You have been NUDGED...

This week in my Consumer Behavior class, we spoke about NUDGES. According to the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by R. Thaler and C. Sunstein (2009), which we had to read for class, a Nudge is an arranged environment, which gives individuals the freedom to choose, but still “influence[s] people’s behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better” (Thaler & Sunstein, p. 5).

One of the last in-class examples reminded me of a Nudge designed by IKEA. A few years ago I a read this German book Wir IKEAner (translated: We citizens of IKEA) by S. Hermann (2009) in which the author introduces IKEA’s history, its retail strategy as well as store layout, restaurant idea and all other phenomena behind the IKEA mystery. 

Reading this book, I discovered something I have never been aware of and which had nudged me my entire life...

Have you guys ever noticed the following: You enter an IKEA warehouse and its showroom with the intention only to buy the one or two items you ‘really’ need. After taking the full IKEA tour, you leave the store with at least two or three items you did not had in mind in the first place and maybe did not even buy everything you came there for. S. Hermann (pp.103-105) names tealights and napkins as the most popular spontaneously purchased items by IKEA customers. 

Really just a spontaneous and impulsive choice, or one perfectly arranged by IKEA?

  

The book and further research gave me the answer...  

Every IKEA store looks at least from the outside and in most cases from the inside pretty much the same (Hermann, p. 106). The loyal IKEA customer knows where everything (all different showroom areas, restaurant and self-service hall) is located and feels homey. The so familiar IKEA journey starts at the beginning of the whole-level showroom, is guided through all different rooms a home needs furniture and decoration to place in, and ends in the IKEA restaurant before you take the stairs down to the self-service halls. That is in every IKEA store around the world pretty much the same (Hermann, p. 106).

Did you ever notice, that you don’t just walk a simple loop through the showroom?

It is like a maze – the IKEA maze – with all its hurdles and obstacles (purchase temptations and suggestions of items one ‘really’ needs). The path through the IKAE showroom forces the customer to walk around a lot of corners and makes them rotating there focus and consequently their point of attention as often as possible (Hermann, pp. 106-113). The same intention is behind the apparently randomly placed boxes in the middle of the alleys containing all kinds of decoration and household items. Changing your center of attention every few feet within this store maze, makes you notice all this items, which you most likely do or don’t need (Hermann, pp. 106-113). Arranged in a simple loop, you would probably not even pay attention to the most of them. Items you noticed and thought about are half way in the cart and almost through the check out...

Smartly designed and well established! The most people don’t even notice, that it is not only them to blame for the so long IKEA receipt.  But I can tell from my own, my friends’ and family’s experience: Even when you are aware of this Nudge by IKEA, you don’t change much of your consumer behavior.

Don’t we all just love IKEA?!

To get some more information about this phenomenal Nudge by IKEA, check out this website and the other links at the end of the article:

http://www.retailwire.com/discussion/15027/prof-calls-ikea-layout-tortuous

=> These articles describe the IKEA’s intention behind this (from my point of view) so well-designed, labyrinthine showrooms more negative than S. Hermann does in his book.