How IKEA Creates A Luxury Experience

IKEA is a retailer known for furniture that the customers have to assemble. Its showrooms feature ongoing displays of its products, and delicious Swedish meatballs are sold in restaurants located inside its stores. It is also known as affordable, which may make you ask, “How can an affordable brand, like IKEA, create a luxury experience?”

That’s the question answered by Neen James, the author of Exceptional Experiences: Five Luxury Levers to Elevate Every Aspect of Your Business, who uses IKEA as a case study to prove that even brands known for low prices can create a luxury experience.

In my interview with James on Amazing Business Radio, she makes it clear that luxury experiences aren’t always about high-end and high cost, although they can be. An evening at the Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons will cost significantly more than an inexpensive roadside hotel, and the experience will be distinctly different. However, the experience at an inexpensive hotel can be elevated by triggering the five luxury levels in James’ book.

Luxury Is About Experiences, Not Things

This is the title of Part One in the book and makes the case for my hotel comment above. James says, “You don’t have to have a luxury product to provide a luxury level of service.” Luxury experiences don’t have to be costly or limited to fancy products like expensive handbags or high-end cars (or fancy hotels). Even a small business or budget hotel can deliver what feels like a luxury experience if it focuses on how it treats its customers. It’s more important to make people feel special, valued and appreciated than to give them material things. True luxury comes from the way you make someone feel, not just from the price tag.

The Five Characteristics of Luxury

According to James, “In the Luxury Mindset Study, we learned that luxury is defined with five words: high quality, long lasting, authentic, unique and indulgent. These characteristics apply whether you’re at Motel 6 or the Ritz, except maybe the word indulgent.” These words can shape the way your company or team interacts with customers, making every experience feel exceptional. By focusing on these qualities, even basic products and services can seem luxurious. It’s the way you make customers feel. James says, “Always look for ways to make your service authentic and memorable.”

The Five Luxury Levers

James talks about “champagne moments,” about elevating the ordinary and making it extraordinary. Any company can have these types of moments. It’s about elevating these moments and creating a human connection. The experience elevation model has five levers:

1. Entice: Create the experience that will captivate your customers’ interest and make them pay attention to you.
2. Invite: Communicate your offerings in a way that makes them feel exclusive and desirable. Make your customers feel special by making them feel as if they have been “invited” to do business with you. When possible, make it feel personal.
3. Excite: The experience should be exciting enough to be share-worthy. If your customers are talking about you, you’ve triggered this level. James writes in her book, “When clients think of your brand, you want them to ask, with awe and wonder, ‘What else will they do?’”
4. Delight: This lever comes from making a customer feel unique and special, offering excellent customer service and anticipating your customers’ needs.
5. Ignite: This is where you create advocates. The experience is so good that customers want to tell others about you.

How IKEA Creates a Luxury Experience

While not traditionally associated with luxury, according to James, IKEA hits a number of luxury triggers. First, they engage all five senses—even taste and smell, thanks to the brand’s delicious Swedish meatballs. The in-store experience allows customers to touch fabrics and see how easy products are to assemble. Its use of “sensory elements” (touch, taste, smell, sight) makes shopping at an IKEA store feel special and memorable.

Additionally, there is the incredible experience of the IKEA effect, in which customers feel a sense of accomplishment when they assemble furniture themselves, creating more satisfaction than simply receiving pre-assembled furniture.

And to emphasize that luxury is about experiences, not things, James points out that luxury is not about the price tag. IKEA offers the luxury experience in a way that makes customers feel special, not just through expensive items. In short, it’s all about the experience.

Final Words

Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the five characteristics of luxury or James’ luxury levers. They may seem like common sense, but common sense isn’t so common.

Dig into these ideas and strategize around how you can activate them throughout your customers’ journey. Ask yourself questions like, “What do we do to entice our customers?” “Do we make customers feel special, like they are invited guests?,” or “Are we creating the type of experience that our customers would want to tell others about?”

Questions like these will get you into a luxury mindset. Remember, the luxury experience is tied to the customer experience more than it is to fancy and expensive products.