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How IKEA tricks you into buying more stuff
- accountofme 5y agoI have always called the inside of an Ikea store intestines. Mainly because the make sure that you mostly have to go past everything to find the thing you want. Ikea maximises surface area of things for sale as you move through. The human gut uses the same trick to maximise getting food into you blood via villi. * As a side note, I know that Ikea has shortcuts. Thank fuck! But if you walk through the store wandering aimlessly following everyone else, you are being maximised.
- mlac 5y agoI went once during COVID and they had closed signs on all the shortcuts…
- Semaphor 5y agoIt’s funny, because their layout makes me spend less. Not because it doesn’t work, but because it makes me absolutely dread going there. There’s no other store I hate going to as much as Ikea because of the pure annoyance of their layout. So I usually don’t.
- jebronie 5y agoI feel the same way. Its so awful to walk the long narrow paths, that are clogged with slow-walking smelly people. The store in my city is also overheated, so not only is it torturous to walk the store, its also hard to breathe and sweaty.
- technothrasher 5y agoThis was my feeling the one and only time I went into an IKEA. I actually had a panic attack halfway through because of the no way out, crowded, hot maze I had unexpectedly been thrust into. Not for me, for sure.
- paulcole 5y agoAs proud as HN commenters are of not falling prey to the tricks that work on normies, this shouldn’t surprise you. IKEA isn’t designing their store to extract maximum value from you.
- Semaphor 5y agoAs I mentioned, it is working on me just as well as on the next person. I’d love to claim differently, but for this, I can’t. It’s the side effect that destroys it.
- paulcole 5y ago> It’s funny, because their layout makes me spend less. Literally what you said.
- Semaphor 5y agoYes, maybe you shouldn’t have stopped reading afterwards.
- paulcole 5y agoIf you go to the store less because you hate the experience, it doesn’t work. This is like saying, “The medicine works on me but I don’t like the flavor so I hardly ever take it.” The medicine doesn’t work on you!
- hotpotamus 5y agoI guess I'm here to shill for Ikea. I enjoy wandering around the labyrinthian layout (though it was always clear to me this was intentional to make you spend more time in store), and the level of detail is impressive - open a drawer in the showroom and you can buy the organizer and all the utensils within. As I've aged a bit, the spare, modern nordic design of everything isn't quite as appealing as it was to my younger self, but I still like it. I suppose it's the unified design of the entire store experience that works for me. I even enjoy putting the furniture together with their wordless instructions, though I'm told many people find it frustrating. Also, the furniture is cheap to the point of disposability which I consider a double-edged sword. You certainly wont be passing on heirloom Ikea furniture to grandchildren, but it does the job for a bit and you can move on from it without much worry if you need to get rid of it quickly.
- hk1337 5y agoI’ve been known to look at what I want online, check the store inventory and where it’s located and go in through the exit to get what I want and leave.
- hattar 5y agoThis is definitely the trick. My wife and I buy plenty of IKEA stuff, but I haven’t been beyond the exit warehouse in years.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mft_ 5y agoI'm with you. We sometimes have no choice but to go to Ikea (in some furniture categories, in this country it's difficult-to-impossible to find options in between Ikea and excessively expensive) but we view it as a necessary evil, and always take the same approach: do a speed-run through the store (taking all shortcuts) until we hit the exact section we need. Sit, recline, feel, examine, decide... and then continue on the the next section. The only area that sometimes defeats us is the kitchen-ware.
- flenserboy 5y agoOne great part about their layout, however, is the placement of their grocery section — you can bypass everything, zip over there, & get out of the store quite quickly. And the grocery section is really the best part of what they offer, at least in the US, where many flavors, and some items, are all but unavailable elsewhere.
- dazc 5y agoExactly this, if I want a single item I want to go and buy it and walk out of the store with the least friction possible. One coud argue that this is the reason why Ikea are not nearly as succesful as they could have been. I should also mention their e-commerce business which is beyond terrible. Considering how many years they have had to get this right, this has to be their biggest failure by far.
- drivers99 5y agoYou don’t have to follow the entire designated route. I just look at the map and use the built-in short cuts. I go when it’s not busy. I get in and get out easily.
- Semaphor 5y agoYeah, but that is stressful, stress that I avoid by going somewhere I don’t feel railroaded. Hell, I might even walk everywhere and look at everything to see what else I could need, but I won’t feel railroaded to do so.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoI always thought it was fun finding the shortcuts.
