By Yiler Huang

In Ikea, the store is arranged like a maze, where the customers have to pass through the whole store in order to leave. There are multiple small areas with arrangements of their products designed to look like real rooms. This is so that the customer can go from one sample room to another, imagining themselves with the products in the spaces in their homes.

The store’s lighting is consistent in all the areas except for the sample rooms. Ikea’s use of lighting in Ikea is designed to make their products look bright and neat through the use of whiter toned light. However, they use warmer tones in some sample rooms, particularly in those showcasing bedrooms, to make it easier for customers to imagine what the products will look like in their homes.

Ikea uses the color yellow, blue, and white as their primary color to establish brand awareness. This is so that people associate the colors with the brand. The use of the three colors can be seen throughout the store. Blue and yellow are colors that are easy to spot in a white background, so they are used as colors for signs in the store to guide people. They use red, an even more eye-catching color, in order to promote products that are on sale. The products that they sell usually have neutral colors like black, gray, white etc. this is because these colors are easy to mix and match with most other colors.

The sample rooms seemed to be arranged to fit a theme or style. This is so that customers can easily find products that match their taste. Because we live in Taiwan, many arrangements and placements of items seemed to be leaning towards smaller spaces. They also group products within the same category together so customers have more choices when comparing and choosing among similar products.

There are sample rooms all around Ikea, each of them has a unique theme and style. Different themes are put next to each other like a real house. It offers the customers a wider variety of style reference to their desired home layout.

While I did not see any signs marking specific areas, there are some signs that can be seen throughout the whole store. For example, signs with yellow and red colors usually tell the customers that the item is on a discount. Blue is for identifying different areas and categories. White signs are usually tags showing the product’s general information.

The general layout of the store takes the customer down a direct path to the exit. While the layout is like a maze, there are arrows on the floor and blues signs telling the customers where to go next. There is usually only one exit for each section, and it forces the customers to go through the entire showroom before leaving the area.

The prices in the store are differentiated by the signs and tags that they have. White tags and signs represent normal price, yellow and red signs represent discounted price. A white tag with yellow usually is a sign of discounted price.

How are customers encouraged to stay inside the store longer? Throughout the store, there are beds and chairs people can try and test out. These are used mostly when people are tired from their shopping. There are also two food courts, one in the middle and one at the end of the store. These two are spots for people to rest and not need to worry about going out for food, leading to even longer time spent within the store because their needs are all taken care of.

Customers have a very limited field of view in different areas of the store. This is to maintain the coherency of the themes of the areas. Usually, customers can not see the next area until they enter the next showroom.

In all the showrooms, there are often electronic devices that are being shown to the customers. Devices like clocks and lights were all on and adjusted to the right time. This makes it more realistic and easier for the customers to imagine if the sample room is their home.

In the showrooms, it is not very hard to leave if the customer follows all the arrows on the floor. However there are many twists between entrances to different sections of the store. It is also not so easy to move between sample rooms because the layout is similar to a house.

In Ikea, there are many kinds of inputs that are given to the customers. The sample rooms were designed to look like homes, the tags and signs were in varied colors to express different messages etc. Many of them are for keeping the customers in the store longer or encouraging them to buy their products.