IKEA is a large multinational furniture company (Rosner, Bean, 2009) which originated in Älmhult, Sweden. It is among one of the most recognised furniture retailers in the world as it out of the common due to its distinct feature wherein rooms are showcased to customers to make an appearance that all its products are designed to work together to produce an eye catching, stunning, and comfortable living and working space. IKEA’s vision is to make its customer’s lives easier and better through the products they make and services they offer. Moreover, this multi-million-dollar company does not just sell furniture, they give focus to improving customer experience through the introduction of one on one customer appointments, and online shopping to keep up with the consumer trends. To maintain the lead of consistency, there needs to be a new constant creative approach.
As mentioned previously, IKEA’s vision is to offer services that allow its customers to shop at their own pace, and their own time for their convenience. Services such as online shopping and in-store planning kiosks all help to the customer’s ease of purchase and enhance the overall shopping experience at IKEA (Mehra, 2019). In addition to this, the said company should work on another level of enhancement which is to introduce an Augmented Reality Shopping tool for customers who opt to use one of their off-store services which is their online shopping platform. The idea is that customers who has a preconfigured space in their house they want to fill out with furniture or products from IKEA, can open up the website or application through their mobile phones, IPADs and other gadgets and load the furniture that they wish into the room via the mobile augmented reality feature which then would redirect them to the the page where the customer can then purchase the product conveniently. Introducing this service will help change the customers the way of shopping at IKEA and will significantly reduce the company’s losses when it comes to returns since some paying customers order online without physically seeing the product hence high return rates but through this AR feature, they would be able to try and see the product they are about to buy and make sure the dimensions and design of the furniture is at its best fit for their space.
To this day, IKEA’s sales representatives have been entertaining questions and queries from walk-in customers regarding the pieces they wish to purchase but unfortunately, there are some instances wherein customers are in need of advises regarding which furniture is best for their space prior to their visit to IKEA hence, the company should step up and launch a one- on- one consultation service with their specialists per department. The consultation can be done virtually or in-store depending on which option is the best for the client. In addition to this, the customer will be spared from the inconvenience and the cost of travelling to the store. Through this, IKEA can give over the top service in-store and off-store and at the same time improve the quality perception of the company as a whole.
This development would greatly influence the way the customers shop globally – this would ensure that IKEA will be one of the first furniture retailers to offer this. Through creativity and innovative ideas, the company can gain competitive advantage over the market which will put the business to the top of the market share however, for this to work, consistent creative efforts and innovations are needed to maintain it.
The creative initiatives Augmented Reality Shopping tool and one-on-one consultation service were derived from Peter F Drucker’s Seven sources of innovative opportunity wherein the Augmented Reality Shopping system is based on the New Knowledge perspective as the service is deemed useful when more people are exposed to technology and new sets of knowledge while the specific source that will be focused on the one-on-one consultation service system is the Perceptual Changes for the creative innovation.
New knowledge is considered to be among the strongest with innovation production as it coincides with the advancements that we currently have in our society. Any products, services, or processes that are introduced with new knowledge as the source will always be something that pushes it out of the norm. Bringing that example back to IKEA, incorporating the Augmented reality online shopping into the website will help the consumers make the right decisions when it comes to purchasing furniture for their home. While IKEA already has an augmented reality application in place, it only allows you to view the products, instead of providing the complete experience of viewing, comparing, and purchasing the product. The creative idea is to introduce the augmented reality software as a shopping tool and to be incorporated into the physical mobile application as currently it isn’t (Ayoubi, 2017).
Perceptual change is important as that is how the public and potential customers will perceive your brand, it also works in a way where different products are released to cater the needs of the society to adapt to the change in human perception throughout time (The Seven Sources of Innovation, n.d). The rationale behind the one-on-one consultation service is that with the introduction of the new process, it will create a different perception to the customers and further assist in picking the right products and not make the customer purchase unnecessary goods that they simply picked up along the way (Jansson-Boyd, 2018). Doing this personalised service creates shopping with purpose which is a totally different way of viewing IKEA.
