IKEA's delayed gratification results in 60% impulse buying | Hacker News Reader

IKEA's delayed gratification results in 60% impulse buying

blogs.wsj.com

81 pointsmceachen31 comments

Aren’t IKEAs linear? I never had any problems navigating an IKEA since there are only two directions to walk to. There are shortcuts (paths which obviously don’t look like the main path) but I always ignore those (except for one – I think every IKEA has a shortcut right at the very beginning that takes you to the end) and just walk on the main path.

I guess my tip for everyone lost in IKEA would be to always stay on the main path and to never use the shortcuts.

I actually prefer this linear design to the completely non-linear designs of many other furniture stores I have been to. I certainly want to look at everything when I’m at IKEA.

It's not so much that you get lost... it's that you have to walk past every other item in the store.. Compared to say "Harvey Norman" where if you want a couch -- you walk to the couches section..

Well, the sections are marked and you can just ignore everything else and walk straight to the couches section without stopping. One thing that does irk me about IKEA, atleast here in the Netherlands is that I first walk through their section with a bunch of model rooms, then I walk through the section where they display everything. After that you generally go downstairs (passing right by the restaurant), and walk through the "shopping" section and then the warehouse. The result? I see the same products 5 times, which is exactly what they want.

It seems rather strange to describe this by saying that "delayed gratification" leads to more impulse buying. What leads to more impulse buying is making everyone look at all the merchandise.

Right. I looked at the store map last time I went to Ikea and it looked quite similar to a space-filling curve. It doesn't seem that tricksy to imagine that Ikea a) wants to maximise its use of space and b) wants to ensure people look at all its merchandise. I suppose it is different to a regular kitchenware or furniture store though.

It's not that sequential access is difficult; it's that random access is much more efficient. But obviously IKEA doesn't want you to be efficient in finding what you're looking for.

It seems like thats what the catalog is for. The purpose of showrooms is usually to show things.

It sounds like you're being purposefully obtuse.

The catalogue shows you the goods but then when you go to pick them up you are pushed around the entire showroom (with the hopes that you'll see things that will go well with what you've picked out already).

The showroom's purpose for a customer is to show them things before they buy (or alternatively to give them ideas and fashion cues). If I want to buy a bed though I don't really want to look around cupboards, kitchens, children's toys, etc., etc., I want to look at beds.

From the companies POV the showroom is to show you things. For IKEA it is to show you as many things as possible with the hope that some of those things will look attractive to you. If you go in for one thing they are doing their best to ensure that you leave with other things too.

There's also a consideration of sunk costs. The showroom takes about 45 minutes to navigate, if you go around and don't buy anything it feels like you've failed somehow. The idea is that if you buy something then you haven't wasted the time. Indeed there are no exits except through till lanes. You are a customer, you will buy, leaving without buying is made as hard as possible.

They have alarms on inactive checkouts! Sneak out without buying and you set off an alarm; they're good at what they do.

Well, I guess IKEA is not for you. I always went to IKEA with the understanding that I actually want to look at everything.

IKEA is one of my favourite places actually. We go there for coffee if we're in the area - I really enjoy looking for the clever little adaptations in their designs that make all the difference.

However, I have found in the last 5 years or so that they appear to have slipped a bit from good value to cheapness.

It is possible to circumvent some of their tactics too, for example going in backwards up to the checkout area and in to the "warehouse".

Did you watch the video? That was exactly the point being made: IKEA is designed such that you're pushed along a specific path where you have to see their entire showroom before you're taken to the part where you actually buy the products. This gives you subliminal hints for what things go together and triggers a marked increase in impulse buys.

No, I did not and shame on me. I thought the text is a sort of short version of the video but there is apparently a mismatch between article text and video content. I only quickly jumped around in the video.

But this brings up an interesting point: I think that Ikea is a fundamentally different experience from many other, traditional furniture stores. Ikea sells stuff at prices below the impulse buy threshold, that's why it's all about the browsing when visiting Ikea. That just doesn't happen in more traditional furniture stores. If browsing is your goal when visiting Ikea the experience is not terrible at all.

They are linear but with short-cuts.

My first time in IKEA I definitely got very lost. I think I went down one of the "shortcut paths" and ended up going back and forth between the beds and the office area trying to find the direction I was supposed to be going - and I was with a friend, so it wasn't just my crappy sense of direction.

So yes - IKEA newbs do not take the shortcut paths!

I worked at IKEA for quite a while, and it taught me so much about selling. There's this 1 big book devoted to store layout, what product should be placed where etc. For example, a big long wall with products spread out over the whole length is too overwhelming. That's why half-way there's a "break": a big colored display of 1 product, which is either new, or something to get rid of.

