Additionally, IKEA is committed to ensuring all products pass stringent health and safety checks. On the website it states that “IKEA puts special focus on children’s products, which must meet particularly high quality and safety requirements” (IKEA, 2009). IKEA staff undertake training at the Children’s School to gain an understanding of children’s health and safety issues. In addition to complying with local laws, IKEA tests all of its children’s furniture at an independent laboratory in Sweden.
SWOT
The results of the research was analysed using the SWOT method as follows:
Strengths: Large company with a strong link between the products, brand and UNICEF, independently tests all children’s products, has Children’s School, and has a broad range of products catering for babies up to early adolescents.
Weaknesses: Does not have a strong presence in the market, is not a specialist baby store, only stocks IKEA products, not a broad range of brands, only has one store in New South Wales.
Opportunities: Is one of the only companies that sell only their brand products. Many of our competitors sell a variety of different brand products. We could use this as an opportunity to reinforce that we truly know about the products we sell.
Threats: Our preliminary research has identified that one of our main competitors, Toys r’ us are creating the new store Babies r’ us.
Problem
Following the research, we identified the problem as low sales in the BKY department of IKEA.
OBJECTIVES
Informational
- To inform more than 75% of Greater Western Sydney parents and caregivers of children aged 0 - 12 years in the next two sales quarters about IKEA’s commitment to children and the environment.
Attitudinal
- To create the perception in more 75% of Greater Western Sydney expectant parents and caregivers of children from 0 - 12 years in the next two sales quarters that IKEA is a viable provider of children’s products.
Behavioural
- To increase the children’s department’s sales as a percentage of IKEA’s total sales at the Rhodes store from 4% to 7% in the next two sales quarters.
These objectives support out key proposition that IKEA is the natural choice for children. By implementing the objectives incrementally, we can position IKEA in the market as environmentally friendly organisation. The will alter the perception and ultimately the actions of our publics.
AUDIENCES
Our target publics will have the common demographic characteristics of being from the Greater Western Sydney area and being medium income families. Specifically, they are:
- Expectant parents
- Parents and/or guardians of children from the ages of 0 to 12 years
- Childcare workers and teachers
- Paediatricians
- Community nurses
- Children from the ages of 5 to 12 years
STRATEGIES
- Inform our target audiences of IKEA’s commitment to the environment and child safety.
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Increase affiliations with community clinics, child care centres, schools in the local area specifically those in Ryde Council, Parramatta Council and Canada Bay Council.
- Increase awareness of the children’s department with new and existing IKEA customers.
TACTICS
Strategy # 1: Inform target audiences about IKEA’s commitment to environment and child safety
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Colouring-in/ drawing competition. This tactic will involve providing children with paper and drawing implements in the IKEA crèche. Kids will be encouraged to pictures of the environment. 12 pictures will be chosen by to appear in a calendar for 2010. This tactic will inform children of our environment initiatives.
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Guerrilla marketing campaign. This tactic will involve placing IKEA children’s furniture in public, outdoor spaces. These exhibits will highlight the connection between IKEA and nature and will attract the attention of our target publics including the media. This tactic was inspired by the “please play me” initiative for the 2009 Sydney Festival in which pianos were randomly placed around the CBD. The campaign attracted significant media attention for the Sydney Festival.
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Gift bags & media releases to journalists. This tactic will involve giving gift bags containing IKEA children’s products, a pot plant and a media release to journalists. The media release will discuss the use of unsafe materials in children’s products and the commitment of IKEA to source natural and safe materials. This tactic will provide IKEA with media exposure and will highlight the strong link between child safety and IKEA.
Strategy # 2: Build affiliations with clinics, childcare centres, and before and after school care centres.
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Pre-school/play-group/childcare/mother’s group gardening competition. This tactic will involve local children group’s participating in an annual gardening competition. IKEA will send invitations to participate to such groups within the local areas surrounding the Rhodes store. A $1000 IKEA voucher will be given to the winning group and a $50 voucher will be given to other participants for their efforts. This tactic will provide participating organisations with a healthy, outdoor activity for the children. This will help to build a positive working relationship between IKEA and the local children’s groups.
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Seminar by community nurse. This tactic will involve a child specialist from Joy and Pete consulting conducting their “A bucket full of ideas” as an in-store seminar for expecting or current parents. Letters and posters with event information will be sent to mothers groups, maternity clinics, community centres, preschools and ante-natal classes. This tactic will allow members of the aforementioned organisations to learn more about caring for babies and children in a relaxed environment whilst viewing IKEA children’s furniture. This will create a positive image of IKEA and will create and strengthen affiliations with children’s groups.
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Before and after school care activity pack. This tactic involves the creation of an activity pack for children attending after school care. The books will be distributed to after school centres free of charge and will provide the children with entertaining games and puzzles. This tactic was chosen as it will foster loyalty between the local centres and IKEA.
