“Success, Criticism and Effect of IKEA” Articles Review
Here are the list of articles, some of which have been referred to for the analysis and understanding of IKEA:
https://frieze.com/article/ikea-end-metaphysics
https://www.dezeen.com/2015/08/21/13-best-ikea-hacks-and-designs/
http://time.com/4019716/ikea-catalogue-german-literary-critic-hellmuth-karasek-ad/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/house-perfect
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9643122/Ikea-25-facts.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ikea-effect-effort-imbues-everyday-objects-personal-value/
https://www.apqc.org/blog/what-building-ikea-furniture-can-teach-you-about-process-improvement
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/11-091.pdf
https://www.curbed.com/2014/10/8/10038294/how-ikea-became-americas-furnitureselling-powerhouse
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/06/stages-shopping-ikea_n_7213678.html
https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/can-you-spot-it-10-nearly-unrecognizable-ikea-hacks-223995
IKEA has, since it opened, established itself as a brand — a brand that goes beyond selling items or creating an experience for you when you visit one of its huge stores. IKEA develops a relationship with you, one that it hopes it can maintain for a long time, and usually successful in doing so.
A lot of this success is attributed to a couple of the following
- Providing household items that a typical person would need to use while providing options for customisation
- Doing so in a simplistic manner that is exuberant of style (and coincidentally goes together really well with other IKEA furniture and items)
- Arguably most importantly, forces you to become a stakeholder in its longevity
I want to discuss more on the third point, as it is the most interesting and striking to me. As one is required to put together their own furniture as part of the IKEA process (there are exceptions such as getting your family/friends to put it together for you or taking the easy way out by hiring someone else to put it together for you), you inevitably create memories.
Funnily enough, some of my fondest memories that my housemates always revisit involve sitting around a mess of wood, screws, cushions and each other sweatily as we put together almost everything in our apartment as we lugged everything back from IKEA. This meant the sofa, 3 of our beds, 3 of our tables, multiple chairs, brackets for walls, and probably more that slip my mind in this moment. 3 years in, all of the furniture (though heavily used by tons of guests, drunk college students, and *ahem ahem* fun times) stands strong and continues to be an essential part of our daily routines.
And we’d not trade the memories we initially made when putting together the furniture, or the ones we made since, for anything else.
This is referred to as the IKEA effect — where your sweat and effort that goes into putting the furniture together increases its perceived value.
I am admittedly partaking in this psychological effect as I share my story, but I want to be open in sharing how this is a strong part of why we (the 3 of us amongst many more) love IKEA so much.
The lack of boundaries for how we build furniture is the cherry on the cake. For the adventurous, the raw materials for the furniture can be further tweaked to suit one’s needs.
Don’t need your table to be that long? Why not saw it up.
Or that bed is too high? Mark its 4 legs and chop them off equally (we actually did this for one of our beds and we had tons of fun doing so).
Literally, you get to OWN your furniture. Not just monetarily or legally, but emotionally.
It becomes part of you, and your life, from the moment you walked into the store, to the moment you toss it away some 10 years down the line when your taste might have improved past IKEA furniture to serious Versace furniture that costs 1000x more.
Or maybe you never move past it, and it always remains as a part of you.
