IKEA’s Crimes Against Cartography

Shopping at IKEA is an ordeal, an expedition. And IKEA has just made it harder. Whilst IKEA is the McDonald’s of housewares, its approach is quite different. IKEA offers the same products and experience all over the world, at very competitive prices. How do they do it?

Volume.

Layout.

And Psychology.

Just as Winston Churchill was famously noted for his skill at mobilising words for war, IKEA has mobilised its store wayfinding for commerce. To achieve this, they have drawn upon lessons from medieval cathedral labyrinths, and the psychology of warfare.

The IKEA philosophy

IKEA has over 400 stores in 49 countries, all operated and run on the same principles. Customers are subtly persuaded to do as much of the in-store work as possible, in the promise that they are saving money. The company constantly looks for ways to save itself money, space, and time. This approach has famously led to their flat-pack products, saving on both transport and store space, whilst maximising availability and transportability.

IKEA shoppers travelling overseas may have noted that the progression of departments, from Living Rooms, Kitchens, Bedrooms, Wardrobes and on to the Self-Serve Furniture Area, is identical across continents. To ensure that shoppers traverse every aisle, they make the store one long contiguous path.

Pushing the work onto the customer

Another key component of IKEA’s store design is to minimise the manual work its own employees do, so they can focus on helping customers. This is achieved in large part by having the customers go to the Self-Serve Furniture Area (the warehouse section) to load the flat-pack items into their carts themselves.

Employees do not have to waste much time fielding wayfinding questions, because of the contiguous shopping path, and the fact that IKEA provides a handy store map (with a shopping list on the flip side). Signs above and arrows on the floor nudging shoppers along the path.

Conscious philosophy is a weapon

The store layout is the main component of the IKEA customer experience strategy, taking shoppers on a wending trai‎l through every department and near every product, over two levels. To further disorient shoppers, the path jags left and right constantly, and there are no windows through which to sense direction or time.

Traffic engineers have long understood that one way streets increase throughput by reducing flow turbulence. Whilst IKEA has set up the one way pedestrian flow so that shoppers simply follow others through the entire store, they have reversed this principle. As shoppers are taken through every department and past every product, many of them stop to take a gander, slowing the procession. This maximises the turbulence to provide each shopper with more time to engage with the goods.

As such, a store map is not really needed, and this is what most shoppers experience. They are happy to trudge the road of commerce. Typically the long walk through both levels takes at least an hour, and often one or two more, depending on the aisle crowding and the amount they purchase.

Alan Penn of the University College London’s Bartlett School of Architecture analysed the IKEA shopping experience in a 2011 lecture:

• IKEA is highly disorienting but there is one clear route to follow.
• Diversions from the path result in quick disorientation.
• By the time they reach the Market Hall, shoppers are tired, and most of them just want to pay and exit, making them much more susceptible to impulse purchasing.
• Delay is followed by gratification.

Decision fatigue is the psychological phenomenon that leads to people making poorer choices. Making decisions takes energy – by the time customers reach the checkout line, their neural reserves are depleted.

The end result of this overwhelming shopping experience is all part of the plan. The promise of saving money at a large store is usually overridden by buying more than anticipated – an example of induced demand. This makes IKEA a retailers’ Utopia – most shoppers walk through every department. A two dimensional store layout is transformed into a linear trek.

But IKEA doesn’t stop there. IKEA is a real world, analog furnishings and housewares holodeck for consumers to act out their house decorating fantasies. Visual saturation and over-stimulation of the ‎brain results. This also greatly contributes to lowering the shopper’s resistance to impulse purchases.

Chartres and sacred paths

Circle labyrinths were created by ancient Greeks and Egyptians; the Romans in contrast created square labyrinths. By the Medieval period, circular designs were again the rule, built into cathedral floors, the most famous of which being the one inside Chartres Cathedral, dating from c.1201:

Labyrinths have a single winding path, called unicursal, almost always in a symmetric pattern. Walking a labyrinth is often associated with a religious or spiritual experience, and the designs have been developed by cultures all over the world. People from the aforementioned polytheistic societies to Christians, Khmer Buddhists, and Nordic pagans have coursed such paths.

