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Kompass

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Personalizing a gamified shopping experience for young shoppers

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Executive Summary

All of IKEA’s features are tailored towards children and adults. “Smaland and kid meals” are children friendly, while the “shopping” is done by adults. IKEA is unappealing and unexciting towards teenagers. Making IKEA shopping an active and fun experience is essential for building loyalty in our generation. IKEA has a rich culture and history, but it is not being promoted in a way that appeals to teenagers. Teenagers need to be attracted to the shopping experience at IKEA, not for the sake of purchase, but for the memorable journey IKEA brings. IKEA must strengthens its brand by weaving its history and culture into an emotional narrative that resonates with Generation Zs.

Kompass is a gamified and personalized app that all teenagers must have. Like a personalized pocket compass that can be installed on your phone, Kompass encourages product engagement through a gamified map and reward incentives.

Kompass help shoppers maintain a personal sense of purpose while also kindling their curiosity similar to a museum tour. In addition, our app will have a Kahoot-style quiz feature where users can earn reward points if they correctly answer questions related to IKEA’s products and history; Kompass creates an immersive environment that transcends furniture to ignite customer’s full curiosity and IKEA’s full potential to market itself.

Increased emotional value from teengers towards IKEA will increase future loyalty, thus reducing advertising costs and enhance marketing strategies for IKEA. Generation Z will be more engaged and willing to shop for not only products but also the immersive customer experience at IKEA. Their developed emotional value towards products will increase loyalty towards IKEA. Through emotional engagement, customers will not only purchase products out of necessity but also out of attachment and fondness.

In a recent article, Harvard Business Review revealed that “customers who form an emotional attachment to a brand are 52% more valuable” than regular customers.

Objective

Solution

Results

Understanding the Numbers

That’s the percentage of IKEA customers that are Gen-Z. Targeting the new generation is vital to IKEA’s future success.

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77.5%

22.5%

That’s the percentage of teens willing to shop in store. IKEA is a unique retail store, so let’s make its shopping experience best for Gen Z.

That’s the percentage of teens willing to shop online. Despite the virtual shift during the pandemic, most still value in-person shopping. This is why we focus on in store shopping enhancements.

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Providing the more engaging, memorable in store shopping experience should be IKEA’s ultimate aim.

IKEA currently lacks effective engagement for Gen Z youth.

Teenagers have great potential as a key target audience for IKEA to attract.

WHAT’S IMPORTANT?

Visiting the store twice, we noticed there were rarely any teenagers at IKEA. When they did arrive, they preferred the restaurant or lounge couches over the slow browsing in shopping areas.

Passive Participation

Distractions

Superficial Engagement

Because teenagers lack purchasing power and interest in retail stores, they trail behind their parents without active engagement, wait in showrooms or zone out while parents browse. They are apathetic and indifferent to retail store shopping.

Lack of Interest

Teenagers turn to phones for entertainment. U.S. teenagers spend an average of 4.8 hours daily on social media platforms — more than half their time outside school. 85% of U.S. teens play video games, with 41% engaging daily. This bleeds into their shopping time.

Lack of Entertainment

Some teens may enjoy physical product interactions in showrooms. However, initial engagements are superficial and detached (i.e. brief glances). Creating emotional connection to products is challenging when they lack understanding of its value.

Lack of Significance

Current Youth Engagement

“I don’t really go shopping at IKEA because it’s a retail store. Other than eating their meatballs, I have nothing else to do. My parents go there to buy furniture, but what do I do? Sit on a couch?”

Kaiyu Zhu

14 year old high school student

(825)-437-1198

Our Solution

Kompass

The best shopping experience balances convenience with engagement (gamified and incentive-driven learning). This is the objective of our solution. We propose a powerful, gamified shopping app that encourages active participation in youth. Our priority is to create a memorable shopping experience for teenagers.

Gamifying and personalizing IKEA shopping.

Though our app particularly targets Gen Z youth, is could potentially be applicable towards other age groups and families. Active and gamified participation is a universal theme.

Thinking Smart

Youth love play and challenge.

They are driven by natural curiosity.

This is where the gamification of our app comes in. Reward points are given through completing various challenges and tasks. A few of our challenges are specified on the right.

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Users can use these points to win various rewards on home delivery, Swedish restaurants, discounts, and more (in accordance to IKEA’s point specifications for the IKEA Family profile).

Give back old IKEA items, participate in sell-back program, or buy one item from IKEA’s second-handed program.