- Freak_NL 5y agoWe really only go when we need something that Ikea specifically has a good product and price for. En route through the store we pick up any of the other basic or clever stuff that we need (I like their crockery and various kitchen utils), and end near the cash registers in the second-hand section to fill a bag with a selection of special screws, bolts, and those clever nuts they have for €2. For someone into woodworking those bins are a treasure chest. And of course pick up some Swedish food in the little Ikea supermarket beyond the cash registers. I've never understood how people get stuck following the designated route. Much faster to just take the shortcuts and stay of the (crowded) main path.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoAnd was just saying this to my wife the other day: explains why they seem to have avoided moving with any effort to online shopping, even in the last two years of COVID lockdowns. With online shopping they can't really push you through a maze of junk before you get to the checkout. Around here you can buy things online from IKEA but they make the shipping and delivery a pain and more expensive than their competition.
- steve_taylor 5y agoI wanted to buy a $6 shoehorn online from IKEA. When I reached the checkout page, I selected the click and collect option. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw they were going to charge me an additional $5 to pick up the item myself. I ended up walking through their silly maze to save $5. (Prices in AUD.)
- bombcar 5y agoHere they charge you $5 and give you a $5 coupon “for next timel” to keep you hooked.
- jeremymcanally 5y agoWhy would they pivot their entire logistics workflow and supply chain to something that likely isn’t profitable for them outside of a pandemic? They did Pick and Click (ie, curbside pickup) at all their stores, which we did several times. It worked great, was safe for everyone, and used their existing infrastructure. And if our store was any indicator, they got plenty of business to justify offering it for sure.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoWhy pivot? Because during the pandemic especially their competition (existing and new) did pivot and now people expect smooth online ordering for things they never ordered before. Long time friend of mine is an engineering director @ Article Furniture (hiring BTW), and companies like that seem to be doing well out of the transition. If I am now used to buying almost anything online, and can now buy sleek modern furniture online without hassle and with excellent logistics, why would I drag my ass to an IKEA? I don't feel like COVID is much of a threat anymore at least not right now, but the thought of sharing stale air and maneuvering a shopping cart around a rats maze of junk still fills me with dread. The only thing that would get me there is the free EV charging, just cuz.
- matsemann 5y agoWhile it's "impulsive buys", they are at least for me still intentional. I go to IKEA when I know I need new stuff, but without explicitly listing all the small stuff. I know I will go through every department, and then see whatever it is I need on the way.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoMore so than IKEA, the store that makes me buy a lot more than I planned on is Costco. It also uses the cheap food trick ($1.50 hot dog, $5 rotisserie chicken) as well. I tell myself I am going to run in and get one thing, but I come out with my shopping cart full. Because Costco changes what they carry on a regular basis as well as the promotions, whenever you see a sale, you want to immediately grab a bunch of stuff. Also add its super friendly return policies and you are thinking “If I don’t like it, I can always just bring it back”.
- icecap12 5y agoI agree. We're currently affiliated with Sam's Club (we switch back and forth to maximize the free membership deals). I feel like we never get out of Sam's Club or Costco for less than $100, regardless of what we went for originally.
- mlac 5y agoI wonder if the size of the warehouse has some effect. In that size space, things look smaller and less substantial so you buy more or subconsciously feel more need. I know I bought a TV and thought it looked ok / a bit small but then when I got home it was huge. I had measured prior to going and was between two sizes.
- bombcar 5y agoCostco and Trader Joe’s excel at the “make you buy more than you wanted and be happy about it” way more than anyone else - you come out with a full cart and tell yourself you did a good job even though you went in intending to buy a single thing. I think a key difference is you don’t feel tricked about the quality, whereas half the crap from IKEA has been absolutely insanely cheap quality and undurable as all get out (and the other half is a good deal for the price; the hard part is distinguishing- you have to identify the weakpoints that will be problematic in your use case).