Here be dragons

Mazes, contrary to labyrinths, are designed as puzzles, with dead-ends, lack of symmetry, and only one solution. Accordingly, mazes of antiquity have been strongly associated with the Underworld and chaos, most notably the Minotaur, as seen in the title image,

Store geometry

Previous IKEA store maps were geographical representations depicting the actual path taken through all of the merchandise departments. These floorplan maps depicted what IKEA calls the ‘Treasure Map’, much like the meandering pirate maps of old that wended (cryptically) past several landmarks.

Fortunately there are shortcuts

Experienced IKEA shoppers prefer to skip unnecessary walking and distractions by proceeding directly to the desired department, finding the product(s), and then heading to the check out.

This is possible as there are shortcuts in IKEA’s labyrinth, hidden in plain sight amidst the wall to wall product samples and difficult Swedish product names. Physically the shortcuts are merely breaks in walls, with product on either side and beyond, so they are well camouflaged as to be nearly invisible. Some IKEA maps show the shortcuts, but to find them is often deliberately difficult.

The psychology of warfare

IKEA uses war psychology – confusion, camouflage, and attrition – to wear down and coerce shoppers, starting with the store layout. We’ve already described the disorienting non-linear shopping path.

The Five Forms of effective military camoflage are:

• Shape – Break up the shape of the object so that there is no outline or silhouette.
• Shine – Conceal any shine or reflection. There is no lighting or reflection coming through the shortcuts.
• Smell – The only discernible odours are from the IKEA Restaurant and Cafe.
• Shadow – Being well lit is a retail necessity, so this not an issue.
• Sound – The shortcut is small, the store is noisy, so there is little to no noticeable sound emanating from beyond the opening.

In the following image, the hanging sign indicates that there is a shortcut somewhere to the left:

Here is a closeup of a separate shortcut – even the sign is small and hard to read:

Most rookie shoppers won’t even notice the shortcuts, and even those that do won’t take them to avoid missing any products, deals, or ‘the IKEA experience’. Those visitors who do brave the shortcuts change their experience from a labyrinth into a maze – they have left the slow but safe wagon train.

Experienced IKEA shoppers may have noticed ‎that the shortcuts change over time. This is to prevent too many consumers from learning about and using them. And as part of the general retail principle of changing up the layout to keep repeat shoppers stimulated.

‎The shortcuts were likely introduced to improve staff efficiency by allowing them to proceed through the store more quickly,but they may also be required to ensure speedy evacuation in case of fire or emergency.

This writer’s personal best to find one item, using optimal shortcuts and paying, is 20 minutes. And despite the judicious use of the shortcuts, the store’s footprint still had to be traversed almost twice, once on each storey. Furthermore, using the shortcuts adds considerable unpredictability to one’s location, turning the labyrinth into a monstrous maze, planned and executed with Viking ruthlessness.

Notwithstanding the shortcuts, passing through many departments is still necessary, as well as through the Self-Serve Furniture Area, Market Hall, and the obligatory wait at the Check out, where additional goods are on display for the tired shopper.

Furthermore, frequent IKEA shoppers have found that unmarked doors and empty hallways (which are escape alleys) are often back routes to different parts of the store. These are not shewn on any map. IKEA puts much effort into making them less visible, like hiding them behind curtains. But they will save additional time – they are open to the public, unless they are marked for employees only.

The new IKEA Line map

The traditional IKEA map was geographic and helpful for orientation. Like the Tube map it was a slight abstraction, but did broadly conform to physical reality. Hence the maps were intuitive to use.

‎To wring even more money out of their consumers, IKEA has now simplified the store map even further – as a line map.

On the surface, replacing the squiggly IKEA path map with a line map seems like the next logical step – possibly inspired by the line and strip maps on many urban rail vehicles. It’s really the order of things on the IKEA path that matters, not the exact layout, just like stations on the Tube map. However, this new line map is actually much more disorienting – an oversimplification.

The IKEA line map shows the two stories as separate levels of the same line. But the complex, asymmetric nature of the store path and the spatial ambiguity of the line map betray that idea.

The new IKEA line map dispenses with reality altogether – it is a purely abstract one dimensional representation of an intensely non-linear, two dimensional space. As a result, trans‎posing the map to the physical reality of the store now requires significant mental effort. Hence most shoppers give up and stick to the flow of the shopping path.

