Preview

Ikea-Value Chain

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1235 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Ikea-Value Chain
1. Introduction
IKEA is one of the most successful manufacturing and retail furniture companies operating in today’s global marketplace. IKEA manufacture from the bottom up, top down furniture that offers environmentally friendly, state of the art designed furniture that is both affordable and attractive to its customers via their online, catalogue and worldwide distribution channels, with a logistics network that are low cost footprints with the enforces on cost efficiencies couple with technology, product design, excellence and customer satisfaction. IKEA was founded by Ingvar Kamprad in a small village in Sweden. Its Scandinavian–style home furniture offer attractive designs at affordable prices. And IKEA is obtainable from 275 stores throughout 44 countries throughout the world. Employing nearly 70,000 employees who are engaged by IKEA globally with 59,000 employees working alone in Europe (Tengblad, 2006). This essay is going to analysis value chain of IKEA in two areas which are primary activities and support activities. 2. Internal and External Realities of IKEA
IKEA is one of the leading manufacturing and retail furniture companies in the world with its operation in over 44 countries across the world (Jonas, 2011). With the support and assistance from more than 1,500 suppliers spread over 50 countries. The company‘s initiatives and commitment to provide top quality products at affordable price to be identified as IKEA’s competitive advantages. So far, the company has been successful in sustaining and reinforcing its low priced structural development. The company’s stylish stores couple with its online stores and catalogue distribution add to its marketing strength to attract customers globally. IKEA’s progressive management style is seen as one of its strategic factors in order to sustain its business for the long term. Certainly, the company has opportunities to increase its market share by exploring new markets across the world and by making

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    IKEA is a Swedish-owned global business founded in 1943. The business generates annual revenues of 27 billion euros and employs 139,000 people in 298 stores and 26 countries. The values and design philosophy of the founder continue to underpin the brand. These values might be summed up as frugal, democratic, environmentally aware, and design oriented. IKEA has become synonymous with Swedish lifestyle. The stores are virtually identical across the globe and sell a range of globally sourced flat-packed furniture products as well as a range of related furnishings for the home—the stores offer customers a Swedish experience by incorporating restaurants and a variety of customer services intended to simplify the shopping process (e.g., childcare). What is interesting about IKEA is that customers have become a significant part of the value creating process—customers play a key role in terms of logistics and in production. By performing the assembly of the flat-packed furniture, customers complete the final stages in the production process. In terms of logistics, the customer “moves” goods from warehouse-style storage through the checkout, and then transports the goods home. The trade-off for the consumer is lower prices and immediate gratification—furniture is typically sold using just in time (JIT) inventory management, which means that once a customer has placed an order, the furniture then goes into production and is delivered to the customer’s home some 3–4 months later.…

    • 765 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Our group will illustrate IKEA’s general development in chronological order. We analyze its’ different strategy in corresponding stage, and look into IKEA’s future development.…

    • 1558 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    Crowesl M3 A2

    • 2324 Words
    • 7 Pages

    IKEA is a Swedish company that dominates in the furniture industry and is very successful with their sales and marketing strategies. They are also very conscience about the external environment. They have been in the foreign market since 1973, they currently have stores in over 37 countries and are continuing to grow (most recently Asia). By following the traditional pattern of globalization, first operating in countries with similar cultures and then expanding to the foreign market, they were able to have great international success (Burt, Johansson & Thelander, 2011). We will discuss in detail why IKEA strategies are so effective and why other organization should learn from their current success.…

    • 2324 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Case Study Ikea

    • 1919 Words
    • 8 Pages

    IKEA is one of the most successful furniture retailer’s worldwide. The factors that contributed to this success and distinguished IKEA from its competitors will be monitored in the following analysis.…