- ufo 5y agoIf we're talking about IKEA store layout, we must mention the classic SCP-3008. Don't forget to open the journal transcription at the bottom, which has the meat of the story. https://the-scp.foundation/object/scp-3008 https://the-scp.foundation/object/scp-3008
- b1476 5y agoThanks for reminding me of this, really great read! For a similar feel there’s a good short story by China Miéville called The Ball Pit.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoI generally like IKEA as a concept and furniture source, but am aware that big corporations use all sorts of tricks to get you to like them, use their stuff, not like or use competitors and so on. But the IKEA hate seems mostly based on snobbery and/or brand awareness. Like those stories about random tech things that shoehorn Apple or Telsa into the title because it gets people to click. And people seem to hate other, poorer people wearing the same clothes as them, using the same chairs etc. It's weirdly self-defeating behaviour. This article's most interesting bit is the part when they discuss IKEA's focus on low prices: > The main ingredient of the company’s affordability is a technique called flat packing. > The company reduces manufacturing, logistics, and fulfillment costs by disassembling items and fitting pieces together in a box as tightly as possible. “We hate air” is a common mantra at Ikea: Every pocket of space is accounted for and minimized. > “Ikea designs products with manufacturing and transit in mind from the get-go,” said Katelan Cunningham, of the logistics software company Lumi. “They design for the realities of the supply chain, rather than having to make sacrifices for it.” > Obsessive changes in packaging have saved Ikea millions of dollars: > When Ikea transitioned its Ektorp sofa to be flat packed, it shrunk its packaging for that product by 50%, reduced its logistics by 7,477 truckloads, and led to a 14% price reduction for consumers. > Repackaging the Jules office chair by separating the base and the seat saved the company ~$1.4m per year.
- silvestrov 5y agoI think it is the same with articles like this article: people don't like to assign importance to the banal things, so they come up with all kinds of "clever tricks" explanations. The banal thing is that IKEA is cheap for this level of quality. (and that this quality is good enough for most people). > once an Ikea product hits the shelves, the company is militant about maintaining, or even reducing, its retail price aka Jeff Bozos "your margin is my opportunity". Being able to run the company with low margins are the best defence against competition.
- dylan604 5y ago>aka Jeff Bozos I don't know if that was typo or deliberate. It's the first I've seen it, but I love it to the point I will forever spell it this way.
- gsliepen 5y agoWhen I see videos of people creating custom made tables from a large slab of oak and some resin pour, it looks awesome, but probably IKEA could furnish your whole house using the same amount of wood and still cost less. IKEA is a blessing for this planet. As for self-assembled stuff perceived to be more valuable, I also think it is nice to know that you can assemble, and more importantly, disassemble it yourself. It's more repairable (IKEA sells spare parts as well), makes moving easier, and also allows you to "hack" IKEA products: https://ikeahackers.net/ https://ikeahackers.net/
- microtonal 5y agobut probably IKEA could furnish your whole house using the same amount of wood and still cost less. IKEA is a blessing for this planet. Except that IKEA product last far shorter. We moved frequently due to being in academia, Billy bookshelves are often pretty much worn-out after disassembling and assembling them 2-3 times. We had IKEA sofas (not the cheapest models) that would wear out in 3-5 years. The surface of our relatively expensive IKEA dining table cracked open twice. They replaced it, no questions asked, but their quality is quite mediocre. Before IKEA, in The Netherlands Lundia bookshelves were popular. They were made of massive wood and designed to be easy to assemble/disassemble. They would often last and be passed between generations. I knew fellow students who had 30 year old Lundia bookshelves that were passed on from their parents and moved from house to house and then from student home to student home. Besides that, I really hate shopping at Ikea. It's far too chaotic and annoying. (The trick is going on weekdays and knowing all the shortcuts.)
- flenserboy 5y agoYou disassemble them to move them? No wonder they don't last — I've found that IKEA products are solid & sturdy until the fasteners are removed and/or work their way out on their own (which doesn't happen too often, but can and does on frequently moved/shaken parts such as drawers or desks.
- xxs 5y agoYou can reassemble them with some extra mix of PVA and/or epoxy/wood shavings to fill in. Ikea furniture is easy to repair
- jll29 5y agoIKEA is essentially a bank, as a friend explained to me. They pay suppliers late and meanwhile get paid for selling the furniture made from the supplied parts. Personally I'm a big fan of their simple designs and some of the style, and a regular buyer of book shelves.
- gerikson 5y agoIKEA has a bank in Sweden - Ikano Bank. It handles my branded car credit card, among a lot of other things.
- lozenge 5y agoDon't they teach in business school to pay suppliers late? That's universal of any company with enough size (buying power) to get away with it. https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/suppliers/food-and-drink-manufacturers-taking-longer-on-payments-than-retailers/593476.article https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/suppliers/food-and-drink-manufac...
