IKEA's Use of Store Environment to Achieve Competitive Advantage

Two of the environmental factors that CVS uses the most from the Consumer Behavior Model is offering and cultural. CVS’ marketing stimuli of offering value to the customers by having a pharmacy along with household products, as well as the Minute Clinics located in many of the stores to have the convenience of a one stop shop. In fact, CVS is the largest integrated pharmacy health care provider in the US and operates retail and long-term care (Market Line, 2017). The company offers the atmosphere of everything needed in a small and convenient sized store, located on the corner of almost every five-mile stretch (Feyder, 2012). With today’s fast paced lifestyle, customers want to rush in the store, get what is needed, and head to the next

When customers walk into the store, they first try to adjust themselves according to the surroundings of the store. It is very important to get the customers attention.By viewing the setup and location of the store in relation to the shopping, Paco

The place element of the marketing mix involves making products available to the customer in the most convenient way. To ensure this JD operates in many different places such as high streets, out of town locations, shopping centres and online stores. JD wants to make the shopping experience distinctive from that of its rivals. It does this by innovative displays and creative imagery to make the store experience fun and exciting.

”The IKEA Concept starts with the idea of providing a range of home furnishing products that are affordable to the many people, not just the few.” *http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_GB/this-is-ikea/the-ikea-concept/index.html

This report analyses the current market for the Kirkcaldie & Stains department store and the areas that need improving based on the findings for the market analysis. The remote environment is analyzed through conduction a PESTE analysis showing that technological factors are one of the biggest contributors to the changing retail industry along with economic factors changing consumers shopping habits. The macro environment analyzed through a TOWS analysis, competitor analysis and customer analysis shows that the greatest threats include the online market, not having a broad target market and the physical presence inside the store does not align with Kirkcaldie & Stains image that they want to portray to their

As soon as you walk in, one can be expected to be showered with a lovely aroma of freshly baked bread, and delicious cakes and pastries. When you walk down the first aisle, you are once again hit with an alluring mixture of smells coming from the ethnic food station, which both are filled everyday with new, fresh food. The different sensations is a direct result of having a higher quality product, and can also contribute to consumers need for better tasting

IKEA is a global furniture retailer, which is established on the concept of contributing wide range of well designed, functional, and low cost home furnishing products in 40 countries, with 330 stores and 154,000 workers (The IKEA concept, 2012). IKEA was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kampar and has turned in an international furniture retailer that specialized in stylish but inexpensive furniture designs.

Grocery shopping is one of the biggest routinized activities in every household. People have a basic need to purchase foods and essential household products all the time, it is a challenge for retailers and managers to find out those needs and also to encourage customers to buy more of what is might be less important so that the company can gain more profit in each shopping period. There are many different ways to stimulate customer’s demand such as advertising, sale promotion or any other marketing approaches however store environment is now being widely considered as it can also effectively influence the number of items purchased, money and time spend in the store. One of the big elements in supermarket environment is its layout; grocery store layout means the way in which products, shelves, shopping carts are organized; the size and shape and the spatial relationships among them. Additionally, the layout management in the supermarket or grocery store is not just about where to put products and shelves but also include intangible components such as shopping aisles and the invisible spaces. Overall successful grocery store layout allow shoppers to move through the entire sales floor in a natural and comfortable way, encourage customers to discover new products, lengthen the shopping time spend and increase sales.

There is a profound competitiveness bounded within today’s retail sector. Food City is one such retailer that could benefit from this week’s case study. Food City’s store product layout appears to be backwards from most grocery chains. Products are grouped in unrecognizable order. Due to the product layout, I simply do not do my grocery shopping with the company. Visual simulation would portray a consumer’s difficulty in finding products within the store. Layout could be analyzed and addressed to assist shoppers with a more pleasant shopping experience. I also feel that the Oscar Myer Corporation could profit from a visual product simulation study. Packaging differences are evident and distinctive. Due to product packaging, Oscar Myer products

The store advertises the same sales and merchandise for the three stores and coordinates to maintain enough inventories within each store location to maintain a customer service level of 95% (Virtual Organizations Portal, 2007). Like other retail stores customer satisfaction is a prime marketing tool but so is the ever changing gourmet items offered in the stores. New items are introduced regularly into the store; Kathy looks to competitors for pricing strategies and product comparison to market the new goods. While Kathy looks to competitors her customer differs from other markets in the area, they look for a gourmet experience.

2. Digital and Interactive Storefront Windows: this would help in attracting customers but would also help in familiarizing brands for the window shoppers. Making them interactive and digital gives more in-depth experience

Items in the store are also arranged by their intrinsic properties. For example, the dairy products are in the same aisle as Ice Cream and Yogurt. This arrangement makes for an easy transition for the customer. This layout pays a considerable role in assisting the customer’s visual system to pay attention to the store’s items.

In this modern hypercompetitive marketplace, a company must be a powerful competitor to survive. A company must possess a powerful strategy in order to become a powerful competitor. But what makes a good strategy for the company?

IKEA is a privately held, international home products company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture. The company is the world’s largest furniture retailer. It was founded in 1943 by 17-year-old Ingvar Kamprad in Southern Sweden. As of October 2011, IKEA has 326 furniture stores, operates in 38 countries and engages 1,500 suppliers of 12.000 products. In fiscal year 2010, it sold $23.1 billion worth of goods, a 7.7 percent increase over 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA).

In august 2008, IKEA had total 253 stores where 560 million people visited. Here the total sales became 23 billion Euros. Considering 20% sales profit here IKEA’s average customer per store and cost per store are given below: