I am Jacks monolithic marketing machine:

So, we went to IKEA for the first time yesterday and as any person that has watched Fight Club 48 times could tell you, it was not as I had expected. The movie had led me to believe that I should expect a furniture floor room that had prices spinning about every item on display. The reality was far more commonplace. IKEA is a marketing machine, using every possible marketing scheme known to man and every corporate cost saving tip ever coined.

The store is a maze, which we went though backwards initially. Perhaps, it was this that granted insight in to the inner mechanizations of this sales behemoth, kindred to proof reading an easy backwards; not that one does not still fall prey… Starting at the beginning is good and so after having previewed all that I shall discuss here, we began in the living room display area.

I had envisioned some sort of standard furniture store setup, seen at the likes of LACKS, or HAVERTY’s. Such setups have the stigma of when I last darkened those doorways. This was a decade or so ago with my parents, in their never ending and notoriously boring, search for the perfect “X” piece of furniture. I’d swear we went to 95% of the furniture places in a 50 mile radius of town. So this was actually a good thing for IKEA, but, a difference from my expectation none the less.
Attempting to find that which you have seen on line is somewhat hampered by the fact that there are multiple locations for items of the same style but different types. Thus when we had found the section for the style of coffee table we wanted, we still couldn’t find the specific one we wanted.

This brings us to asking an associate. On this occasion there was one close at hand and we quickly we directed to where we needed to go. All of our dealings with associates seemed efficient and our requests answered satisfactorily. Finding them however is another issue. They seemed to move about the store like centaurs, owners of the maze. They other attribute they all had in common is that they all seemed to be late for tea with the mad hatter….

So the way that IKEA handles large items. Larger items are tagged with their location in the warehouse, checkout section of the store. This is cleaver in that you can go, “this looks great, we’ll get one of those” and you don’t have to carry it around with you while you shop their smaller wares. This deceases your consciousness of how much your spending (usually governed by how dull your cart is). The system is very similar to that which BEST used back when they were still around. However, best had warehouse monkeys that brought you stuff out for you. At IKEA your the warehouse monkey. That’s cost savings baby.

Now I’ve alluded to this store being a maze, and it is. So leaving from one section trying to move forward is like two steps forward on step back and waltz waltz waltz. So it takes awhile. It also tends to remind you, as you walk though replicas of every room in your house, of those few things your missing in each room. Score another one for IKEA. Now the first part of the display area is almost done after wandering in the kitchen area for forty years (ok, minutes) when you realize they put all of the kids toys right at the exit. While we didn’t have too much trouble on this day (a testimony to our “you don’t have to walk if you ride in the cart” plan) however it is one of those last gasp actions that you might expect so that you will waste just enough time so that when you get to…

The food court, cafeteria, “Swedish Diner”, whatever you want to call it. It is an ingenious money sucking plan. Now I had not previously mentioned, some of the carts have an advertisement on them, that proclaims that IKEA offers child’s meals for 99 cents (where their marketing team put the other penny consumer never know but it sure is better that way somehow)
So, while this was supposed to have been a small, casually trip to check out the store, it was now getting kibd of late. So after eating their bait we had dinner, after going through the cafeteria line, and sinking into a chair. As we got up to continue though the “Bed bath and beyond” portion of Swedish branded Chinese goods, I couldn’t help but wonder where the hook was. Then I realized that I had eaten where I was shopping so I could shop more, this is never a good sign.

After several misadventures involving the acquisition of coffee, a really sweet coffee tea thing, bed pillows, bamboo blinds and a cheese grater. We came upon the duvet covers my wife had been looking at. Only, neither one of us was particularly impressed with the quality of the cheaper one we had seen on line (it was jersey knit), and our comforter is midnight navy (and would probably show through)…so now we see a higher quality one down the row. Clunk, Ca-Ching, and IKEA scores again!

The next illuminating (sorry couldn’t help it) location was lamps. Where the price you see on line was just the pole not the shade. Skewed again by IKEA’s clever marketing. Although, we actually got a good deal on their florescent bulbs.

Now remember when I mentioned that you were the warehouse monkey for your large items earlier? So, now you have a cart full of these heavy items you’ve loaded up and finally you arrive at the check out line. Towering over your head, so that there is no possible way a person with any ocular ability at all could miss them, are the worlds largest value menu signs. $1 and you too can have ice cream cones and cinnamon rolls. This appeals to the sweaty warehouse monkey, I mean customer. We did not indulge despite the 4 year olds protests and gyrations.

This was in part because the line took about as long to move an inch as it takes for teenagers (or tired parents) to get out of bed on the weekends. As such they has closed by the time we made it through. IKEA had, as is obligatory, used the checkout isle as a place to purvey those last minute goods. While they had avoided the parentally aggravating wall of confectional doom, decried by all administrators of good nutrition everywhere; they had a new item that at first seemed peculiar. Bags. That’s right bags. Not too strange, but the accompanying sign was. Basically, to help save the environment (read reduce the bottom line) IKEA has decided that you will either need to buy a tarp that was moonlighting as a bag, or make a charitable contribution of 5 cents for every regular “grocery” style bag you desire. So either donate or buy our spiffy new bag at 59 cents. Luckily, God gave me arms, and thankfully he doesn’t charge me to carry stuff out of the store (or as it was, push our bag less shopping carts out).

So in conclusion after spending no less than 3 hours at IKEA, I’m all for the original Fight Club plan.