- wiredfool 5y agoThey're also a charity, so they don't pay income tax.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoIf you look carefully, shortcuts are signposted, but - of course - not highlighted. But you can still get lost because the exit isn't.
- bombcar 5y agoFollow the fire escape signs. And if you get to a fire escape door use it and stay you were confused.
- dumbfounder 5y agoGoing to IKEA drives me absolutely bonkers. I went with my son to buy a few things, ended up going through their amazingly frustrating maze jam packed with people 3 times and finally gave up. Wanted to compare a few different storage solutions to each other but it was maddening trying to get back and forth between a few different sections and trying to remember what was where sucked. I ended up buying much less than we wanted and went home and my wife was mad at me. I am not going anymore.
- lupire 5y agoIf the store is so crowded you can't fit, that means IKEA's only mistake is in not opening more stores.
- jbotz 5y agoThis is all true, and obviously so. But the flip side is that IKEA does have good stuff at good prices, and they have pretty much everything you need to furnish and equip a home. Walking the entire IKEA maze is still faster than visiting all the separate retailers you would otherwise need to visit, and within the same budget you're likely to get higher quality at IKEA. I'm not saying that their quality is very high, but it's usually at least adequate which is better than what you usually get at lower-end prices at other retailers where quality nowadays is a big crap-shoot and half of all items break after the first few uses. When I lived in a place that had IKEA stores I dreaded going there, but I never regretted it. Now I live where there aren't any, and I rather miss them.
- IshKebab 5y agoThey have cheap products at cheap prices. Nothing wrong with that. There's a huge market for disposable chipboard furniture. But they aren't really any cheaper than the competition when you compare like for like. As soon as you get to real wood they're usually pretty comparable to the rest of the market.
- Beltalowda 5y agoI've had Ikea furniture last more than ten years; the bookcases I inherited from my grandfather probably lasted more than twenty in total (and I only got rid of them because I moved abroad). I don't think that's "disposable". It depends a bit on which product you get, but overall I find the quality to be pretty decent. The best? No. But certainly not "disposable" either. There's some shops that offer significantly worse (and often cheaper) quality furniture. I think part of the success of Ikea is that it strikes the right balance between quality and price: you get decent quality for a decent price.
- IshKebab 5y ago20 years is disposable for furniture. Well made furniture can easily last 100 years.
- einpoklum 5y ago> The home furnishings giant enlists a maze-like layout, cheap food, ... to get you to fill up your cart. Thank you, captain obvious... the motivation for the store layout can hardly escape one's notice I would say. But the less-obvious point, to me anyway, is the use of _decoy pricing_. Indeed, I never feel I can figure out whether the price of some IKEA product is high or not. > The Billy bookcase — a product so beloved that one is sold every 5 seconds You know what they say, a sucker is born every second... or 5 seconds. Those infernal pieces of rickety cardboard! People should be liable for bringing guests into homes with Billy bookcases. > one-way path Actually, more like two paths, because (at least in the stores I've seen) you can get to the "market hall", the latter half of your visit, without going through the showrooms.
- akagusu 5y agoIt's not just IKEA, it's every big store out there, no matter what they sell. Out entire economic system depends on people buying more and more stuff, stuff they usually don't need, and they only buy because they were "tricked" to buy.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoCar marketing is the worst. Buy this car and you can have a beautiful wife, healthy and happy children, a nice house in the suburbs, people fawning over you and empty roads to drive on.
- gpmcadam 5y agoanecdotally i’ll go to ikea for a specific product but will always end up picking up some small items impulsively i wonder what the proportion of a typical spend looks like breaking down planned vs impulsive my guess is majority of money is actually planned and while you buy more items impulsively they’re usually small/disposable/refill purchases (napkins/chopping boards/cups/plastic bags)
- harryvederci 5y agoUnrelated nasty IKEA trick I noticed: I ordered a desk online. The previous time I ordered something from IKEA, I received a bazillion messages from them on the day of delivery. This time, I received one message: the desk was being picked up. After that: total silence. At the end of the day, I called to ask what's up. Apparently they didn't have the desks, and it would be months until they would be back in stock. What I learned: If you don't get stalked about the status of your delivery, you don't need to stay at home. You're not getting it. What I did: told them I'd wait for the next delivery, and expressed my annoyance. Got a coupon because of that, then cancelled. I couldn't help myself: if they play tricks on me, I have to return the favour.
