IKEA

I was going to IKEA last Friday to inhale Sweden for a while and enjoy the Swedish food. It was on that way I got the idea. Globalization, this week’s assignment, what could be better then referring IKEA to globalization and the other way around. The questions I wanted to get answer to in my research were how IKEA has succeeded in Japan and how the company has affected the country in both positive and negative ways. The article IKEA: The Japanese misadventure and successful re-entry writes that IKEA did several tries to open an IKEA store in Japan in the 1970 but the demand was not high enough to succeed in Japan. IKEA was not ready for Japan and the Japanese people were definitely not ready to drive it home and put it together themselves. IKEA came back to Japan in 2006 to give it a new try and according to the article IKEA’s new plan for Japan, was Japan now a much more open country for new ideas and IKEA was a much better known company in the country. I also discussed this with my speaking partner Chiaki how said that one reason why she thinks IKEA succeeded this time was because the Japanese people these days have a very good image of Sweden by associations to quality, high education and a good wealth fare system. I asked her how she thinks IKEA have affected the country and she says that by having IKEA in Japan more Japanese people can afford to buy fashionable home furnishing to good prices.

When I were at IKEA in Osaka I took the chance to talk to Kazuhiro who have been working on IKEA as a manager of the living room area for one and a half year. He said that IKEA’s positive effects of being in Japan is that more Japanese people got interested in home furnishing, especially younger people and people with less money. The negative effect is that IKEA have effected the local stores a lot. He said that he think most Japanese people would choose IKEA before other Japanese companies. A proof of this is that IKEA expended from one store in 2006 to five stores in 2009.