Ikea stores are located all over the world. In recent years, their stores have appeared in both shopping centers and malls on a somewhat smaller scale. Something that distinguishes these stores from their larger department stores is that they lack the maze-like aisles with arrows in the floor.
The reason why they chose to have a different structure for the stores in malls and shopping centers is because they wanted to let customers walk more freely and thought that this would be good for those who wanted to go in quickly and buy something, which The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on.
Customers prefer Ikea’s labyrinth structure
But now surveys and interviews conducted with customers show that they prefer the maze-like stores more than the free ones, which also Today’s PS reported on.
– We didn’t think we needed to guide the customers, because the stores are so small, we thought they would see everything, says Tolga Öncü, retail manager at Ingka Group, which runs the majority of IKEA’s department stores, to The Wall Street Journal.
Ikea in Gallerian is to be rebuilt
The surveys show that customers prefer to be “held by the hand” around the stores, with the help of the labyrinths. Several stores with the freer structure have been forced to close, due to too few customers.
The stores in Paris and Vienna’s city centers had the open structure like in the Galleria in Stockholm, but were later rebuilt into the honorable labyrinth and then sales also increased.
Now Ikea in the Gallerian in Stockholm is also planned to be rebuilt into a classic Ikea labyrinth, according to The Wall Street Journal.