Social Media Monitoring: “IKEA USA”

IKEA is an international home store that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture, appliances, and home accessories.  The company is known for its modern architectural designs and its focus on cost control, operational details and continuous product development.  As a consumer I find IKEA to be socially and environmentally responsible and they offer good products at a reasonable price.  IKEA attracts customers by providing design quality products and smart solutions to help make life at home better.

I have been monitoring the social media activities of IKEA USA for the past two weeks.  Many of the results were expected however some findings did prove to be surprising.  The time period considered for my study was January 29^th 2013 to February 26^th 2013. 

Presence Across Various Social Media Platforms

The company has presence across all the popular and relevant social media platforms for their target audience.  The Facebook page shows 1.7 million likes and has event information and IKEA fan chatter.  IKEA USA uses the Twitter handle @DesignByIKEA to show product information and to participate in hash tag searches such as #DIY and #HowToTuesday.  The IKEA USA YouTube site has featured playlists and links to other websites such as the IKEA “Plan Your Kitchen” interactive feature. Pinterest allows IKEA fans to interact with different boards and pins of the various “life improvement” product designs.   

Target Audience

This Quantcast demographics chart shows that the target audience of IKEA consists primarily of female shoppers in the 25-44 years of age bracket.

The landing page of “IKEA USA” Official Website

The IKEA USA website’s landing page displays the current promotion or offer run by the company.  It contains an image gallery as the main feature where the user can navigate through various links to catalogs and online fliers. 

Social Mention Analysis

The information I gathered from SocialMention for the most part did not show clear trends.  During the observation time period there was a decrease and then an increase for strength of discussion and reach percentages.  The passion of discussion percentage decreased.  The sentiment ratios showed an increase and then a decrease.  Most of the mentions are neutral and there isn’t a noticeable amount of negative conversation.  Another important observation is the variability of the average per mention; this shows that IKEA conversation on social media occurred sporadically during the observed timeframe.  

Fans and Followers

The number of fans on Facebook has increased during the weeks of observation.  There is also a significant increase in the number of people talking about IKEA USA.  A similar trend of increased conversation was observed on Twitter using TweetStats; there is a significant increase in daily tweets during the month of February.

Blog Interest and Trends

I used IceRocket and Google Blogsearch to analyze blog information and interest levels, and there are reasons for the increase in IKEA USA social media conversation during the weeks of observation.  On February 25, 2013 news sources reported that IKEA recalled Swedish meatballs from stores across most of Europe after one batch was found to contain traces of horsemeat.  This inevitably led an uprising on Facebook and Twitter, as many people used the Internet forums to express their concerns about tainted products.

The Google Trends interest over time graph shows that peak search volume for IKEA occurs on Sundays (and weekends).  The IceRocket trend tool shows that search term “IKEA” appeared in blog posts at a consistent rate throughout the month of February with the exception of two dates in the latter part of the month.

Customer Interaction

When monitoring IKEA USA Facebook and Twitter accounts, I found some interesting strategies that are used to engage customers.

IKEA’s response to horse meat concerns:

Same-day Responses to Customer Complaints:

A Customer Relays Her Concerns About Israeli Stores:

Interactive Customer Assistance:

Posts Regarding IKEA’s Equitable Corporate Policies:

Special Customer Events Posted on Facebook and Linked to Twitter:

Community Initiatives:

IKEA has interacted with their customers in a variety of ways.  Through social media the company has responded to various concerns, displayed their fair practices and policies, and advertised special events and promotions.  It is also interesting to note how individual local IKEA stores are able to link their social media accounts with the main division; this provides customers who are visiting the IKEA USA pages with opportunities for a more personalized experience.

Conclusion and Recommendations

IKEA has been successful in using the Facebook and Twitter pages to establish a community that is a place for fans to have an engaging and fun experience.  The company is indeed committed to product development and its presence on various social media platforms supports their interests in customer concerns.  I did however find certain complaints from customers on Facebook that did not receive feedback.  It would help IKEA USA to be more customer service-oriented with their social media interactions.  This shift would have a two-pronged effect: customer complaints will be dealt with more effectively and IKEA will obtain detailed feedback about their products and services.

I will continue to monitor IKEA USA’s fans and followers and also its customer interaction.  The analysis will include metric data observations and their relevance to blog postings and Facebook and Twitter activity.  This will allow me to see how numerical trends in postings/activity are affected by conversation tone and topic.