IKEA’s Social Media Listening & Monitoring Initiatives
| Case Code: ITSY082 Case Length: 12 Pages Period: 2009 - 2015 Pub Date: 2015 Teaching Note: Available |
Price: Rs.300 Organization: IKEA Industry: Furniture Retail Countries: Europe; US; Global Themes: Social Media Listening, Social Media Monitoring, Business Intelligence, Marketing Research |
Abstract Case Intro 1 Case Intro 2 Excerpts
Excerpts
Ikea and social media
In 1997, IKEA launched its website, www.ikea.com. It reported that in 2011, its website had had 904 million visitors globally. In 2013, visitors to IKEA’s website were reported at 1.3 billion and in 2014 at 1.5 billion globally.
IKEA’s fans followed it online through different websites. Critics observed that IKEA’s internet approach strategy was different across the different locations it operated in. It was present on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest, among others. On Facebook and Twitter, IKEA launched separate Facebook pages and a Twitter tweet blog for each of the countries in which it operated. Also, the engagement model with its customers was country specific...
Social media monitoring & the socializers
By mid-2014, IKEA felt the need for an effective customer relationship management program to establish and promote client communication, connect the different business units and departments to develop and implement its marketing plan, and also to develop a strategic partnership. IKEA stated that through “The Socializers”, it aimed to derive real time-insights from social media on who was speaking about it, where it was being spoken about, and which product was being mentioned. The Socializers was founded in 2009 by Marvin Towler, Nathaniel Hansen, and Jeff Snyder. According to The Socializers, people and technology were their focus....
Ikea monitoring customers
In November 2014, Forbes named IKEA as the “40th most valuable brand in the world” in its annual list. Marketers considered IKEA as the most recognizable brand on the planet. According to Forbes, IKEA’s brand value as of November 2014 was estimated at US$12.5 billion. In 2013, according to Millward Brown Optimor (including data from BrandZ, Kantar Retail, and Bloomberg) IKEA’s brand value was estimated at US$12.04 billion, and in the year 2012, at US$ 9.2 billion...
Ikea malmo store launch on facebook
In 2009, IKEA launched its first Social CRM project in Malmo, the commercial capital of southern Sweden. In that year, IKEA decided to launch its store in Malmo through Facebook. This was considered one of the most innovative launches on Facebook by industry observers. IKEA worked with Forsman & Bodenfors (F&B) for the launch. A Facebook page was created for the IKEA Malmo store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Over a two-week period, his pictures taken in the stores were uploaded on his Facebook page and his friends were tagged. According to IKEA, anyone who tagged their name to the products displayed in the picture won the product. The campaign went viral. Soon, IKEA observed that there were requests from the fans to upload new pictures...
Big sleep over
In December 2011, IKEA launched “The Big Sleepover” happy to bed campaign in the UK. According to IKEA, its team uncovered a group on Facebook called “I want to have a Sleepover in IKEA”, which had been started by IKEA fans. Identification of the fan group was the seed for the campaign. According to the company, it had identified a need to change the perception of customers on the IKEA brand as customers were viewing it only as a retail furniture shop. IKEA wanted its customers to see it not only as a furniture retailer but also as a brand that guided customers at every step of the redesigning and furnishing process in creating an ideal haven and then going “happy to bed”. IKEA observed that people in the UK were too embarrassed to test out a mattress in-store properly. With these inputs, IKEA developed a fully integrated plan, for the “Big Sleepover” at its stores for its customers. It invited people to sign up for the group “I wanna have a sleepover at IKEA”. One hundred entrants (aged 25 years or more with disposable incomes) were randomly picked by IKEA from 100,000 entrants for the campaign...
Ikea and the great horsemeat scandal
Another instance that demonstrated that IKEA was monitoring the social media even prior to 2014 was during the Great Horsemeat Scandal. The Great Horsemeat Scandal went public on January 15, 2013, with the Food Safety Authority (FSA) of Ireland announcing that pig and horse DNA had been found in products specified to have been made from beef. Subsequent to the announcement, consumers across the world observed that retailers including Tesco, Lidl, Aldi, Iceland, and Dunnes had recalled 10 million burgers from their store shelves. FSA authorities stated after rigorous monitoring and testing, that horsemeat had been found in beef and beef products in at least 14 European Union (EU) countries...
The issue with Ikeahackers.net
In 2014, IKEA confronted a situation that amused the Public Relations professionals globally. On the IKEAhackers.net website, IKEA users posted ideas for revamping and remodeling furniture and merchandise that were already available at IKEA stores. The website invited ideas for new products. IKEAhackers.net was founded by Jules Yap (Yap) (actual name Mi Mi Yap) in 2006. According to Jules Yap, she was searching for IKEA hacks and had observed that the internet had many amazing ideas on products at IKEA stores. In an effort to collate and compile these ideas, she floated a webpage, IKEAhackers.net, which hosted product innovation ideas for IKEA’s products. According to Yap, the only source of revenue for the website was the advertisements...
Challenges before Ikea
Industry observers felt that by monitoring social media, companies such as IKEA benefited through fact-based decision making, sales recovery, waste reduction, and opportunity identification to avoid a potential public relation crisis. (Refer to Exhibit V for benefits of social media monitoring). With 315 operational stores across the world, IKEA’s digital marketing strategy remained uniform – extensive use of social media with separate country pages for respective markets and an ever increasing stress on digital catalog applications which could be downloaded on app stores such as Google Play and the Apple store. According to marketing experts, IKEA’s customers & fans were characterized as highly educated customers, who constantly dictated high standards of quality and service for products and were well-connected owing to easy access to media to publicly express their opinions. IKEA stated that it looked forward to the social space for a future filled with innovation. However, social media listening and monitoring also posed many challenges to the company. According to Gartner, the challenges ahead of IKEA in social media monitoring were many...
Looking ahead
Industry experts observed that the sequence of events at IKEA from 2012 to 2013 had dented the customer’s perception of IKEA. In 2012, IKEA released its Saudi Arabia catalog after removing the women in it via photo retouching. IKEA in its other countries’ catalogs had women. The altered images caused a great uproar when revealed in the Swedish media, prompting an apology from IKEA’s head office in Sweden. IKEA apologized for removing all women from its Saudi Arabia catalog. “We should have reacted and realized that excluding women from the Saudi Arabian version of the catalog is in conflict with the IKEA Group values,” the company said in a press statement...
Exhibits
Exhibit I: IKEA’s Corporate Structure
Exhibit II: Global revenues of IKEA (Year 2003-2014, in € billions)
Exhibit III: Image of a Typical IKEA Listening Hub
Exhibit IV: Comparison of IKEA’s Global Sales and Food Sales
Exhibit V: Benefits of Social Media Marketing according to SMB marketers worldwide January 2013
Exhibit VI: IKEA’s Reputation (according to YouGov’s Brand index during September 2012- February 2013)
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