With any new creative process, there are going to be blocks and difficulties to come up against for the initiatives that are considered in any business. However, there could be some limitations that potentially could happen with IKEA in reference to the proposed creative initiatives of augmented reality shopping tool and one-on-one consultation service which potentially involve the lack of intrinsic motivation (Amabile, 1997). Intrinsic motivation refers to the drive of curiosity and inner satisfaction to the job that the individual is performing (Cherry, 2020). As an organisation, there is a fine line between intrinsic and extrinsic as to progress, companies would prefer a candidate who can excel extrinsically as that individual would be driven with results (Rampton, 2017) moreover, this could drive discouragement within the organisation for employees to volunteer with the initiative of implementing the augmented reality shopping tool and the one-on-one consultation.
Another potential block when introducing this creative initiative would be the person’s fear of making mistakes and being singled out because of the idea that they have created or suggested and not being chosen among their peers (Brown, Kusiak, 2005). A workplace with fear embedded in the culture can be destructive as employees are not focused on being creative but instead worrying whether what they are doing is valid and making sure that they will still have a job for the next week (Ryan, 2017). This could be a challenge for any organisation including IKEA. Even though the company promotes a healthy workplace, the challenge would be in the employees which has fear embedded in them from prior work experiences.
With IKEA, the potential blocks for creativity space could lie within the fear of standing out and fearing to be perceived as someone who is not competent enough to be providing ideas and taking charge of it. It’s a psychological challenge that is present in a lot of workplaces and it could be just the employee’s perception not necessarily the actual truth (Krivich, n.d). Extrinsic motivation is often deemed as something bad and will hinder the creative process in certain circumstances with certain individuals but little do they know that there is a type of extrinsic motivation called synergistic extrinsic motivators wherein recognition, and feedback from superiors and peers can strengthen and boost an individual’s performance (Amabile, 1997). If employees are not receiving the correct method of support within the organisation it could lead to low levels of creativity which does not create an agile environment for the business to grow exponentially.
Stimulating creativity is not something that can be achieved by just one person. To gather creative ideas that can be used within the workplace, there needs to be a team of like-minded individuals who will build off each other to come up with a creative innovation solution that will benefit the business and result in business growth. The technique that can assist with stimulating creativity that is most relevant to IKEA and the creativity initiatives would be brainstorming (Brown, Kusiak, 2005).
Brainstorming allows employees to sit together as a collective group to discuss an idea and build on it which allows to develop the idea into a process that could be transformed into a prototype of a product, service or concept. The aim of the brainstorming phase is for the group to write down ideas, and approaches that come to mind for them to make the business operate efficiently (Wijetunge, 2007). Linking back to IKEA as an organisation, the main work frame of the business is to collaborate with fellow peers to consistently improve the business that will benefit the customers (Clarke, n.d). With the creative initiative of implementing an augmented reality system, the employees could sit in a room and discuss what a prototype could look like and what would be the best way to communicate this feature to customers who would like to purchase a particular product and would like to see how it coordinates with the rest of their furniture. This could involve tasks such as the subtle integration into the current application, coding the current application to implement the technology, or designing a new application completely.
Looking at the second initiative to implement a one-on-one consultation, it also helps to brainstorm ideas with how the consultation will take place. The ideas that would revolve around this stage would be the easiest process for the customer to take up this service. The employees would also conduct an analysis to observe if the proposed idea would solve the frustrations that the customer had been communicating and how much of a traction it would gain from the consumers if a service of this sort was to be launched within the large furniture retailer. If the response leans towards the positive side, the company will proceed with a prototype of the system and could potentially invite a few customers to test out the prototype and receive feedback about their experiences utilising the service.
As the proposed creative innovation is an addition to an establishing service and process, this can be deemed as an incremental change as the augmented reality technology for IKEA already exists through a separate application that purely showcases the capability of smartphones and augmented reality systems (Lopez, 2015). However, with the creative initiative, it is intended to be used through as a shopping tool where it is integrated on the mobile application and provided with a direct page where customers can purchase their goods and make payment instantly from that page.
With the one-on-one consultation service that is part of the creative incentive, that would also be a part of an incremental increase as the organisation already has the resources to do the work, which are the competent staff members in each respectable departments to help sell the products and walk customers through the technical detail of each product (Lopez, 2015).
The microenvironmental factors of the proposed changes to IKEA are measured by the PESTEL analysis. The PESTEL analysis allows businesses like IKEA observe the macroenvironment patterns and assess how it would impact the business’ performance. The changes that are planned for IKEA do not affect every single element of PESTEL, instead it will cover the following factors of economic, social, technological, and environmental.
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