- justsomehnguy 5y agoDepends on IKEA/country I suppose? I recently tried to order a chair (it was in stock when I ordered). On the delivery day I got delivered two other items in the same order and later I got a call about how they couldn't deliver the chair because it out of stock. Got a full refund for the chair price (without any action on my part), a coupon for smaaaal amount and a 1/3rd part of the delivery fare as a 'compensation'.
- k_sze 5y agoWe have IKEA in HK. I don’t understand how anybody can claim that its layout is maze-like. It is, to the contrary, expressly linear, with some shortcuts if you really want to skip some sections. Every section is also clearly labeled and you know exactly where you are at.
- petepete 5y agoI never understood that comparison either. I think the thing authors are usually trying to get at is that you can't see the exit from the entrance.
- bombcar 5y agoIt’s in comparison to Home Depot or similar - the difference between navigating a grid city layout and a random organic one.
- tibiapejagala 5y agoMaybe the difference is cultural/environmental? I live in Europe in a city with organic street layout and I find Ikea easy to navigate. Unlike typical grid layout store, I can remember location of every section because they are more distinct. Also shortcuts feel natural just like when driving in the city. I always use them to skip 70% of the store. In a grid layout store I'm always lost, because I can't remember the aisles despite visiting them much more often.
- bombcar 5y agoThat may be the case for multiple visits - I have no real problem with the Ikea layout but a friend of mine will never ever step foot in one again, so there's no chance he'll learn the layout.
- scatters 5y agoIt's a labyrinth, not a maze. There is a single path, but it's circuitous.
- nomilk 5y agoI've bookmarked this article for its exemplar writing style. There's no cruft, and it efficiently conveys intelligent, well referenced ideas. It's not often the reader's time and intelligence are respected. Kudos!
- iambateman 5y agoIdk, every time I go to IKEA, I find the experience magical. The headline is click-baity…no one who had been to IKEA once has ever been tricked by any of this the second time.
- wirthjason 5y agoThe article was a relatively entertaining description of some psychological but for me there’s a more important reason I buy more than in planned for, IKEA’s design is quite good. I fall into the “IKEA as Disneyland” camp. For me there’s tons of inspiration from their designs and layouts that I wouldn’t have thought about on my own —- this is particularly true for organization and maximizing utility in small spaces. Most people are not professional interior designers so it helps to draw inspiration from professionals. If left on their own the things people “think they need” is far less than the things they actually need — people need more, and that’s not a bad thing. I’m not talking about over the top consumerism or aimlessly amassing stuff. I’m certain this is a lot of appeal to shows on HGTV. You see how they design something similar to your house then steal the ideas. I’m also attracted to their minimalistic design. Simple designs and neutral colors never seems to go out of style and blend well with everything. Given IKEAs diversity the same products are sold around the world —- Europe, Japan, America —- so they need a timeless and borderless approach. I’ve probably bought far less from IKEA because I never feel the design is old. I also like the little stories about they inspiration for design. The article mentions how cheap product make IKEA seems like a bargain but even the cheap stuff is well thought out. One designer commented that the plush toys don’t have plastic eyes, they are all stitched / embroidered. The designer realized this after seeing a child with a stuffed animal that only had one eye. The designer thought no child’s toy should eyeless and fixed try problem. IKEA isn’t the only store where good design sells products. Muji is another. I almost always walk out of there buying more than planned. I think it’s easy to attribute this to psychological manipulation but sometimes making a better product and demonstrating how he utility is the real secret sauce. For people interested in design, particularly the theory side, check out the work by Kenya Hara, the design director for Muji.
- Schiphol 5y ago> Let’s say there are 2 cabinets for sale: a $40 budget unit, and an $80 unit with more premium materials. Ikea might create a 3rd unit — one that offers neither the low price of the budget unit, nor the premium materials of the pricier unit — to make the others look better. I strongly suspect I'm the chump who buys the 3rd unit.
- sarusso 5y agoThe impressive thing about this article for me is that it applies to any of their stores around the world. It doesn't matter if you are in Hong Kong, Sweden, the US or a small province in Italy: the layout is really always the same.
- sarusso 5y agoAlso, the meatballs pile infographic is stolen from CERN piling up CDs to the moon. :P
- Overtonwindow 5y agoRelated, IKEA is the world's largest nonprofit. https://archive.is/pDmLm https://archive.is/pDmLm
- CPLX 5y agoI think this is a pretty well known hack but the durability of IKEA furniture increases dramatically with one simple trick, which is to glue everything together when you assemble it. Just get a bottle of very good wood glue like Titebond III and apply it to every surface that touches another surface while you’re putting it together and most of the shaky fall apart if you lean on it qualities can be eliminated.
