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"IKEA"
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Internal communication and employer branding within a humanistic model – a case study of IKEA (Spain, 2019–2021)
PurposeThe study aims to establish that a humanistic model is a necessary context for efficient employer branding (EB) and to identify the characteristic features of a humanistic model in IKEA.Design/methodology/approachThis study included a review of the scientific literature and a narrative case study via semi-structured interviews with top management leaders and middle managers.FindingsThe research demonstrates that the effectiveness of EB depends on the implementation of a humanistic model and that IKEA uses a business paradigm that involves EB through a humanistic management model. In addition, the pandemic has enhanced prosocial management and revealed the need for this model in companies. Through the analysis of the humanistic model used by IKEA, the authors provide an example of how other organizations and business leaders can develop communities and society not based on profit maximization. However, further research is needed to contrast the quantitative information provided by the company itself and by external sources. What is offered in this article is the starting point for future studies on this topic.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies on EB in the context of a humanistic model and the first to use IKEA as a paradigmatic example.
Journal Article
Exploring IKEA effect in self-expressive mass customization: underlying mechanism and boundary conditions
Purpose
This study aims to understand the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions of the IKEA effect in self-expressive mass customization (MC). It examines the effect of the extent of choice in MC toolkits in terms of perceived value of self-designed products, as well as how self-expression mediates this effect and what kind of consumers are more inclined to experience such effect.
Design/methodology/approach
Two experiments were conducted, using online MC toolkits. In total, 393 consumers participated in the experiments. Data collected were analyzed using t-tests, analyses of variance, path analyses, bootstrap analyses and spotlight tests.
Findings
The results show that offering a greater extent of choice in MC toolkits to consumers provides a greater opportunity for self-expression, resulting in higher product valuation. Further, consumers who have high romanticism in aesthetic preference and high self-esteem are more inclined to influences associated with this effect.
Originality/value
This research adds to the literature on the IKEA effect in self-expressive MC by identifying a key antecedent (extent of choice), its underlying mechanism (self-expression), and two boundary conditions (aesthetic preference and self-esteem). The results of this study provide firms with a better understanding of how they can improve their self-expressive MC strategies.
Journal Article
International expansion through flexible replication: Learning from the internationalization experience of IKEA
Business organizations may expand internationally by replicating a part of their value chain, such as a sales and marketing format, in other countries. However, little is known regarding how such \"international replicators\" build a format for replication, or how they can adjust it in order to adapt to local environments and under the impact of new learning. To illuminate these issues, we draw on a longitudinal in-depth study of Swedish home furnishing giant IKEA, involving more than 70 interviews. We find that IKEA has developed organizational mechanisms that support an ongoing learning process aimed at frequent modification of the format for replication. Another finding is that IKEA treats replication as hierarchical: lower-level features (marketing efforts, pricing, etc.) are allowed to vary across IKEA stores in response to market-based learning, while higher-level features (fundamental values, vision, etc.) are replicated in a uniform manner across stores, and change only very slowly (if at all) in response to learning (\"flexible replication\"). We conclude by discussing the factors that influence the approach to replication adopted by an international replicator.
Journal Article
Exploring digitalisation at IKEA
PurposeThe paper aims to clarify how an incumbent retail organisation explores digitalisation for its existing business.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws from an in-depth case study of home-furnishing retail giant, IKEA conducted with semi-structured interviews, participant observations and document analyses.FindingsIn the exploration phase of digitalisation, three major activities – interpreting, interrelating and integrating – illuminate how the exploration process can be organised in practice.Originality/valueAlthough digitalisation ranks amongst the most significant ongoing transformations in retail businesses, research on how incumbent retail organisations have engaged in exploring digitalisation in practice has remained scarce. The paper contributes insights into digitalisation processes in retail businesses that may also apply to other trends affecting the retail industry.
Journal Article
CSR as Corporate Political Activity: Observations on IKEA's CSR Identity–Image Dynamics
In this article, we develop a conceptual framework to understand how a company's CSR identity becomes defined as a political activity destabilizing the strong identity–image relations. We draw on theories of political CSR and organizational identity–image relations to study how CSR emerges as a corporate political activity in a context where the corporate CSR work is first appreciated and later critiqued by the public in the wake of socio-political events. We analyse the micro-organizational processes in the context of macro-political level changes, and we refer to this as the 'identity–image dynamics of political CSR'. Concretely, we describe in two vignettes how IKEA's declared 'apolitical and neutral' CSR identity becomes entangled with national and international socio-political events that critically challenge the corporate engagement prior national understandings of citizenship rights. In this process, IKEA's CSR identity becomes defined as a political and non-neutral activity. Our article contributes by bringing attention to the organizational level dynamics of political CSR by offering a conceptualization of how global and local socio-political events may disturb the alignment between CSR identity and image and challenge the corporate CSR work beyond managerial control.
Journal Article
ANALYSIS OF THE HR AND CUSTOMER RELATED CHALLENGES FACED BY IKEA IN THE UAE MARKET DUE TO CROSS CULTURE DIFFERENCES
This research paper studies one of the world's largest multinational furniture retailers which is IKEA. It focuses on how they have faced with some cultural challenges in the expansion into global markets and possible recommendations and solutions brought from customers' feedback and intensive research. Some of the important things included in the research are the information about the industry and the company, SWOT analysis, the methodology used for this research.
Journal Article
Ease or excitement? Exploring how concept stores contribute to a retail portfolio
PurposeThe study aims to explore how concept stores (theoretically) differ from other experience-based retail formats, and hence, how they (practically) contribute to a diversified retail store portfolio.Design/methodology/approachCase study based on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with seven IKEA retail managers, three industry experts and 26 customers of IKEA concept stores in London and Stockholm.FindingsThe concept store represents a conceptual departure from other experiential store formats. It is neither fully experiential in the sense that it is not only about marketing communications nor is it sales or profit-focused. Its aim is to be an accessible touchpoint that reduces friction on a diversified customer journey with its value to the retail portfolio being that it attracts new and latent customers, mitigates existing inhibiting factors and drives them to other touchpoints.Research limitations/implicationsIdeas about the different characteristics of new store formats and their potential to shape the customer experience are extended. New formats reflect innovation in retailing and are part of a retail portfolio which generates different customer expectations and determinants from traditional store formats which provide the customers' existing reference point.Practical implicationsThe contributions of new formats should be evaluated in light of other existing formats in the portfolio and not isolated. This is particularly true when considering format cannibalisation and the potentially extended customer journey that arises when customers use traditional format stores and new concept format stores simultaneously.Originality/valuePrevious research, using sales metrics and market-based results as performance determinants, suggests negative outcomes for format diversification. Our study suggests that the contributions of the concept store format should be viewed from an overall customer journey perspective and the “performance” of different format based touchpoints are not best captured through traditional sales evaluation methods.
Journal Article
International retailing as embedded business models
As retailers internationalize they interact with diverse socio-political-economic environments and the activities, processes, behaviours and outputs underpinning their business models evolve over time and space. Retailers are not passive, and through managerial agency they interpret the environment to compete and further their own commercial aims. Consequently, mutual interaction with the host environment means that changes may also occur in the established institutional norms in a market. Most existing studies have focused on the implications of territorial embeddedness for internationalizing retailers. In this article we also consider the societal and network forms of embeddedness identified by Hess, and illustrate how retailers transfer, negotiate and adapt their business model as they embed themselves in different institutional environments. A case study of IKEA is used to illustrate the synthesis of these two frameworks.
Journal Article