Strategy # 3 Increase awareness of the Babies, Kids and Youth department with new and existing customers
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Stall at the Babies and Children Expo. The Expo is an important annual event for expectant and current parents. Our tactic is to create an IKEA stall at the event so that visitors could see furniture from the BKY department and receive vouchers, catalogues and other information. This tactic will provide IKEA with direct access to the target publics.
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In-store gift bags. Gift bags containing toys and catalogues will be distributed to parents as the drop their children off at the IKEA crèche. This will specifically target parents with small children and will draw attention to the fact that IKEA sells a wide range of children’s products.
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Cross promotion with Heinz Nurture Gold. In a cross promotion with Heinz, parents will receive a free toy from IKEA by taking 10 empty cans of Heinz Nurture Gold to the Rhodes store. Liaising with a baby formula brand will highlight the existence of the BKY department.
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Bounty bags. IKEA will supply a free toy, blanket and voucher to new mothers in Sydney via the Bounty Bag initiative. This will make new mothers aware of IKEA children’s products from the beginning of their child’s life and encourage brand loyalty.
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Product Placement on renovation television shows. IKEA will donate $2000 of children’s products to Domestic Blitz and Renovation Rescue. This will highlight the existence of IKEA’s children’s range to a national audience.
BUDGET
The campaign will have to fall within a strict budget. $50,000 has been allocated to the approved tactics. This figure includes the following costs:
- Vouchers
- Toys
- Printing of books, promotional
- Production of bags
- Stall at the Babies and Children Expo.
- Chairs, tea, coffee, snacks and partitions for the seminar
- Annual participation in the Bounty Bags initiative
IKEA management will provide us with an updated budget upon approval of the remaining tactics.
CALENDER
The expo is to be the first tactic executed. This is because the date it is predetermined. As the in-store gift bags coincide with this tactic, the will be implemented at the same time. In October, we will begin implementing our environmental and child safety tactics. This is because Christmas shopping commences around this time and magazines begin coordinating their Christmas issues. In November, our tactics will focus on babies. This will allow us to assess the effectiveness of these tactics during December to decide whether we will continue with such tactics throughout 2010. In December we will begin pitching our product placement and gardening competition proposal. This is because television networks and childcare centres being planning their programs for the following year.
EVALUATION
Objective # 1: To inform more than 75% of Greater Western Sydney parents and caregivers of children aged 0 - 12 years in the next two sales quarters about IKEA’s commitment to children and the environment.
It was intended that this objective would be achieved through the colouring in competition, guerrilla marketing campaign and media send-outs. However, we have not yet implemented these tactics as we are still awaiting approval by IKEA management. The rate of success of these tactics is likely to be high. This is due to our research indicating issues of child and environment safety being of great importance. Similarly, we received positive indications from IKEA stakeholders in relation to the originality of our tactics. There are a copious amount of organisations making ‘green claims’ about their products. In contrast to these, our tactics do not bombard our target audience nor overstate our commitment to the environment. Therefore, whilst reinforcing our objective they remain true to the quirkiness associated with the IKEA brand.
Objective # 2: To create the perception in more 75% of Greater Western Sydney expectant parents and caregivers of children from 0 - 12 years in the next two sales quarters that IKEA is a viable provider of children’s products.
This objective was to be achieved though our gardening competition, seminars by community nurses and activity packs to before and after school cares. IKEA management has yet to approve the implementation of these tactics. However, we believe that as they are directed to our target audience through a variety of channels our objective will be met. These tactics are simple and coincide with actions already taken by our target audiences. For example, many childcare centres make gardens as part of their curriculum. For new parents, our seminar provides one more source for information. From first-hand experience with before and after school cares, centre coordinators are constantly seeking activities to employ within their centres.
Once our tactics are implemented, qualitative and quantitative research will be undertaken to confirm the fulfilment of our stated objective. This will be demonstrated in contrasting these answers with the prior results attained.
Objective #3: To increase the children’s department’s sales as a percentage of IKEA’s total sales at the Rhodes store from 4% to 7% in the next two sales quarters.
This objective was to be achieved through the stall at the Babies and Children Expo, in-store gift bags, cross promotion, Bounty Bags and product placement on renovation television shows. We are able to determine that this objective has already been partially met through our presence at the Expo and through the distribution of in-store gift bags. To date, we have had a 70% return on the vouchers distributed within both tactics at the IKEA Rhodes store. From this, it has been projected that sales of the BKY department will increase to a minimum of 6.0% in the next quarter. It is expected that total sales will exceed our intended objective of 7% once our other tactics are approved. This is because each will align IKEA with other successful brands. Moreover, as the vouchers distributed have an expiry date of 12 months, it is likely we will see a greater return in the coming months.
