Don’t treat IKEA floor models as your own bed

By Jiang Chu Source:Global Times Published: 2012-8-8 11:05:03

 

Illustrations: Peter C. Espina
Illustrations: Peter C. Espina

Last Saturday, I accompanied my mom to an IKEA store in Beijing. When we arrived there, it was crowded, as usual. In the bedroom display area on the third floor in particular, customers, both young and old, were leisurely sitting or even sleeping on the floor models as if they were at home.

It was my mother's first visit to IKEA, and it was the first time she witnessed such a scene. I knew why she felt so surprised. Outside of IKEA, "Don't touch" may be the most frequently heard words in many Chinese furniture shops.

Actually, one week earlier, a series of photos depicting a slew of snoozing visitors in an IKEA store in Shanghai had been widely shared on microblogs. The original poster even wrote on the entry, "Only when my generation dies out, can the moral quality of Chinese people improve."

The post has attracted much attention. Some claim that IKEA's experience-based marketing is a good example for Chinese furniture shops, while others argue that we Chinese should pay attention to our cultural image and improve our moral quality.

IKEA is the world's largest furniture retailer. It allows consumers to go directly to the section where the items on their list are displayed. In my view, IKEA is also a very successful example of experiential marketing. In any IKEA store, you can see various samples of kitchens, living rooms, master bedrooms, youth bedrooms, and bathrooms. To some extent, IKEA is like a large house, just like its Chinese name Yijia, which means warm home.

IKEA's modern, comfortable environment and eco-friendly interior design have attracted lots of "family members" and made impressive profits. But at the same time, it inevitably has to bear the cost: People do treat IKEA as their own home. This may be the reason why many Chinese people like to sleep on IKEA's sample beds.

However, it's not like this everywhere.

I have been to three branches of IKEA: Beijing, Dalian and Cardiff. The scenes inside the Beijing or Dalian stores are similar to those in the Shanghai branch. But in Cardiff, things are different.

In 2010, I arrived in the UK and needed to buy some furniture and household goods. IKEA was a good choice. The layout and interior design of the IKEA store in Cardiff looked just like the other stores in China. One big difference was that there were fewer people there, and the other was that no one slept on the beds. The same experiential marketing tactics, but with totally different outcomes.

The major reason is Chinese people's lower sense of public awareness. When they sleep on sample beds, they neither think about whether their behavior will disturb other customers, nor worry that they will make trouble for the IKEA staff. They seem to only care about their own comfort.

IKEA has already made a response to this phenomenon. The company will continue to follow its experiential marketing platform and provide maximum convenience for customers. But at the same time, IKEA hopes that Chinese customers will be more mindful of their actions in the stores and try not to behave in a way that affects others.

Having heard IKEA's statement, will you continue to sleep on their showroom floor models?

The author is a freelance writer based in Beijing. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn



Posted in: Viewpoint

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