    • 1919 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    The IKEA Group, one of the world’s top furniture retailers, has emerged as the fastest-growing furniture retailer in the US. Its unique business strategy has given it its strengths for its success today. However, like all strategies, IKEA’s strategy has its own flaws that can pose as weaknesses. IKEA also has a lot of opportunities in the marketplace such as expansions of their company and threats such as competitors in the same industry.…

    • 2551 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    IKEA case study

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages

    IKEA’s view of value creation and delivery assists customer loyalty by creating a strong brand culture. Nowadays, people are becoming brand conscious thus helps IKEA in retaining more customers. The company is customer oriented which make its products based on consumer needs. IKEA sells stylish furniture at such a low price that is really affordable and more people buys it, which in turn increases sales and customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is all about attracting the right customer, getting them to buy, buy often, buy in higher quantities and bring you even more customers. IKEA started as a pure Scandinavian furniture seller with a standard product but latter on get mixed with local culture of country and life style as in case of China. In addition, convenience of going to IKEA stores is another contributing factor to customer loyalty. The stores are near to public transport places and shoppers view furniture on the main floor in scores of realistic settings arranged throughout the cavernous showrooms (Wild et. al., 2007). IKEA has started a home delivery service and assembly service to make it more convenient for the customers. Not only this people who are very busy in life and cannot go to the brick store, they can also order through World Wide Web for the furniture and IKEA will deliver it to their doorstep (IKEA, 2012). Also, the company started additional services such as food outlets, food market and Kid’s corner to entertain its customers who comes for shopping.…

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    From its low cost structure to its corporate culture (“The IKEA Way”) to the do-it-yourself approach (replete with measuring tapes, paper, and pencils available in-store) plus its strong brand image (representative of high quality, low-cost ,trendy, modern and fashionable furniture), the added amenities it provides (carracks, childcare, restaurants, design consultants), and its strong focus on sustainability (from product design to disposal) IKEA is well able to avail itself of current market opportunities (the weak state of the U.S. economy, demand for convenience, sustainability issues) to leverage its competitive advantages.…

    • 1456 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ikea Case Study

    • 580 Words
    • 3 Pages

    IKEA by American standards is a very unique store, and it is known around the world for its stylish, quality, and low-cost furniture and home furnishings. Based in Sweden, IKEA's stores have a strategy of operational excellence in productions, supply chain operations and marketing. IKEA wants to penetrate the US market but the US market is a different market and IKEA would have to adapt to penetrate such a market. We will examine IKEA's competitive advantages and look how it should go about penetrating the US market. We will look at strategic alternatives and we will look at possible outcomes for the penetration of the US market.…

    • 580 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Ikea Case Analysis

    • 1218 Words
    • 5 Pages

    IKEA possesses numerous strengths that will help the company gain high value proposition around the globe in general and in the United States in particular. IKEA has been well known for its distinctive self-service store, unassembled furniture with flat packages, and featured amenities as playrooms for children and Swedish cafes. Its success in the United States has visibly shown through the double revenues from 1997 to 2001 ($600 million to $1.27 billion) (IKEA Invades America case study). By 2002, the United States was IKEA’s third-largest market, after Germany and United Kingdom, (exhibit 3 - IKEA Invades America case study) with 14 stores established, second largest number of stores worldwide (exhibit 4 - IKEA Invades America case study).…

    • 1218 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Professor

    • 6347 Words
    • 26 Pages

    On January 01, 2009, Modern Material Handling announced that IKEA Group3 (IKEA), world‟s largest furniture retailer4, had won the Modern‟s Productivity Achievement Award5 for the Warehousing/Distribution segment for the year 2008-09. Founded in 1943, in Sweden, IKEA focused on offering a wide range of good quality, stylish, well-designed, and functional furniture at a low cost so that more people could afford it. IKEA kept cost reduction at the center of any decision making. It made efforts to improve its internal supply chain processes like packaging, warehousing, and transportation which contributed to its cost cutting objective. Its most differentiating factor was its flat packaging system which had significantly improved its operational efficacy. IKEA was ranked 35th in the list of the top 100 brands by Business Week6 for the year 2008-09. The company‟s brand value was estimated to be US$ 10.9 billion in 2008. For the financial year 2008, IKEA registered sales of US$ 28.8 billion. According to industry experts, IKEA‟s supply chain management was the key factor for the success of the company. The company considered factors like carriers used for transportation and pallets used in warehouses to base its decisions like furniture design and packaging. As a result, IKEA was managing its costs better than its competitors and was able to offer products at 30% lower costs. IKEA maintained a long-term relationship with its suppliers and assisted them in improving their processes so that it would help in cutting costs further. The company did not offer free…

