Samenvatting

IKEA stores around the world are part of the IKEA franchise, the franchisor of which is called Inter IKEA Systems B.V. All IKEA stores need to fulfill mandatory requirements set up by Inter IKEA Systems B.V., such as which services to offer customers, one of these mandatory services is the picking with delivery service. This service is allows the customers to have their IKEA products collected and delivered for them in exchange for a fee. The goal of this research was to try and establish how successful the IKEA picking with delivery service is. This was done by looking at the customer satisfaction of the service as well as how much the service contributes to IKEA stores revenue. Furthermore, the research strove to conclude how many customers IKEA can gain by offering this service. By proving the successfulness of the service, the hope was to encourage franchisees who were struggling with implementation to give it a higher priority. Additionally, this research concludes in a recommendation as to how to improve the service.
The research was conducted for the IKEA Delft store and took relevant data for this store in mind. For primary data, two questionnaires were created for the research as well as a short competitor monitoring. The secondary data included information from previously conducted surveys as well as IKEA databases which were used to give base to the conclusions made in this report. Among this data could be found that the customer base for the picking with delivery service is quite low, only about 0.5% of all customers end up using the service weekly. However, the customers who use this service are responsible for 8% of the total sales at the IKEA Delft store. In order to keep these valuable customers, IKEA is advised to look over the customer satisfaction of the service.
The conclusion of this report led into three main recommendations. Firstly, the awareness of this service is reasonable but, if this awareness is improved, the amount of customers of the service may increase. Secondly, the research showed that many people do not perceive this to be a low priced service. This goes against the goal of the IKEA Brand position which aims for the company to be seen as having low priced offers, it is thus advised for IKEA to look over possible solutions for this perception. Finally, IKEA was advised to focus more on who the customers of this service are. This should be done in order to optimize the marketing of the service for the most relevant market segment. If IKEA takes all of these recommendations to heart they could improve an already well-functioning service which in turn could lead to higher customer satisfaction and ultimately retention.