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Post five selfies of “Our Swedish Traditions” board or any Swedish store symbols.

Try out IKEA Kreativ, IKEA’s house design planning page

WHAT KOMPASS ACHIEVES

Focus

Engagement

Incentive

Feasibility & Scalability

Convenience

By illustrating the locations of products on their wish list, customers walk into IKEA with a sense of purpose. The AI generated products will enhance the shopping experience with relevant and helpful product suggestions. However, customers still maintain power to add products to their map and decide their shopping purpose.

The user’s shopping experience will transform into a journey of discovery. Users learn captivating facts about IKEA products, such as its sustainability practices, historical evolution, design heritage, etc. Understanding these facts increases the value of the product. The quiz and active challenges are fun methods of active engagement that incentivizes users with reward points.

Kompass is an incredibly flexible platform. Adding extensions to the item list and advertising the latest changes are easier than ever. It smoothly integrates with IKEA's existing points system for IKEA Family members. We highly encourage IKEA to incorporate additional features such as their 3D AR product designs into the our app to enhance and create a holistic shopping experience.

The reward points earned through Kompass correspond to different rewards in accordance to the point-to-reward system for IKEA’s Family Loyalty program. However, we see a deeper purpose behind the incentives. Completing the quiz and active challenges is a way to advocate and promote IKEA’s sustainability values and Swedish culture.

Kompass’ AI algorithm not only considers objective factors like spacing, dimension, compatibility, but also subjective factors such as aesthetics that will balance well. Kompass AI automatically recommends items based on the user’s tastes. The map illustration of the product location serves to enhance shopping convenience. Planning out your day at IKEA will be facile and simple.

USING KOMPASS

Young adults play an important role in a family’s purchasing decisions. They can influence their parents, their teachers, and their friends. Kompass should be used to direct teens’ attention towards products that captivate them, encouraging them to persuade and share with others. As a thought experiment, consider what teenagers would spend their reward points on (eg. food). Kompass allows youth to find their sense of purpose at IKEA.

Understand the power of young consumers.

92% of consumers hesitate to make a purchase when there are no customer reviews or prior knowledge. Kompass provides unique context behind every product. Take it one step further by showing personalization options. Give an embellishing description on its history and where it could be found at IKEA. Knowledge and curiosity is what drives action.

Fascinate the customers about a product through knowledge.

Customers need a navigation tool to optimize their experience.

Kompass was ironically inspired by the IKEA pencil and paper shopping list–which unsurprisingly of little use at present. Give consumers a direction, and allow them to discover through exploring the AI recommendations. Our product is a compass, easy to use and incredibly versatile. Everybody comes to IKEA with a different purpose. Use Kompass to actualize their dreams and extend their reality.

UNDERSTANDING THE POTENTIAL OF KOMPASS

KOMPASS is a solution to product accessibility

Inefficient In Store Navigation

The traditional maze-like layout of IKEA stores can be overwhelming and time-consuming for younger shoppers who are accustomed to the speed and efficiency of online shopping. The unnecessarily weaving nature of IKEAs store map can deter them from fully engaging with the in-store experience. Kompass helps young shoppers maintain their intentionality while also feeding into their curiosity of what is around them.

Whats up with IKEA’s unconventional names?

While the intended purpose

of IKEA’s Swedish product names

is to enhance product memorability,

it becomes strenuous and difficult to understand. While being interviewed, Rohan revealed his honest opinion of IKEA’s Swedish names of being stuck every time he sees the Swedish product names. Kompass will reveal the clever intricacies behind every product’s Swedish name, enhancing public knowledge of the reasons why IKEA chooses to promote their culture.

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Transforming the Sell-Back Program with Kompass

Custom Furniture

IKEA’s current Sell-Back program can be expanded to include personalized options for family-loyalty program. After a customer accumulates enough points, they can use those points to customize their furniture.

Young adults enjoy creation. Activate everybody’s inner engineer by allowing them to build their own creations in an IKEA workshop, accessible through earning points on Kompass. Once a person has enough points, automatically set this as their next objective.

Have the option for refunded furniture to be used as tools of creation. Young adults will truly have the time to create something truly personal. IKEA can host workshops and use the furniture to fuel a programme that teens will enjoy.

PUBLIC EVENTS

We encourage IKEA to be more than a furniture store. Below are four proposals for public events IKEA can advertise through Kompass to engage the younger generation.

