Ikea: how is it coping with the increase in e-commerce activities?

As advanced in a previous article, more Ikea consumers are purchasing online instead of visiting stores. That has been the case during the lockdown and even after the reopening of shops. How is the firm dealing with this shift in customer behaviour?

Its chief digital officer Barbara Martin Coppola said that along with buying on the Web, clients have also been engaging in “really, really quick decision making”. Instead of taking months to complete a purchase, this is being done in days. As such, the furniture giant has had to modify the way it operates to adapt to this shift in customer behaviour.

 To accelerate their process and to enhance the shopping experience for its clients, they have stopped a lot of activities that they thought were not productive. Instead, they invested their energy into areas such as fulfilment to make sure that it can address the varying needs of a wide range of customers by offering options such as in-store collection and contactless deliveries. They have turned many shops into fulfilment centres.

Speaking about the future priorities and realities of retail, Coppola advances that privacy is of significance importance. She said, “We are respecting it in the physical world, we are respecting it in the stores: we need to bring the same values to e-commerce and to online”.

Ikea is enhancing its digital operations