Control

It is generally known that IKEA has been established since 1943 in Sweden and IKEA is a global brand in the home furnishing market with hundreds of stores across the world.

IKEA has a very specific aim: selling all kinds of furniture and accessories at a reasonable price so that most people can buy them. By supporting a feast of the eye for assortment, the key word is functionality. Consumers can find everything they wanted in IKEA.

What IKEA had done and had been successful with for all this time is control on balancing costs between manufacturers and customers. To reduce the relatively simple idea, for this aim, IKEA’s customers have to assemble the bought product. This leads to the innovation going to upstream, which helps suppliers save costs. For downstream, customers build up their furniture by themselves. It really can save more costs compared to others. This article will discuss about IKEA’s 3 forms of control namely: feed－forward control, normative control, and feedback control.

Feed－forward control

IKEA not only focus on current events, but also focuses on future events. IKEA always strives to design and develop products that require the least possible amount of resources. IKEA also integrates solutions that minimizes a product’s environmental impact throughout its life-cycle. IKEA wants to focus even more on finding ways to not only decrease the amount of raw materials required for IKEA’s products but also to find alternative materials to avoid the depletion of precious resources. These two actions could be made since IKEA has a bad reputation on the Environmental Protection problem aspect. Maintaining strong connections with their partners could enable IKEA to support the development of sustainable practices deep into an often long and complex supply chain.

Normative control

Normative control is, as is indicated by the name, the regulation of worker’s behavior and decisions through widely shared organizational values and beliefs. Values are what the culture sees as good, whereas norms are the unwritten rules of behavior and attitude. That is, norms are contextually determined guidelines for how to act and they are based upon the values of the culture. There is, however no distinct line between the two concepts. (Alvesson, 1995). IKEA collects market information from storefront and IKEA will also do other surveys in market demand of surroundings to predict the market trends of the consumer. Because of IKEA‘s predictions and right strategy, IKEA's products tend to be stylish and affordable. These two factors could satisfy different age groups. Low prices helps it to weather the downturn, even though 80% of its sales are in crisis-hit Europe. In 2010, its sales rose in Spain and Italy. The firm is doing well in Bulgaria and Romania and planning to expand further in central and Eastern Europe. Thrifty Germans are IKEA's best customers, accounting for 15% of sales. It even becomes part of German culture.

Feedback control

At IKEA, they are constantly trying to improve their service to their customers. Because customers may find a list of areas that they would like to improve, and IKEA would love to hear from it. Whether customers have had a good or bad experience, or just want to share some thoughts on how IKEA could make the shopping experience better. There is a feedback page on IKEA’s official website to collect information from its customers. After IKEA gathers all information regarding performance deficiencies, they will try to find a way to solve these problems then correct or prevent performance deficiencies and improve customer satisfaction.