Many netizens have a relatively one-sided understanding of IKEA. Let’s learn more about what IKEA does.

IKEA is a world-renowned furniture and home furnishings retailer from Sweden. It provides a wide variety of home furnishings that are beautiful, practical, and affordable for ordinary people; and its philosophy is to create a better daily life for the public.

IKEA has 311 shopping malls in 38 countries and regions around the world, 17 of which are in mainland China, namely in Beijing (two), Tianjin, Shanghai (three), Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Wuxi, Dalian, Shenyang, Ningbo, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hangzhou.

Among them, Chongqing IKEA is the largest IKEA standard store in Asia. IKEA's procurement model is a global procurement model. It has established 16 procurement trade areas around the world, three of which are in mainland China: South China, Central China and North China. IKEA's purchasing volume in China accounts for 18% of the total, ranking first among IKEA purchasing countries.

According to data provided by IKEA, the performance of Huiju, the three shopping malls in China that cater to family customers, is pretty good. Despite the relatively remote locations, 53 million customers visited in fiscal 2016, a 20% year-on-year increase in customer traffic, and a 36% year-on-year sales increase. IKEA does not disclose specific rental income and occupancy rates.

Compared with competitors, the prices of furniture sold by IKEA are on average 30% to 50% lower. At the same time, it continues to cut prices. On the contrary, the prices of many furniture retail companies tend to increase over time.

IKEA's slogan is: "Valuable low prices." Its goal is to keep the price of its products not too high, but not to make customers think its products are cheap. To achieve this, reducing costs has become the only way.

In fact, cost reduction runs through the entire process of IKEA products, from product conception, design, production to transportation and marketing. Ingvar does not think about cost all the time.

For this reason, he once said: "The waste of resources is a fatal mistake at IKEA. A target plan without cost accounting will never be accepted."

Tracing back to its roots, IKEA’s success is first of all the success of the company’s strategic positioning. Deng Delong, general manager of Trout Brand Strategy Consulting Company, believes that "IKEA's strategic positioning is a self-service furniture service provider, and this unique positioning is the core of IKEA. Once the positioning is occupied, it will be difficult for competitors to imitate it, and it will be imitated alone." Every step is in vain.