- bombcar 5y agoOne thing that is nice about IKEA is since everything is pretty standardized you can create mashups that were never intended. For example, they sell a bathroom vanity on little 3 in legs - but the legs are the same as the bookcase legs elsewhere in the store - which are also available in 6 inch. So if you want a higher vanity you can easily do it. But other stores have caught on to flatpack shipping - you can get solid wood dressers for example from Target shipped as a flatpack and easiesh to assemble (have a power screwdriver or drill torqued down low). The problem is some of the things you have no idea of the durability until you’ve used it. For example this is good: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/hejne-4-section-shelving-unit-softwood-s49046978/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/hejne-4-section-shelving-unit-s... especially for the price (accommodates rack units!) but this is an absolute pain in the arse https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/ivar-system-11703/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/ivar-system-11703/ to get working correctly (I threw it away and burned the rest after the third time shelves bounced and collapsed). I ended up replacing most of it with wire shelving from Uline.
- namibj 5y agoIVAR is fine if you screw it to the wall. Yeah, the wire crosses are fairly wobbly for narrow setups, but with a little attention to linkage theory/movement, they are far from bad at their job of being shelving. One great addition is to have one or two columns contain a cabinet-unit, who's wooden back plate provides a lot of reinforcement/stability. For non-wall-mounted setups, one mostly just has to prevent sideways loads that aim to collapse the parallelogram structure.
- roter 5y agoThe HEJNE shelves have gone done drastically in quality. Picked up a new version ~3 years ago. Flimsy, wood split while assembling due to flaws. Just re-assembled my mother-in-law's older version. Tighter grain, thicker wood, just more stable. The IVAR shelves have also started cheaping out. The shelving support rails/clips/whatever were metal and are now plastic. Perhaps they're strong enough but our old version has been going strong since the mid-90s under heavy use. Glue-lam is a strong material. We are in our 50s and live like students...
- warner25 5y ago
- karaterobot 5y agoShowing me more items I want at a price I think is acceptable is not the same as tricking me.
- mahathu 5y agoI love the "adult disney world" analogy. IKEA gets a lot of (well deserved, I guess) hate in my circles, but I love it. It reminds me of my childhood, going there with my mom, eating meatballs and assembling the furniture in the afternoon. Plus you can walk through the showroom and imagine all the different kind of paths your life might play out.
- smilespray 5y agoAlso, you get to watch young couples have their first real argument.
- depr 5y agoThings like "When you catch a glimpse of yourself in an Ikea room, you’re primed to believe you belong in it" and "Familiarity encourages purchasing" are surely among the long list of psychological effects that won't replicate.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoI love going through the store in reverse if I know what I'm getting precisely to rebel against their manipulation. It does feel outright illegal. When I do go I'm the correct direction it is a power walk where I shoot through sections to bypass slow walkers and use their shortcuts (they do technically exist)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- legitster 5y agoThere was a fascinating Econtalk episode where they discussed some of the narrative about why milk is at the back of the store: https://www.econtalk.org/munger-on-milk/ https://www.econtalk.org/munger-on-milk/ Which ended up turning into a friendly debate with Michael Pollan: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/07/23/334076398/episode-555-why-is-the-milk-in-the-back-of-the-store https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/07/23/334076398/epis... TL:DR; there are a lot more logistical reasons they put milk in the back of the store than there are psychological ones. I don't feel like Ikea is necessarily a comparison. A grocery store is supposed to be convenient. I go to Ikea because I don't know what I want yet, and their showrooms are excellent. And since I plan on spending half a day there, of course I want to buy a few things when I'm there.
- dmschulman 5y agoConsidering there are all kinds of egresses to different sections of the store as you wind your way around the marketplace, it's ridiculous for this article to harp on how IKEA forces you to go only in one direction and in a single file line.
- j7ake 5y agoAre there even decent competitors now for furniture at IKEA’s price point? I feel it’s either IKEA or pay 5 times the price for the local furniture shop. I was recently shopping for baby beds and I was absolutely convinced IKEA had the safest and cheapest baby bed by far. No contest.
