Building a Strong Brand: A Study of IKEA

The assignment content discusses the customer-based brand equity model and its application to IKEA, a furniture retailer. The model helps in understanding how customers perceive a brand, including its salience, performance, imagery, consumer reactions, and resonance. The analysis highlights IKEA's strengths, such as its affordable prices, wide range of products, and enjoyable shopping experience. However, it also identifies areas for improvement, including the need to balance price and quality and to increase customer loyalty through community engagement.

assignment
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Introduction
Every organization aims to build a strong brand with eloquent equity by gaining a sustainable
competitive advantage. This helps in maximizing the customer loyalty and helps in reducing the
vulnerability to the actions and crisis of the competitive markets. While building a strong brand,
various questions rise and in order to answer those questions the customer-based brand equity
model has been developed. The model helps in providing the distinct perception about the brand
equity, how it can be built, maintained and measured. The main objective behind the
development of the model is to know the perspective of the customers towards the brand like
how they felt, seen and heard about the brand. Further, the company IKEA has been chosen from
the list of inter-brand of 2015 in order to see that how the company developed brand knowledge
and how it handles the procedure of building a strong brand.
Source: ("Mind Tools: Online Management, Leadership, and Career Training," 2016)
Brand Salience
The brand silence is at the bottom of the pyramid as it is shown above in the diagram. The brand
salience helps in identifying where you stand and who you are. The brand salience for the
company IKEA is the retailer of the furniture. The company became one of the largest retailer of

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the furniture in 2008 ("IKEA.com - International homepage," 2016). This helps in understanding
that the IKEA satisfies the needs and desires of the customers under various circumstances in
order to increase the brand loyalty and achieving the sustainable competitive advantage.
Therefore, the customers are able to recognize the brand by its services and the logo of the
company.
Brand Performance
The brand performance helps in identifying what you actually are. IKEA is leadoff in the retail
market of furniture. According to the research, 89% of the respondents stated that they prefer
IKEA as the first brand whenever they thought of home furniture. The tagline of the IKEA is
‘affordable solutions for the better living.' The products of IKEA focuses on minimum price and
functionality. The disadvantage for the company is that the products are not long lasting as they
have a short life. In spite, of this fact, the IKEA provides a lifetime warranty and guarantee for
the products of furniture ("Value Chain Group," 2016). The vision of IKEA is to offer well
functional and created home furniture to maximum people at low prices so that they are able to
afford the products. Approximately, the single store of IKEA includes 9,600 products of varied
shapes, size, and designs.
Brand Imagery
The brand imagery helps in identifying that what you are in the minds of the consumers. The
company IKEA was originated in Sweden. The Scandinavian style of the IKEA not only
fabricates in the blue and yellow logo of the company but it also fabricates in the products of
furniture. The simplicity of designs is being fascinated and appreciated by the customers all over
the world. The company is mainly targeting the customers who are oriented towards price, the
varied sizes of the family i.e. from small to large space of the house but mainly families which

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are young and also have children. The IKEA is popular for the broad range and variety of
products. IKEA is not the only place for customers to purchase the furniture but it is a place
where customers have fun and creative to achieve inspiration related to the home’s design with
respect to the ideational placement of the products of the furniture in the store of the IKEA.
Consumer Reactions
The consumer reactions include the feelings and the judgments of the consumer, and this helps
the company to know the responses of the customers towards the brand Londoño et al., 2016).
 Judgment
IKEA is the brand which provides the comprehensive solutions to the customers with the
desirable prices. The products which are price oriented sometimes offer quality with a low
performance which cannot be avoided. The customers of the IKEA are conscious enough
towards the quality despite the price of purchasing and the gained satisfaction from achieving a
great deal. IKEA is the complete package of functionality, design, affordability, etc. in the
consumer’s perception. These features of the company make it superior from the competitors.
The products are easily transported to the customers by using common transportation. The
customer services of the company IKEA has developed a great relation with the customers.
Further, the employees of the company treat the customers as a family in order to build a friendly
image of the brand.
 Feelings
The consumers enjoy shopping at IKEA even more than purchasing. The felicitous atmosphere
fabricates customers easy like their own place. The company offers services like the playground
for children and the restaurant in order to satisfy the needs of the customers and enables them to

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do shopping with ease. The layout of the showroom is based on one direction which makes the
shopping enjoyable. It is not possible to visit IKEA to purchase a single item because the
customer ends up with shelling out more hours in the playground of the furniture. The effect of
IKEA is inferred from the Do It Yourself experience as it is the first pop-up which comes in the
minds of the customers. Whereas, developing something by own always satisfies the feelings of
the own achievement and it also helps in increasing the value of the object. IKEA has the
positive approval of the society, and because of the availability, costumers get the positive
response or feedback while shopping for the products of furniture of IKEA. The atmosphere and
the products of the IKEA offers an assured experience for the customers.
Consumer Brand Resonance
According to the analysis of the love marker, IKEA is the implicit love marker with great respect
of customer but with less loyalty. The company has the low loyalty towards customers because
of their strategy which is price-oriented and the small transformation in the price may take the
large portion of targeted segment away. The customer loyalty of IKEA depends on the
benchmark of distance and price (Swoboda et al., 2013). The stores of the IKEA are located
outside the main cities, and this factor sometimes reduces the motivation of customers to visit the
stores. The IKEA is strongly engaged with the customers through the strong community which
enables the customers to share their experience with IKEA.

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REFERENCES
IKEA.com - International homepage. (2016). IKEA. Retrieved 4 November 2016, from
http://www.ikea.com/
Londoño, J. C., Elms, J., & Davies, K. (2016). Conceptualising and measuring consumer-based
brand–retailer–channel equity. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 29, 70-81.
Mind Tools: Online Management, Leadership, and Career Training. (2016). Mindtools.com.
Retrieved 4 November 2016, from https://www.mindtools.com
Swoboda, B., Berg, B., Schramm-Klein, H., & Foscht, T. (2013). The importance of retail brand
equity and store accessibility for store loyalty in the local competition. Journal of Retailing and
Consumer Services, 20(3), 251-262.
Value Chain Group. (2016). Value Chain Group. Retrieved 4 November 2016, from
http://www.value-chain.org/brand-equity-pyramid/