Ikea

Ikea has established strong branding with wide range of stylish products. It focus on offering low-priced and affordable furniture. The furniture is easy to assemble and ship. It offers one-stop shopping and featured the amenities as playrooms for children and Swedish cafes, bank and enough parking spaces. It creates a friendly atmosphere and services to shop and design the store layout for a nice journey of shopping. It has strong global sourcing capabilities.

These enormous materials consumption numbers don’t incorporate the water needed to grow food and to run our households. Consistently we consume in this way about a hundred times our body weight in water. But household water use to have been on the decline in the most developed countries. In the U.S. it is down about 5 percent from the peak in the 1980, in the substantial part due to low-flush toilets.

IKEA established in 1943, has been one of the largest household goods retailers in the world. Moreover, IKEA has always been keen on providing the mass majority with well designed, good quality and low price household furniture. Through analyzing its marketing strategy and marketing mix, we can find the reasons why IKEA can be so successful in the intense competition, which we learn from.

Today IKEA has 315 stores in 27 countries with about 9 500 products in the range and 135 000 employees. One of those countries is Singapore, the main focus for today’s PESTEL and Porter’s five forces report.

Highly competitive market brings IKEA weaknesses such as magnitude of the global business that is or isn’t capable of managing stakeholders, product differentiation, suppliers’ issues of not abiding by IKEA Group Code (IWAY code) in to limelight. Other weaknesses of IKEA i.e. ineffective communication and information exchange with its consumers and stakeholders due to huge scale of business operations are also identified (Johansson et al., 2008).

IKEA has a broad target market. They aim to appeal to customers of all demographic with one thing in common which is price preference.

And by offering the right products at the right prices we will help our customers live a more sustainable life at home. IKEA has an important role to play in terms of taking responsibility for people and the environment. This is why sustainability is one of four cornerstones in the new Group strategy “Growing IKEA – together”. We have a strong foundation to build on – it is in our culture to twist and turn established truths to find a new angle, a new idea, and to have the courage to try to do things differently. IKEA is obsessed with making more from less, and we hate to waste resources of any kind. This will continue to be our compass in years to come, and we will stimulate new thinking and innovation in our sustainability work. Innovation is needed to build sustainable solutions into the IKEA range and to tackle some of the global challenges society faces. We need to identify and use more resource efficient materials and develop better solutions for reusing and recycling IKEA products once our customers no longer want them. I believe IKEA together with our customers, co-workers, suppliers and the rest of society can make a big difference. The 50 million low-energy bulbs purchased at IKEA in the past three years represent energy savings equivalent to the output of four and a half nuclear plants, and substantial reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. This gives just a hint of the potential that lies in the word “together”!

IKEA is recognized as one of the reputed brands of Sweden, operating in the segment of ready-to-assembled furniture’s, fittings, appliances, and many others designed accessories and equipments. Although it entered in this segment in the year 1943 in Sweden but very quickly it expanded its operations in the markets of China as well. It is mainly due to its modern architectural stylish designs and eco-friendly nature. This helped Ikea to improve its brand image and profitability by almost 50 percent as compared to previous years. This proved extremely effective for Ikea to enhance its customer bases and reliability in the market among many other rival players (Inter IKEA

There are two hundred and fifty three of IKEA FAMILYs over the world and five hundred and sixty five millions of visitors. The sales volume grow up to one point four billion Euro from 2007 to 2008. “Low price and good quality” is the most important thing to IKEA. Low price is not equal to poor quality, on the contrary, quality show the valuable brand.

says how different people in different parts of the world thinks about IKEA, how elegant their designs are and how affordable

From the very beginning, IKEA understood the needs of its customers and target prospects, and provided variety of option to their customers, so they were highly attached and relied upon its name

Now, more and more people concern company’s corporate social responsibility on environment issues. IKEA needs to increasing energy efficiency and reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases to prove their concern on environment. Therefore, IKEA have to invest more on green issues and try to maintain low cost in the meanwhile, which is a big challenge. (IKEA, online, 2009)

IKEA inventory is also stocked at night after their opening hours so they can reach the demand of the costumers reducing ordering and avoiding to overstock or the opposite have less stock than needed which also helps to reduce the costs.

Ikea’s approach to ‘DIY’ has been a massive success and they’ve built a strong based on this unique experience, and best of all, its affordable! Due to their approach to business Ikea is “The world 's largest furniture retailer by sales” (Mollnos). Ikea’s furniture allows room for creativity within the space being designed. Their affordable prices are ideal for the average consumer. Ikea has a fruitful way to bring in a younger crowd based on the success of their Instagram account. The account shows rooms transformed from dull and cluttered to organized and inviting. Being able to view real average people who have transformed their homes with affordable, modern furniture is an excellent move for Ikea. When shopping at an Ikea store, the products displays are meaningful and products that coordinate are placed together. This proves to be successful when additional furniture is purchased.

First, IKEA has found “niche” to serve. The fact that they are producing “Scandinavian style” products makes them unique. Their idea of offering a very broad range of products, with limited style variations, the bold colors and the typical Scandinavian names, has created a very strong brand image and also a high recognition value of its products. Also, their slogan “Design with meaning” distuingishes them from their competitors. IKEA offers