Ikea: Buy With Your Time

When was the last time you felt appreciated as a customer? Many shops have loyalty cards but do we really feel appreciated by these still or just tricked into spending more? Don’t get me wrong I love a good loyalty card still. However, Ikea has found a new way to show their appreciation with their Buy With Your Time scheme.

Now I can see the confusion in this sentiment but everyone knows you often have to travel a bit of a distance to get to Ikea. Let’s face it, it’s a day trip in itself but not one many of us shy away from. Using Google Maps you can show how far you have travelled to get to Ikea and this will be converted into money to cover or put towards your item/s.

This video may do a better job of explaining.

The thought of Google tracking your journey maybe a little scary for some people in the GDPR world. I know it was quite a shock to my mum who doesn’t like how much technology is taking over at the best of times. This is something like with most things you have control over though. Maybe it’s time for Google to do a similar campaign to Facebook’s Privacy is Personal here to remind people this is the case. Anyways, I digress.

Verdict

I applaud you Ikea! Making one of your downfalls your main selling point can be a challenge but with this campaign, I think you’ve nailed it! What a way to really show you appreciate the time customers spend getting to you! It is something a lot of us may set aside a day to do because we all know once you are at Ikea you’re going to be there for a while.

I think the main downfall for Ikea here is how much money are they losing with these discounts? It’s quite a daring campaign to run but it may just have paid off. The main goal of the campaign is to entice more people to make the trip showing it’s worth their while. While they’re there they will most likely buy more than expected as you do. Overall, as you can tell, I think this is a great idea. It will be interesting to see if anyone else adopts a similar concept. The exact same might be harder for other shops which are often more local though.

I hope you have enjoyed my brief look into Ikea’s Buy With Your Time campaign. As always, I would love to see your comments below and I’m always up for a discussion on any of my blog topics if you want to drop me a message via LinkedIn or Instagram. What do you think of this campaign? Do you think other brands need to start looking at new ways to show their appreciation to their customers? 

Featured image courtesy of Ad Age.