Another example, the first thing you see when you get to the marketplace (where they sell all the small stuff) is an area with baskets of cheap high-volume products. (cloth-hangers, napkins, etc.) This gives people the idea that everything in the rest of the marketplace is cheap as well.

Wow, thinking back, I truly do always notice how cheap that stuff is at the entrance to the marketplace, and it definitely makes me think the rest of the stuff is cheap. Bravo, IKEA.

The important thing about IKEA to me is that they do offer cheap stuff that's quite nice. For example, I was looking for curtains a while ago, and found that IKEA offered a broad selection that were half the price of anyone else's cheapest garbage.

I never ever go through the whole showroom path, though - I just cut through the registers and head straight to the marketplace. Works well.

  I end up spending 20 minutes walking in circles trying to 
  find the route back to children’s furniture (or some other 
  designated meeting spot). I wind up passing the same mock 
  studio apartment half a dozen times, blood pressure rising 
  with each new sighting.

Is that just hyperbole or is the author really that unable to navigate?

It's easy to bypass the showroom areas if you pay any attention at all to any of the maps.

Sure, every Ikea has a route they prefer you to take... but there are frequent "Shortcut to ____" signs to allow you to move quickly between departments and maps with "you are here" on them showing where all the departments are.

What exactly is the problem?

[edit] Interesting video. According to the presenter, people generally only look forwards and thus miss the shortcuts located at the side (or behind as he claims) of the walkway.

Do people really not look all around when they enter a room? That seems so strange to me.

Also, what area of study do you need to be in to do a Phd in how people maneuver through a shopping centre? Sociology? Psychology? That seems really cool and I'd like to learn more about it

I went to Ikea with my wife shortly after seeing the Scott Pilgrim movie (yes this is an important detail). We were looking for something very specific, so I looked at the map and pointed out all the little shortcut doors that look like "Employee Only" style doors, except they are not employee only. My wife made a comment that it was like the doors that appear out of nowhere in Scott Pilgrim. She had, in several years of going to Ikea, never noticed them.

One benefit of living in the holy mother land of IKEA is that we have stores that are from before their discovery of the one true store layout, and they are much easier to navigate because you have more freedom to go between sections.

That said, watch the video in the article, it shows how "brilliant" the standard layout is, and how it forces you into a state of mind that makes you shop more.

Is 60% high? What percent of the things people buy at Walmart are not on their list?

The oldest of the Chicago IKEA stores (Schaumburg) was allowed to be arranged without the blinder walls until just a few months ago. Having never been to a different IKEA, I was confused upon walking in last week. I did feel as if I was in a rat maze and I was commenting somewhat loudly on this fact to my wife. A saleswoman overheard me and explained that this IKEA, after years of being a rogue outlier, was forced to arrange the store as dictated by the arbiters of shopping wisdom in Sweden. She apologized and expressed regret at the fact. Before this happened, a shopper could see all of the other floors at once and get a good view, from almost anywhere, of the large atrium that pierces the middle of the store. Now we get to look at painted hardboard panels advertising different IKEA wares. Plus I have no idea where I am because I can't easily view the open area. Not an improvement.

This kind of thing seems too much like hostile subversion of my brain, I don't approve of it.

So selling IKEA on the idea of indoor navigation with smartphones might not be so promising after all.

The first thing that I thought of was "hasn't this guy and his wife heard of cell phones?"

That would be cheating.

They always seem to have terrible reception in ikea stores. Probably due to large areas of steel cladding and RC slabs acting like a faraday cage. The building owner needs to actively supply booster base stations to provide a good mobile signal in a building like this and Ikea don't seem to do this.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is deliberate. Its pretty well known that ikea never allow any clocks nor any natural light inside their stores, so customers lose all sense of time.

Building for poor mobile reception would just add to this sense of isolation.

I hate the IKEA layout, so I shop at the competition (here in Europe it's KIKA).

> One result of Ikea’s rat-maze design: 60% of the things people buy there were not on their original shopping list.

Another result is that I avoid shopping at IKEA whenever possible.

I visited IKEA for the first time last week. I guess having all the names of items in Swedish is officially viewed as a feature. I think it's a bug as it's easier to remember a name than a (bar-code) number or a word you cant pronounce. I needed a set of a particular item which always come in 4s. When I got to the pickup area they were all loose, I assumed someone had opened a box so I picked up a sealed box went to the self-service checkout, scanned, paid and left. Hours later and 160 km away I saw that I had only paid for 1 item and had a box of 16. The barcode on the box was the same as the one for each item. Next time I'm there I'll take back the excess and pay the extra but I don't think it's entirely my fault so I'm not going to go out of my way to do a 300km round trip

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