Furthermore, the shortcuts are now shewn, but appear just as long as the regular path, and as such are intuitively unappealing.

Arrows of outrageous fortune

Blue and yellow arrow circle decals on the floor indicate the path, so the shoppers can concentrate on looking at the merchandise.

Lately, IKEA has been projecting light arrows on the floor, conceivably because they are much easier and less labour intensive than scraping stickers off the floor and putting down new ones, when the floor plan is changed. Which seems to happen every few years.

Nonetheless, the IKEA arrows and its devotion to the One True Shopping Path have been the target of internet memes:

The gold standard of wayfinding

Contrast IKEA’s wayfinding to arguably the global gold standard, TfL’s signage in Underground stations. Paths to connecting lines and exits are clearly indicated, plus accessibility maps inside and outside lifts. Each Underground sign is a part of a coherent wayfinding whole. TfL’ s Design Principles are:

1. Anticipate users’ needs

2. Make things easy

3. Keep it clear & simple

4. Design for on-the-move

5. Build trust

6. Continually improve

7. Think beyond functional

8. Do more with less

Here is an excellent example of TfL navigational signage in King’s Cross Underground station, with clear and crisp direction, using colour and icons:

In IKEA however, most signs have a large arrow pointing the consumer up the Shopping Path. Many signs are printed only on one side, effectively becoming a check valve to dissuade counterflow movement.

Yet more lines at the IKEA Restaurant and cafe

The IKEA restaurant is setup as a cafeteria, where the customer again does almost all of the work. Picking up a tray and cutlery, getting in numerous lines to pick or order food, which is good to keep hungry shoppers in queues long enough that they end up ordering more food. Furthermore, the food racks are slightly tilted forward such that the plate behind slides to replace the one just picked up, self-presenting for the next hungry shopper.

Attrition – Wearing down the shopper

Other large stores have noticed the commercial advantages of forced paths, and have added a winding queue at the checkout, lined with products to entice and taunt the tired and bored shoppers whilst they wait at the typically understaffed Check out.

Grocery stores have long used racks of sweets, gum and chocolate as a gauntlet of junk food impulse purchases, known in the UK as guilt lanes. They work – such lanes comprise 1% of grocery stores by area, but account for 4% of store profits.

Supermarkets also place staples like bread and dairy in opposite corners from the entrance, and from each other. This forces shoppers to trudge through to the back of the store, albeit by random aisles, to lead them past many of the 44,000 items the average supermarket stocks.

Doubling the size of a shopping cart leads to the purchase of 40% more food, according to a retail rule of thumb. Hence IKEA has larger carts for large purchases, and sells extra large blue shopping bags.

But no other chain store offers its customers such a close up view of everything in the store, which most shoppers are more than willing to participate in.

Upon entering IKEA, the shopper is swept up in the inexorable and almost irreversible flow of consumers. The flow is a modern version of the wagon train, with shoppers pushing shopping carts instead of horses pulling wagons, moving at the speed of the slowest family member. They usually need to re-provision their energy levels in the restaurant or the cafe.

Furthermore, because the layout is so confusing and oriented for one way flow, shoppers know they won’t easily be able to go back and get an item later. So they pop it into their large trolley and continue shopping.

After paying up at the Check out, their IKEA odyssey ends in the car park. Their IKEA memories are in the car, awaiting resurrection from their flat-pack existence at home.

The contrast of commerce and public transport mapping

IKEA seeks to maximise consumers’ time in the store. by making the simple store layout into a complex labyrinth.

Public transport seeks to do the opposite, by designing networks to optimise capacity, speed, and understandable network design, to minimise passengers’ time on the system. Moreover, transport agencies attempt to design line interchanges, and their navigation, as simply as possible. Given the haphazard development of most underground networks around the world, considerable effort is made to make passenger wayfinding as clear and efficient as possible.

Whilst New York Subway stations are often claustrophobic, which were the inspiration for the following painting, the look and confusion on the people’s faces is also applicable to IKEA shoppers.

How IKEA maps the customer journey

The Swedish behemoth obviously spends a lot of time analysing customer behaviours, both in and outside of their stores. Even online. We should thank the Norse Gods of Commerce that we potential and actual customers do not have to navigate the IKEA Customer Journey Map:

No IKEA products or foodstuffs were purchased in the research for this article.