Ikea unveils game plan for North India expansion; puts mass-reach marketing channels at the core

New Delhi: The Swedish furniture giant Ikea is zealously eyeing mass reach, with channels like the Indian Premier League on the brand’s agenda. 

Ikea confirmed that the brand has been approached by IPL, and it is currently evaluating deals for advertisements or associations. 

Ikea, one of the world’s largest furniture retailers, is now operational as an e-commerce platform in Delhi and its vicinity. The furniture giant is also expanding into cities like Agra, Prayagraj, Amritsar, Jaipur, Lucknow, and Kanpur, offering its online services.

Aiming to hit boundaries in North India?

With Ikea stepping into the lands of North India, the Swedish brand is now targeting high reach channels to propagate brand awareness and visibility, Jayendra Gupta, Country Integrated Media Manager at Ikea India told BestMediaInfo.com, in an exclusive conversation.

“Previously, as a brand primarily serving the West and South, advertising on high-reach channels presented a significant risk of substantial spillover. As the brand custodian, I did not believe pursuing that spillover was advisable. However, with our recent Delhi launch and expansion into nine additional Northern markets, high-reach channels, including cricket, make a lot of sense,” Gupta said. 

According to Gupta, there are only a few platforms, or few modes of advertising, that cut across the length and breadth of the nation, “and cricket is one of them.”

Ikea’s media mix 

Ikea currently operates with an omnichannel approach and an adaptive channel mix. As shared by Gupta, the Ikea media mix is almost 70% digital and OOH combined. 

Elaborating on this, Gupta stated, “To cultivate strong brand affinity, we employ high-reach channels with purposeful, meaningful storytelling in our brand communication. This drives both new customer acquisition and brand love. Our mainline channels, alongside digital formats such as online video, OTT platforms, content creation, and content integration, support this effort significantly. These channels are crucial for fostering that emotional connection. 

Out-of-home advertising remains a consistent and vital medium, contributing to brand recall, high reach, and, importantly, brand love. As Ikea is inherently a visual brand, platforms that facilitate visual storytelling naturally take center stage in our communication strategy.”

While Ikea serves a broad customer base, families with children remain a core audience. "This segment experiences multiple life stages—children growing up, changing needs for space, and evolving home requirements. We offer modular solutions that adapt to these changes, making us an integral part of their journey," Gupta elaborated.

That said, the company also caters to urban nuclear families, multi-generational households, and young adults living independently. "We don’t differentiate; our aim is to cater to all segments by offering relevant solutions," he said.

As per the data shared by the platform, Ikea in India is operating in more than 60 e-commerce markets, with roughly 27 lakh  “Ikea family members.” Along with this, the brand has physical stores in Hyderabad, Navi Mumbai, and Bangalore. Kickstarting their operations in 2018, Ikea opened their first store in Hyderabad. 

The Sweden-based brand has several other physical touchpoints: A city store in Mumbai Worli, a distribution centre in Pune, a remote customer meeting point (RCMP) in Hyderabad, their service office in Bangalore, and the newly-built distribution centre in Gurgaon. 

The sales ratio for Ikea lies at 70:30, with the major chunk of it coming from the offline retail stores. The digital arm is yet to muscle up. With an only e-commerce service, for now, in Delhi-NCR regions, along with nine other cities, the digital sales are expected to see an uptick. 

The e-commerce conundrum

It is to be noted that e-commerce, in the context of Ikea, is the Ikea website and app that fosters e-commerce sales, and not the prevalent giants such as Amazon, Flipkart, and its ilk. Ikea hasn’t joined hands with any of the deeply rooted e-commerce platforms in India. 

Explaining the reason for this, Bhavana Jaiswal, Head of E-Commerce, IKEA India, told BestMediaInfo.com that the furniture giant aims to mirror its in-store experience online, which is “difficult to replicate elsewhere.” 

Getting into the nitty-gritty of the matter, she said, “Our current focus is primarily on our website and app. This stems from our approach to selling home furnishing solutions, not just products. 

We aim to replicate the in-store experience online, where customers can explore room sets, not just individual items. Our website and app feature product displays and inspirational content akin to a Pinterest feed. We emphasise holistic solutions, curating products that complement each other, such as storage accessories designed for specific drawers.”

Jaiswal also conveyed their marketing mix for Delhi. For the Delhi-NCR regions, Ikea is prioritising brand building, followed by performance marketing building up on its back. “In a market like Delhi, we will have a lot of spending on brand building. You cannot have performance marketing without brand awareness,” she said. 

Chiming in with a fresh perspective on the e-commerce aspect, Susanne Pulverer, CEO & CSO, IKEA India, cited “platform control and logistical backbone” as two reasons for their resistance in collaborating with e-commerce behemoths in India. 

Zooming in on the subject, Pulverer shared the company’s strategy to have comprehensive control over the platform, setup, and logistics. “As a new market entrant, we aim to maintain comprehensive control over the customer experience. This guides our current approach, but we're continually evaluating opportunities and market developments,” she said. 

Another insight that Ikea India’s CEO elaborated on was the efficiency of smaller formats of physical stores. Ikea’s conventional setup involves huge stores that also include the inventory. The huge stores require substantial land and the customers are required to walk a lot. “We realised that our 460,000 sq.ft. stores can be a bit too overwhelming for Indian demographics,” she mentioned.

As a result, Ikea in Delhi-NCR regions and other “important cities” in North India is going with smaller commercial spaces, omitting the warehouses from the stores' periphery. “This is one thing we learned: that smaller store formats are successful in India, especially when situated close to residential areas. This is due to the scarcity of time and the heavy traffic, combined with the busy lifestyles prevalent in major Indian cities,” Pulverer concluded.