Ikea Case Study

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Brief background of Ikea and its environment

A young Sweden entrepreneur Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943. With the age of 17, Kamprad turned his business into a mail order operation selling a variety of household products, particularly furniture. Kamprad with his strong entrepreneurship started the first IKEA showroom/store in 1953 in Sweden.

IKEA main strategy was to design functional furniture that was easy and inexpensive to build, receive it disassembled at stores, and display it on the show room floor with detailed explanation ticket to abolish traditional salesperson assistance. Staffs were available for enquiries, but the customers could freely select between orders, pick up, transport and assemble their own selections. In fact, this strategy creates a mutual beneficial between Ikea and customer. Ikea …show more content…

He was once quoted as saying that “maintaining a strong IKEA culture is one of the most crucial factors behind the continued success of the IKEA concept (Ikea, n.d.).” In this level, Ikea’s culture can be understand from what people can see, hear and feel.

According to Smith (2012), IKEA was featured in Fortune for the awards of “100 best company to work for” and “100 best companies for working mothers”. In fact, being listed in the award indicated IKEA’s is a very ideal place to work. The result of the awards was actually generated from the questionnaire distributed to more than 252,000 employees within 257 firms (PwC, 2014). At the same time, the award of “100 best companies for working mothers” shows IKEA’s concerns about the employees’ commitment to family. As a result, many “co-worker” have expressed positive feedback regarding to the work culture in Ikea (Smith,

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