Yes! An IKEA hackathon for ambitious young innovators around the globe. Give them time to ideate and build their own unique products. Not only does IKEA receive amazing ideas, but this is 100% an event that will reach the years of youth worldwide.

IKEA Hackathon

Participating in an IKEA sleepover would be an interesting idea.. Don’t announce it; spread the news through Kompass. When a person reaches a certain point level, unlock the possibility of participating in sleepovers. Keep the parties small and manageable.

Sleepovers…

Host sessions where young adults can come in and learn the basics of crafting furniture in the workshop. This is an excellent opportunity to express IKEA’s culture and give the youth a useful skill.

Workshop Navigations

Not a public event, but an equally powerful way to interact with the new generation. Post footage of sleepovers! Advertise products and make IKEA common knowledge for the future customers of IKEA. Every post is a “public event”.

Social Media

Potential partnerships with Tik Tok would significantly enhance teenager awareness on IKEA. Kompass will collaborate with Tik Tok to launch Global TikTok Challenges that encourage teenagers to create content around home transformations and room organization. Paid TikTok influencers will promote the challenge to their followers, increasing awareness. #IKEAChallenge will become a trend on Tik Tok that will inspire many young teenagers to visit their local IKEA. Users can earn reward points for how much awareness they raise for IKEA:

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PARTNERSHIPS

with TIK TOK

YouTube’s personalized recommendation algorithm significantly enhances user engagement. Over 70% of Youtube content is recommended by its algorithm. As a result, users spend an average of approximately 48.7 minutes on YouTube daily.

Walmart launched the Super Hero AR app in collaboration with Marvel, allowing customers to unlock superhero powers by visiting stores and engaging with the app. Walmart reported a tenfold increase in customer adoption of AR experiences.

Myntra gamified their app to boost brand awareness and sales. Users play games to earn points and rewards while learning about current fashion trends. Over 650,000 users engaged with the platform. Myntra reported a 67% increase in orders compared to the same period the previous year, indicating a 2.3x increase in revenue.

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Successful Case Studies

FINANCES/BUDGET

The financial costs required to run Kompass include creation and maintenance costs. In total, Kompass will require roughly $170000.

Design UI and UX interface

It costs $1,428 per year for a bubble.io professional plan, including costs of AI extensions and GPS tracking plug-ins.

The average salary of a software engineering is $105,742 per year.

If the app took 1 year to build with 10 developers in Canada, it would cost around $830,780.

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Front-End and Back-End Development of App

Running tests, troubleshooting, updates and adjustments

Maintenance and Security

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CREATION AND OPERATIONAL COSTS

The Implementation Process

OUR ACTION PLAN

Develop the UI and UX interface for Kompass. Refining the product descriptions and quiz functions of Kompass to captivate users’ interests. This is necessary in guaranteeing a successful first impression. The front end and back end development of app will span roughly 1 year.

Kompass is introduced to the IKEA application platform. A QR code will be set up at the IKEA entrance. People begin to take notice and soon most of the customers begin using Kompass. We expect a rise in customer satisfaction levels. Purchases increase in frequency.

Kompass, will be launched publicly and officially undergo a one-year public trial period, during which case investigations will be conducted to evaluate its performance and effectiveness. Advertisements will be conducted to increase the popularity.

Every 5 months, Kompass developers will gather together for investigation reports and different study results regarding how to improve the quality of Kompass and assess the effectiveness of the app.

Maintenance will require updates from in store workers on product stock availability and the need to update product location on the online map if necessary. For instance, there is a need to update the positions of products and special events at IKEA.

Reinforcing IKEA’s Values

Kompass encourages users to not only discover about various IKEA products’ sustainability practices, but also promote and actively participate in IKEA’s sustainability commitments.

One of IKEA’s mottos is to “not [be] like other businesses [and] challenge conventions.” Kompass is a method that utilizes gamification to differentiate IKEA from other massive retail stores.

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IKEA encourages customers to be “driven by curiosity [and] enthusiasm”. Kompass is centered around leveraging Gen Z’s innate curiosity and passion to discover.

IKEA values giving customers a unique and different experience of shopping. Kompass redefines shopping as a journey of discovery and turn every visit into an adventure tailored to their needs and preferences.

Meet The Executive Team

We’d like to personally thank you for this wonderful opportunity to contribute our part to help improve the shopping experience at IKEA. Through this experience we have learned so much and will be able to apply this knowledge into future projects we take on.