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Since it was founded in 1943, IKEA has grown from a quirky, Swedish, assemble-it-yourself homeware brand to the world’s biggest furniture store, making more than $50B in 2023 alone.

You might’ve seen them in the news lately, as they recently brought back their viral holiday favorite - the turkey-sized Swedish meatball:

Unsurprisingly, IKEA are geniuses at using marketing psychology to create an addictive - if sometimes infuriating - customer experience.

Today I’m breaking down:

• IKEA’s unique place in psychological history (and how it helped them sell more furniture than anyone else)

• How limiting choice helped grow the IKEA brand

• Why IKEA says meatballs are its “best sofa sellers”

👉 But before we get started, a reminder that I’m shutting down the Choice Hacking Pro Membership intake for a while (I’m not sure how long) TOMORROW.

To learn more about the lifetime access Pro Membership (and all the live Workshops, Group Coaching, Masterminds, and courses inside), you can click here.

If you’re ready to snag your seat now, here’s the checkout.

I’m only letting 3 people in before I shut down intake, so once the seats are sold out the checkout will close.

Here are just a few ways IKEA uses psychology in its marketing and customer experience, knowingly or not:

1. IKEA’s unique place in psychological history (and how it helped them sell more furniture than anyone else)

You might’ve heard of a psychological principle known as the IKEA Effect (it’s one of the most valuable psychological effects any business can apply to its marketing and customer experience).

In the IKEA Effect study, researchers examined if people would bid more for items in an auction if they had helped co-create them.

They tested various methods of co-creation where they asked participants to assemble things like Lego sets and origami shapes following a set of instructions and - most importantly for us - assemble IKEA furniture.

After much study, they discovered that yes, people would bid more for an item they co-created than an item that had been built by someone else (as you can see from the results of the origami portion of the study, below).

Basically the IKEA Effect says that people attribute more value to products they’ve helped create - or in this case, assemble.

Why?

It’s because co-creation produces an emotional attachment to products - and that makes us value them more.

That creaky old IKEA coffee table you put together last year?

When it comes time to sell it, you’ll probably ask way too much money for it on Facebook marketplace - because your “labor led to love.”

2. How limiting choice helped grow the IKEA brand

IKEA furniture comes in a limited variety of colors and sizes (most in just white, black, and “oak”).

For the business, limiting choices allows for production efficiencies that lower costs - helpful for IKEA since they famously decide on the price of an item before they design it.

And for customers, limiting choice makes them more likely to buy rather than browse. Constraining options to black, white, and oak finishes simplifies the buying process.

But why does fewer options help power sales?

It’s down to the Choice Overload Effect, which says that while some choice can be good, too many options will overwhelm customers and become a barrier to sales.

The negative effects of too much choice can be much worse than a missed sale. Research shows that when there are too many options, customers feel anxious, will disengage, and can even become depressed.

By keeping their product options simple, IKEA makes it cheaper to produce items and easier for customers to decide which item to buy.

3. Why IKEA says meatballs are its “best sofa sellers”

At first glance, it might not seem like IKEA’s food has an effect on their furniture sales. But according to the company’s research, 30% of its shoppers come to the stores just to eat. 

Not only that, but an estimated 5.5% of its total sales are food, which means they sell about $2.75B worth of fan favorite items like Swedish meatballs and cinnamon buns.

If IKEA food was a stand-alone business, it’d be the one of the biggest food retailers on the planet.

The food at IKEA food doesn’t just have an impact on the bottom line.

It also has a psychological effect on how customers think, feel, and act in the store. Eating primes a state of happiness, and that mood can affect how much customers spend and what they buy.

As Gerd Diewald, former head of IKEA food operations told Fast Company:

What is Priming?

First demonstrated in the 1970s, priming is when our brains call on unconscious connections in response to a stimulus — also called primes.

In other words, what we’re exposed to now changes our behavior later.

Priming is passive, subtle, and people aren’t aware it’s happening. And it can be activated with almost any kind of stimulus. Images, words, smells, light, sound, tasks, touch, or temperature can all unconsciously affect our choices.

And while some of the research on priming has evolved, the concept of priming itself has some valuable lessons for those of us who create marketing and customer experiences:

The experience before the “experience” has a big effect on what, when, and how much people buy.

If you want to apply these principles like IKEA has, start by asking yourself:

• Do we use co-creation in our marketing and customer experience - and if not how could we? A simple way to increase engagement with your products (and their perceived value - aka how much someone will pay for them) is by integrating co-creation in your marketing and customer experience.

• How simple is our marketing, customer, and product experience? Ask yourself if you’re overcomplicating in the name of “options” when in fact, your customers (and your profit margin) might be happier with fewer selections.

• How does our environment - digital or physical - get customers “ready to buy?” The “experience before the experience” is much more important than most marketers and CX professionals give it credit for. If you want to learn more about how to both prime and nudge your customers to purchase, check out my course, “How to Create Persuasive Experiences,” which dives deeply into this topic.

Until next time,
Jen