Swedish furniture giant IKEA‘s latest app is testing the waters for consumers to be able to visualize and purchase products in their own homes within the same augmented reality (AR) experience, shifting the company’s business model away from pushing customers to suburban stores and towards online and downtown shopping.
“It is a completely new experience,” Barbara Martin Coppola, chief digital officer at IKEA, told Reuters in an interview. “The app is combined with the store experience, with the online experience.”
It should be noted that this experience is not IKEA’s first foray into AR or mobile applications. The company launched an AR app back in 2017 that allowed people to see how products would fit into their homes; however, purchases could not be made. IKEA’s main app allowed customers to read the company’s product catalog and make purchases, but offered no AR functionality.
However, this new app aims to allow consumers to drop IKEA products into their homes, customize textures and colors, compare similar products, and purchase the furniture that’s suited to their preferences. The app will be launched initially in France and the Netherlands, with access opening up to the company’s top eight markets (including the United States, China, and Germany) by the end of this year.
“People who go to the stores might want to access the full range of IKEA,” Martin Coppola said, “And that is when digital innovations come in handy.”
Utilizing extended reality (XR) to streamline furniture sales has been proven to be a successful move, with Macy’s seeing increased sales with their virtual reality (VR) experience within their own brick and mortar stores, and our parent organization th3rd coast Media Solutions seeing success for office furniture manufacturers Trendway and Haworth.
