4.2.1 Analysis on Customers’ Shopping Behaviors .....18

4.2.2Analysis on Customers’ Attitudes towards IKEA’s Experiential Marketing Strategies....19

4.2.3 Basic Information of the Respondents....21

4.3 Suggestions.22

Bibliography.....24

Appendix....25

An Analysis of Experiential Marketing of IKEA

Chapter One Summary of Experiential Marketing

    Since 1998 when IKEA first moved into the Chinese market, it has overshadowed its counterparts with its daily customer flow reaching over ten thousands. Many Chinese corporations are eager to imitate IKEA. They set IKEA’s experiential marketing strategy as an example and even design similar logos, but it is just a kind of copy instead of reference. As a result, they are still a far cry from IKEA.

To give those corporations a deeper insight into the characteristics and the principles of experiential marketing so that they can adopt suitable strategies to satisfy customers’ experiential needs, I will make an analysis of IKEA from the perspective of its experiential marketing and try to seek its essence. 

1.1 Experiential Marketing

    Bernd H.Schmitt, a famous marketing expert, suggests that experiential marketing is to redefine and re-design the thinking pattern of marketing based on the “sense, feeling, thinking, action and relation”. The new pattern, different from the traditional assumption of “rational consumers”, defines that the consumers are both rational and emotional. Their experiences before, during and after shopping is the key to researches on customers’ behaviors and brand building.

    Experiential marketing is to involve customers into emotional process starting from product, give them unique experiences, enable them to feel happiness and achieve self-realization when they are shopping. In a joyful experience, customers are connected with products. In other words, experiential marketing is a process to maximize customer values by providing products and services to meet customers’ psychological needs.

    Before we conduct experiential marking strategy, we need to know what makes it different from other strategies. Three characteristics are mentioned in many similar researches including involvement, emotion and difference.

First, involvement. The key to experiential activities is customers’ involvement, without which there is no experience. Second, emotion. In traditional business transactions, sellers and buyers have a commercial relationship but share no emotional connections. On the contrary, experiential marketing outlines emotional commitment to customers. Through emotional contacts, sellers and buyers can have a better relationship with each other and more importantly, consumers can be emotionally satisfied. Third, difference. Experience, as a personal feeling, can range from people to people because of different backgrounds such as education, culture, personal experiences and hobbies.

1.2 Introduction to IKEA in China

IKEA is a multinational company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture, like chairs, beds and desks, appliances and home accessories. Since January 2008, it has been the world’s largest furniture retailer. It was founded in Sweden in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, a 17-year-old teenager. The company is famous for its modern design for different kinds of appliances and furniture, and the design principle of simplicity. Furthermore, the firm is well known for its commitment to cost control, details and rapid upgrade of products.

    IKEA enters the Chinese market in 1998. It established its first shopping mall in shanghai in January and its second shopping mall in Beijing a year later. The shopping mall in Shanghai is larger than any other IKEA shopping mall in Asia. Covering an area of 33000 ㎡, it offers 7000 pieces of furniture, a canteen with 500 seats, and a free parking lot .