By identifying and highlighting these low-priced products for consumers, we altered the way in which the catalogue was arranged, changing the order in which consumers received information and speeding up the buying process. Using a more intuitive UX/UI experience, we created a more direct connection.

With a minimal budget, we generated huge ecommerce results, while also strengthening IKEA’s image as being very affordable.

70% of Taiwanese mistakenly believed that since IKEA is imported, it must be expensive. And with the added economic impact of Covid-19, we needed to elevate people’s willingness to shop, by combing through IKEA’s 8,500 furniture and furnishing products, finding the super affordable items, and throwing them into the limelight.

In May 2021, a Covid-19 outbreak forced Taiwan’s government to implement a lockdown. This triggered 2 noteworthy shifts:

1. Spending more on home comforts accessories

2. Shift to e-commerce

Consumers delaying big-ticket purchases and a mandatory shift to e-commerce for daily essentials came together as a threat for IKEA, for two reasons:

1. A sales model relying on big-ticket hero items to draw & up-sell

People go to IKEA because they want a new sofa or a new kitchen. The strategy is to convert these major purchases through immersive and tactile retail experiences, and then up-sell relatively accessibly priced but highly profitable furnishings and accessories.

2. Taiwanese shoppers perceive IKEA as an expensive brand

Over 36% of respondents to one survey said their impression was that IKEA’s prices were worse than at other stores.

The challenge was to increase IKEA EC sales, by ensuring shoppers online to purchase accessories items.

E-commerce is all about value and convenience:

When it comes to online shopping, Taiwanese consumers are very price-sensitive. Three reasons drive ecommerce: price (64%), convenience (63%), and reliable shipping (61%). Moreover, as online shopping became more common during the pandemic, considerations cited for choosing an ecommerce platform centered even more on cost. These include product prices (62.9%), shipping rates/free shipping(60.1%) and discount offers (47.1%).

Price is a barrier to IKEA:

In Taiwan, price is the No. 1 reason for rejecting IKEA, for as much as 36% of consumers. Although IKEA was the most famous brand in Taiwan for product satisfaction and appearance, consumers still tended to rule out IKEA when purchasing furnishing accessories online, due to their biased impression of IKEA as being expensive.

The resulting strategic opportunity:

To radically reset IKEA's value perceptions bottom-up, rather than top-down.

Breaking from IKEA’s custom of categorizing products according to the different rooms of the home, we launched the history’s first electronic catalogue sorted according to price, the “IKEA Dollar Catalogue”: 100 items, 100 pages, 100 prices, ranging from 1 to 100 Taiwan dollars (1 Taiwan Dollar = 3 cents). The page number equaled the product price.

Using consumer purchasing data from IKEA’s online store, we carefully selected 100 popular products to include in the IKEA Dollar Catalogue. Our visual design integrated the prices and the page numbers in IKEA’s trademark simple style.

Besides the catalogue, we extended the idea to a video, counting off seconds that equaled the product prices, and to the stairs of an underground parking garage, where a product price appeared on each step. It all fully reflected the brand spirit: “Affordable Makes Wonderful.”

IKEA Dollar Catalogue delivered immediate impact and effectively drove online sales well ahead of targets.

1.Communications objective

Within 2 weeks, IKEA Dollar Catalogue scored over 10 million page views, generating 21 million total impressions.

2.Behavioral objective

The bounce rate during the campaign period dropped to 44.24%, an almost 30% improvement vs 72.62% standard benchmark.

The conversion rate to the IKEA online store was 264%.

3.Business objective

While Taiwan’s overall online retail sales grew 28.2% in Q3 2021comparing to the previous year, IKEA online store value sales increased 123% for the same period of time, ie 4.3x higher than total market.