Even Happier Than Disneyland!
Ikea is no stranger to the
land of the Taj Mahal. It has been sourcing a large volume of its rugs and
other fabrics from India’s huge export textile manufacturing industry, and expects
to step up its supply – side activities and improve the lot of its labor force.
After much deliberate cultural engineering, the world’s largest specialized
furniture manufacturer, Sweden’s IKEA, was finally and recently given the
government’s official “Accha!” (Hindi) / “OK!” (Swedish), to move ahead with
plans to build, solely own and
operate the first four of about 25 retail stores in the sub-continent.
With 301 stores already in 37 countries (as of 2012) and many first time
enterprises planned in the Slavic countries of the former Soviet Union, as well
as in New Zealand, Indonesia and South Korea in the coming years, Ikea has
trumped the Disneyland enterprise, with outposts only in the USA, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Paris.
While Ikea’s mission, “Creating a better life for the many people!” it seems
not to mean “all people”, as it has no signs of moving into South America or
continental Africa, save the unlikelihood that its proposed opening in
September in Cairo proceeding on schedule.
These premiere
emporia of good life and style will serve the targeted middle classes living
adjacent to Mumbai, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Bangalore, cities with total
population over 50 million. Like Target,
the presence of an Ikea store is a sign of an upwardly mobile, culturally
Western-leaning population in a nation with over a third of the world’s poorest
people.
Like the Happiest
place on earth!” (aka Disneyland), Ikea wants its customers to come to a store
that is more than a place to get stuff. It is an entire experience: a museum
(whose works you can interact with buy and replicate exactly in your own home
or office), a warehouse that makes purchasing efficient and a place to enjoy
with the whole family.
In addition to
its products, Ikea stores are known for their restaurants and accommodations
for children. We will be interested to see if the new India branches will have
the iconic Småland, a supervised play area for children
named after the province in Sweden where Ikea’s founder was born. In addition
to the ultimate focus group (your kids) having the opportunity to test some of
Ikea’s products, shoppers can also enjoy the store’s Swedish-themed restaurant.
Like those iconic Levy’s Rye Bread ads, you don’t have to be Swedish to love
Ikea’s ligonberry juice, but in Ikea Israel
the food will be Kosher in accord with dietary laws. In Dubai or Abu Dhabi, hotdogs and soft-serv frozen yoghurt will
not appeal to the locals, so they have adapted the menu that includes meatless
options. We can expect the same in India, with 42% of the population being
vegetarian.
108+ Words
for Elephant
It is not yet
clear whether Ikea will create its promotional materials in Hindi, or just rely
on the fact that in India, a country that has had upwards of over 1600 languages spoken daily, English (of
British lineage) is the most common language used by its target market: the
upwardly mobile middle-class. Ikea’s paper catalogs are still published in 20
languages in 62 versions amounting to 211 million copies annually. Each
regional version of the look-book is tightly edited to visually reflect what
Ikea marketing gurus believe to reflect the appropriate lifestyle for a locale.
(Exactly what are those storage bins holding?) Last year The Wall
Street Journal reported
that Swedes and Saudi Arabians were both up in arms about a page in the
latter’s book that edited out images of women in some of the
photos.
Of course Ikea
has been actively using digital technology, including websites
(which are offered in English as well as local languages), the new Ikea Now
app and regional advertising. It will save many trees, part of the
company’s environmental policy.
Whether
promoted in bricks-and-mortar stores or in print or online, only time will tell
whether iconoclastic Ikea’s products “translate” into the Indian culture. In
the land of Lord Ganesha, the god with the elephant head (and
over 108 Sanskrit words for “elephant”), will Ikea
repurpose its child-pleasers, such “Sagosten”, to better fit the traditions or
rewrite its “LEKA CIRKUS“ to accommodate the beloved
popular devotional tale, or will it take the lead from the ever
accommodating webtailer Cafe Press and just sell whatever the market
will bear?
Each of Ikea’s
product names is an actual word in Swedish that was selected because it somehow
relates to the product. The website "Ikea in Swedish" can provide
assistance in pronunciation. Perhaps when Ganesha’s mom, Goddess Parvati, tells
him its time to put away his ritual weapons for the day, he can use one of
Ikea’s many storage systems, such as “Trofast”, which
coincidentally means “faithful” in Scandinavian languages. Can we anticipate
new Swedish language programs in India’s universities, utilizing the catalog as
text?
Ikea’s Do
(Weave, Assemble, Etc.) - it Yourself Ikea: Gandhi-ji Would Approve
Ikea is no
stranger to the land of Gandhi. It has been sourcing a large volume of
its rugs and other fabrics from India’s huge export textile manufacturing
industry, and expects to step up its supply – side activities and improve the
log of its labor force.
Beyond the
typical marketing research that a powerful multi-national corporation must
undertake before asserting itself into a new market, Ikea has been engaged in
corporate system-wide campaigns of social responsibility assessment and
realignment through the company’s signature ”management
by running around” style.
Ikea’s
corporate executives, in tandem with local executives and scholars have been considering viable ways to
continue to maintain profit margins and competitive edge while working with
local public and private sectors to blend seemingly incompatible ethical,
social, cultural and economic standards to achieve a positive bottom line for
all, including its subcontracted indigenous labor force, many of whom are
children. Ikea’s social and environmental responsibility campaigns are engaging
international and local NGOs and even the United Nations around the table;
although, its “Galant” model seems much to small to
accommodate all the players.
The Ikea
Foundation, touted in The Economist as being the largest
philanthropic entity in the world, has been working in India to find
appropriate ways to improve the quality of life for its supply-side laborers,
including women and children living in poverty. This will no doubt take longer
than it does to build the new stores.
In the mean
time, India will be an interesting lab to test the “Ikea effect”, where “labor leads to love”, a
well-documented marketing phenomenon that individuals were in fact willing to
pay more for the box they built themselves as opposed to an identical
pre-assembled box. The test markets are in Ethiopia and Iraq where Ikea has
worked with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees and other groups to
create set-up-youself shelters for Syrian refugees.
Gandhi-ji would no doubt approve.
No comments:
Post a Comment