- jVinc 5y agoI feel like this is twisting numbers. The fact that 60% are "impuls buys" doesn't mean you are "tricked into buying more". If someone is renovating or moving, then they might go to Ikea to find a new bed or a new sofa, and then find they also need a sofa table, or bed table that they had not planned to buy. This is typically what we do, we don't make a full list of what we need ahead of time, we know some major parts, and then we browse and pick up more things we need. That might mean that 60% of what we buy wasn't "planned" but we weren't tricked into buying more stuff, we just figured out what we wanted along the way. Naturally this makes the layout of Ikea important, because if you never go through the lighting department, you're not going to remember that you'd actually been wanting a desklamp and pick one out. But this isn't some sort of clever psychological hack thats tricking you into buying a lamp you don't need.
- HelloNurse 5y agoIKEA "impulse" buys aren't the same kind of actual impulse buy as unnecessary food or clothes or books when you find them; they are normally useful things one didn't remember to intend buying, or even useful things that one didn't know were available (e.g. something you noticed in someone's home but didn't know was an IKEA product). For reasonably disciplined people looking at just about the whole store and collecting as much as possible of the intersection between what they should buy and what is available is the normal way to amortize the cost of all that walking, and planning to buy something is only a worst-case guarantee that an IKEA visit will be worthwhile.
- null_object 5y agoStart by saying that i have a lot of IKEA stuff in my home: glasses, towels, plates, lamps. But IKEA has had a devastating effect in two ways: 1. Wherever they’ve established themselves, they’ve devastated the ‘middle’ ground of quality-made furniture. In England before IKEA there used to be an immense choice of sofa and furniture makers, many of them producing really well-designed and reasonably priced items, like HABITAT for instance (which significantly was bought by IKEA sometime in the 90s). The large number of choices like this, but even other smaller-scale designers get wiped-out by IKEA’s steamroller. 2. The other problem has always been the way IKEA will copy a design from a smaller designer, and wipe them out that way. These days they’re a bit smarter about doing this, and instead of copying designs and getting the internet backlash they’d suffer nowadays, they partner with cool designers (like Danish Hay) and get ‘cred’ instead. So even though we probably save some money in the short term, we’ve lost a flourishing landscape of smaller and more diverse, and more local alternatives.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoHabitat was sold to the Ikano group after Ikano had been split off from Ikea.
- null_object 5y agoThe ikano group is simply an entity of the Kamprad family ( mostly for tax purposes).
- squarefoot 5y agoNever had any problems with IKEA furniture. Yes, they're cheap, but honestly what do I expect from a €30 bookcase? I have four LAIVAs, two filled with books and two with electronic parts drawers and they're perfect for size constrained rooms. Their office chairs are good albeit cheap, although harder suspensions for bigfoot-sized humans like me would be welcome. Their branded batteries, USB chargers/power supplies and light bulbs are also surprisingly very good and durable for the price, and some of the food is delicious (don't miss the horseradish "sas peparrot" sauce with their meatballs). The only moment I deeply hated them was when they sent a cease and desist letter to the owner of ikeahackers.net, a site where people send their mods of IKEA furniture, therefore it helps sales, but the stupidity of copyright lawyers never ceases to amaze us. Luckily they reached an agreement, and the site is still active. About the tricks, I'm sure everyone employs some; from grocery stores keeping more expensive stuff at easier to reach heights to others promoting a few products at discounted price while most of the others are inflated, so one gets there and buys everything, including more expensive ones, anyway because they know that driving to another store would be a much bigger nuisance. I wish there was a book on how to defend ourselves against all those marketing tactics, that is, one written for common people, not for salesmen.
- CodeWriter23 5y agoSolution: make a shopping list and stick to it. Works in all retail selling formats.
- nunez 5y agoIKEA doesn’t trick you into buying more stuff; it organizes its stuff to trigger compulsive buyers to buy more stuff that they don’t need. IKEA is actually quite good about providing inventory locations and stock; you can shop online and pre-plan your entire run before you set foot in the store. If they were really committed to dark-patterning your shopping experience, they would make inventory harder to find and play games with their pricing (like what Best Buy does for expensive phones, i.e. display the per-month price of the phone with its total amount underneath it).
- bob66 5y ago
- env123 5y agoFor someone who is not attached to money knowing that we all will someday perish from this world, and is cognizant of only purchasing items within the means of affordability, the IKEA experience is compatible with me. So don't see where the hate comes from