Tuesday, May 19, 2009

About Ikea

BBC NEWS | Europe | In search of Europe: Sweden

Here's an article talking about why Ikea is internationally popular, and asks the question "how does Ikea manage to unify Europeans around its brand and its products, where the parliament so often fails to do so?"

A professor from Stockholm suggests:
"..Customers are picking Ikea because it provides certain values."

Ikea's senior staff travel to Almhult, in southern Sweden, to have those values inculcated into them. It is as close to a company town as you get these days - there's an Ikea hotel, a private Ikea museum, and a host of Ikea laboratories, communications and personnel units. You are never far from a self-assembled bookcase or nice-looking but really very cheap mug.

I hope the town square in Almhult is full of plastic balls for everyone to play in.

3 comments:

TimT said...

It sounds like a hell on earth. I hate IKEA. Their mugs don't look nice to me, but they do look cheap.

Steve said...

Oh. I quite like visiting Ikea. I sort of admire their commercial success in the same way I admire Disneyland. But I don't actually buy all that much from them.

Colin Campbell said...

I love the meatballs. We have Ikea stuff all over our house.