(The article was originally curated in Aug 2018 when IKEA opened its first outlet in Hyderabad.)
My IKEA- Hyderabad experience
Now that you have read about the grand opening of the IKEA store in Hyderabad and the traffic woes created due to the massive turnout of the public, here is the write up of my experience of visiting the store.
The very first thing at the store that took me aback was the serpentine shaped queues specifically designed to organize the crowd and navigate them in an orderly fashion. The lines can be likened to those typically seen in any notable temples in south India. Having said this, you can imagine the amount of effort it takes to find a suitable place to park one’s vehicle in such a scenario. A couple of parking areas were made available 3-4 Km away from the store, and shuttles were plying between parking areas and the store.
Once you enter the store, a store map (hard copy) and measuring tape are made available. A store map gives you an excellent overview of the store and its different departments and their navigation details. The departments are numbered from 1 to 27. There is also some space overleaf to scribble on your shopping list.
Customers are routed from departments 1 to 27 seamlessly through signboards put up at several places along the way. Every department has tens of IKEA staff available to guide the customers. Every product in the store is marked either with a blue or yellow tag, besides the basic product description. ‘Blue’ means you can directly pick up the product and drop it in your cart. Yellow means you have to contact staff for further processing. There are kiosks made available to look at customizable products. There are buying guides (paper-based) available for every customizable product. These guides will help you choose from the host of options available to customize the product.
Some products for display are made by select social entrepreneurs who are primarily from humble economic backgrounds. It seems IKEA does this through a program called the IKEA Social Entrepreneurship initiative.
Overall, it was a fantastic experience being there. I feel the store’s focus is primarily to educate the customer on choosing the furniture that best suits the requirement, thereby driving sales. Besides this, their competence and expertise in this industry were evident by displaying furniture with excellent style, quality, and comfort. Also, they have quite a few offerings in terms of furniture maintenance. HITEC city, where the IKEA store is located, has quite a few home furnishing stores like Home Town etc. All these stores are well established here and maintain good customer relations. Now that IKEA has started its operations, it is interesting to see how intense the competition would be in this space and how things unfold in the days to come.
IKEA Shopping Portal: https://www.ikea.com/in/en/