Daily Mail succeeds in solving riddle as old as time: "Ikea design stores 'as mazes' to stop shoppers leaving so you end up buying more..."

Ikea - Bättre skilsmässa åt alla -Better divorce for everyone.
(FYI: That's not their nanny, that's their mother.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isjrGmFapS4


In a move that surely will get the notice of the Nobel Prize Committee in Stockholm, The Daily Mail has succeeded where so many others have previously failed, and solved a riddle as old as time: "Ikea design stores 'as mazes' to stop shoppers leaving so you end up buying more, professor says."
Thanks Professor Alan Penn, or is it "Sherlock"?


Daily Mail Online
Why shoppers find it so hard to escape from Ikea: Flatpack furniture stores are 'designed just like a maze'
By James Tozer
Last updated at 8:14 AM on 24th January 2011

If you've ever found yourself hopelessly lost in an Ikea store, you were probably not alone.

The home furnishing chain’s mazy layouts are a psychological weapon to part shoppers from their cash, an expert in store design claims.

The theory is that while following a zig-zag trail between displays of minimalist Swedish furniture, a disorientated Ikea customer feels ­compelled to pick up a few extra impulse purchases.

Read the rest of this interesting pop culture article, complete with a map dissecting the psychological layout of a typical Ikea retail store at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1349831/Ikea-design-stores-mazes-stop-shoppers-leaving-end-buying-more.html#ixzz1Byrc3awm

Now if only those of us living in this part of South Florida could get a Business School professor to engage in a case study of why the Burger King in Hallandale Beach near the Walmart and the Intercoastal bridge persists in only having one cash register on the customer counter.

Or why on Sundays and Wednesdays, when McDonald's 59 cent hamburger and 69 cent cheeseburger promotion is in effect, the location on U.S.-1 north of Hallandale Beach Blvd. persists in only having one person work at the counter with numerous people in line, but utilizes 2-3 people to take care of one car in the drive-thru window, like they're a VIP.

There's a real consumer riddle there worth solving, which on very bad days, seems straight out of the HB City Hall management handbook.

And it's just the sort of low-hanging fruit of an investigation that the Miami Herald and South Florida Sun-Sentinel can still handle now that they've gotten rid of so many reporters who actually know the area.

Perhaps they can actually help for a change and get some big brains noodling over that counter-intuitive management behavior, which only causes customers to get upset.

Those two fast-food places are easily the worst run retail operation in this small city, though to be fair, the Burger King near Hollywood City Hall is tied with them for WORST if we're going by region and not simply by city, since it's easily THE SLOWEST fast-food place in Southeast Broward County.
By a sun dial!

Cat herding at the Ikea store in Wembley, England
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCB7RqGS684




Ikea -Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEe05lCgYrY


http://www.ikea.com/
Fascinating facts and figures for 2010:
http://www.ikea.com/ms/sv_SE/about_ikea/pdf/Welcome_inside_2010_final.pdf

2011 Ikea catalog, USA: http://onlinecatalog.ikea-usa.com/2011/ikea_catalog/US/

2011 Ikea catalog, Sweden: http://onlinecatalogue.ikea.com/2011/ikea_catalogue/SE/

Ikea USA YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ikea?blend=1&ob=4