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How can we reconcile these two aspects of IKEA?
In trying to combine what has been discovered in approaching
IKEA from both a cultural and political economist
perspective, several contradictory points come to mind:
1. IKEA's latest marketing campaign, "Unböring,"
promotes decidedly wasteful shopping behavior. In stark
contrast to its image as an environmentally concerned
company, the advertisements encourage the viewer to throw
out "old" but functioning elements of interior decoration,
namely lamps. IKEA is keen on promoting itself as
ecologically aware, and by extension it promotes consumption
of these products. A true environmentally concerned body
would encourage the preservation of functioning, durable
goods. IKEA is earth-friendly, just as long as it is
profitable. To generate profits, one must have customers,
and the store as a big-box destination forces its customers
to drive, creating traffic, pollution, and environmental
degradation. On its website, IKEA is quick to mention the
availability of ample parking, free and
handicapped-accessible. They welcome the automobile,
encouraging its use rather than pushing alternative means
like its bus service. Its customers appreciate the role IKEA
assumes as a concerned body by taking an active role
supporting groups such as Greenpeace and UNICEF. Thus, IKEA
is able to use this image of a "dedicated" company as a
cover for their promotion of consumption.
While selling itself as an environmentally friendly company,
IKEA also celebrates itself as a supplier of choices.
2. Upon entering IKEA, one is overwhelmed by products
ranging from furniture to toothbrushes to entire kitchens.
At first glance, the choice seems endless for the consumer.
Along with its affordable prices, it is this belief that has
allowed IKEA to dominate its competitors. As a destination
requiring a full day's worth of time, IKEA leaves all its
rivals at the entrance to its vast parking lot.
Consequently, consumers are left with one choice: IKEA. In
creating "choice" in its products, IKEA effectively reduces
the real amount of choice the consumer has. The
"marketplace" found in every IKEA store is self-described as
"many different specialty shops gathered together." In
bringing the "specialty shops" to one location, IKEA
destroys urban vitality. In the urban environment, specialty
shops serve as destinations for consumers. For example, one
will journey to the other side of a city to get a particular
item like a rug. This specialty rug shop brings people to
the store's neighborhood, increasing pedestrian activity on
the streets, in turn increasing urban vitality. IKEA's
"marketplace" makes the urban experience of specialty
shopping obsolete, allowing big-box retail to thrive.
While IKEA created a niche in this thriving market,
capitalizing on the consumer's desire to create his or her
own personality through home design, it has at the same time
lessened one's ability to express that identity.
3. When one purchases a couch from IKEA with the intention
of making a statement about their character, he or she is
importing a mass-produced, mass-consumed good into their
home. The intention is to express one's self, but IKEA
creates a situation in which this personally identified
article can be found in the neighbor's living room. IKEA's
locations are within reach of nearby metropolitan areas, the
site of their target demographics. Metropolitan areas are
known to be conducive to the creation and flourishing of
individuality. Georg Simmel in his work "The Metropolis and
Mental Life" notes that city-living facilitates the
production of a self-identity impossible in small-town life.
In infiltrating this urban population, IKEA is negating what
Simmel found most interesting and most worthy of city life.
Whether the new IKEA store is opening in Brooklyn, San Jose,
or Barcelona, it remains unabashedly unchanged. The
interiors of these cities' built environments all begin to
resemble one another. Self-expression begins to resemble
conformity as the BANG mug takes over the coffee-tables of
the world. Our notions of what define Brooklyn as Brooklyn
begin to be applicable to any city with a nearby IKEA.
At the same time, Simmel's notion of a "metropolitan
mentality" is the key to IKEA's success at transcending
nations, cultures, and identities.
4. IKEA will not open a store in a community without full
support from its citizens. Implicit in this idea is the
thought that IKEA will incorporate the community into its
workings as the community embraces IKEA into its locale.
However, every IKEA is virtually indistinguishable from one
city to the next. The IKEA near Paris could be mistaken for
the one near Philadelphia. An IKEA store shows no regard for
the environment and culture in which it is located. Rather
than trying to embody the spirit of a place, IKEA
standardizes. With the ascendancy of the post-industrial
economy, cities once classified as ports or colonial
outposts or manufacturing centers lose these titles. The
metropolitan mentality begins to apply to Hong Kong just as
much as Manchester. IKEA, with its cookie-cutter structures,
feeds into the emerging dichotomy of place no longer rooted
in economy, either urban or not. IKEA's products designed in
the modern styling are not attributable to any clear
location. Much like the International style of architecture
changed the skyline of many cities in the past decades and
made them nearly indistinguishable from one another, modern
design sold through IKEA reinforces and promotes a uniform
urban culture. With the establishment of a local IKEA store,
one's ability to move from one city to the next becomes that
much easier. The living room that was left behind can be
trashed and replaced without hassle. By embedding this idea
of disposable interiors, and by extension disposable
culture, IKEA has a constant turnover in customers,
guaranteeing a steady stream of revenues.
Despite these contradictions, IKEA is an immensely
successful enterprise. In order to understand this success,
both cultural and political economy perspectives need to be
considered. Jane Jacobs contended that the built environment
greatly influenced our actions, transactions, and reactions.
IKEA has succeeded in demonstrating the way in which a store
is crafted holds sway over its customer's purchasing habits.
When one enters the store to have the "IKEA experience," one
leaves behind feelings of attachment to place, and takes
home modernity for $5.99.
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