    • 6347 Words
    • 26 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    IKEA Value Chain

    • 999 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Value chain analysis refers to a set of value creating activities, ranging from raw materials to marketing or producing a product or service and distributing it to the final consumer. Currently in present-day context, firms turned to outsource certain resources to reduce their cost of the product. This corporate value chain framework can be used for identifying competitive advantage methods of displaying and categorizing activities to contribute positively to the firm’s competitive strategy. If it becomes sustainable, profitable, defensible and valued by the market, the firm can generate high rates of return with average profitability from the industry in the market. (Srinivasan 2008) IKEA, the world biggest global furnishing mega store, provides products that are well- designed and functional, with prices that many consumers are able to afford them. It all begins from the internal analyze of IKEA’s resources, capabilities and both primary and support activities, also the external analyze of economy, social and technology aspects that made it all possible for their operations. One major resources of IKEA was to harvest woods from sustainable forest. Wood plays a big part for a furnishing industry and IKEA looks for excellent materials from a quality and responsibly managed forest. According to IKEA, the company is moving forward to build a more sustainable direction by the year 2015. The company wants to influence the entire value chain, from product design and development to the very end of a product’s life, to eventually produce products in a responsible way and also to live more sustainably.(Group 2011) Sociologically, it helps IKEA to create corporate social responsibility awareness which strengthen the company’s branding and able to attract consumers. IKEA have a few major manufacturer located in Poland and Sweden. IKEA’s capabilities were to plan different manufacturers to operate and focus on different sectors. According to the podcast, Kattilstorp in…

    • 999 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Ikea Value Chain Analysis

    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The following tables represent an analysis of IKEA operations on the basis of Value-Chain analytical framework:…

    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Best Essays

    IKEA was founded in Sweden in 1962 by Ingvar Kamprad at the low age of 17. The letters in IKEA is an acronym of Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd (the old spelling of the farm where he grew up) and Agunnaryd (the village’s name). Starting with selling pens, matches and other products, Ingvar eventually started selling and later manufacturing furniture. The concept has basically always been the same – large volumes at low purchase price. Products with high demand sold at low prices. Not only do IKEA handle large volumes of goods. With businesses in 26 nations worldwide IKEA is represented in four continents, employing as much as 123 000 people (Ikea.com, a). This makes human resource management a fundamental part of daily processes. Domestic human resource management is a task itself. The international undertaking of HR management is another.…

    • 3709 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    IKEA which may be the world’s most successful global retail has grown into a global cult brand with 230 stores in 33 countries that host 410 million shoppers. To achieve global success, IKEA took some actions, for example, in order to avoid the costs associated with shipping the product all over the world. IKEA works with suppliers in each of the company’s big market and IKEA had to adapt it offerings to the tastes and preference of consumers in different countries. Besides, globalization of market and production are also an important factors of IKEA’s achievement.…

    • 435 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Operation Management & Ikea

    • 6167 Words
    • 25 Pages

    Unlike most furniture stores, IKEA sells goods which need to be assembled by the consumer; this has enabled them to use space more efficiently in their warehouse. The company has developed methods to satisfy customers with their Unique Selling Point (show room, children’ area) and a wise use of technology (stock control, internet).…

    • 6167 Words
    • 25 Pages
    Powerful Essays