Manuela García Viera

This Ables Project Analysis

The work made by IKEA with the This Ables project, shows the great impact technology can have
into society, and also the way socially responsible and inclusive marketing and idea generation,
product development and efficient branding, can bring a great increase in sales and revenues.
Basically, starting on consumer behaviour and gradually moving onto market analysis until product
development, is key for developing a successful costumer centred idea or product, like IKEA has
demonstrated.
First, looking from the perspective of consumer behaviour, IKEA noticed the way their costumer
markets where conformed by different kinds of users from which 1/10 had issues with regular furniture
due to disabilities. This meant that a certain part of their consumers, Actually, a whole new market,
didn’t have their needs fulfilled. Their attitudes, perceptions, motives and believes towards regular
furniture pointed only towards its hard usage, and its twice as high price, thus, disabled consumers
ended up learning or getting used to not being able to use regular furniture, or just pay for expensive
one, if they could. As people recognized their need, the products offered for them were very limited
and expensive, so the evaluation of alternatives was characterised by the same: high process and
nor many offerings. Clearly, if disabled users bought the products or not, depended on their personal
and psychological factors primary, such as their economic situation, life cycle stage, occupation,
believes, motivation, etc. But not everyone could or would buy it.
This is where the brilliant idea of IKEA came in, following their vision of creating a better everyday life
for the many, IKEA after recognizing the consumer need, successfully went over the stages in new
product development: idea generation ( which was via crowd sourcing), idea screening (it was worth
it, a win and real), concept development ( Idea presented in meaningful costumer terms and testing
on target), marketing strategy development, business analysis (projections of success that later on
were confirmed by 37% increase in sales of products with add ons and revenue increased by 33%),
product development (Create) , test marketing on segment and last commercialization. Clearly, their
success was due to many factors, including the ones before mentioned and off course, the use of a
costumer driven marketing strategy. For the costumer driven marketing strategy, the segmentation
turned up to be not geographically limited, demographically inclusive of all ages and genders,
behaviourally it meant that people with disabilities needed it to full film a need, and psycographically
it meant that users knew and where used to low offerings and high process for special products. The
final target was anyone with disabilities searching for an accessible and high-quality product
alternative, hospitals, organizations and families, of course.
That was what made IKEA different and gave it a competitive advantage: it’s an accessible and
innovative add on to an regular furniture that makes disabled users and their families feel welcomed,
available in stores and free for downloading on 3D printers all over the world, and of course, it evokes
positive feelings from everybody towards the brand, reinforcing a positive relationship with consumers
all over the worlds, as the strategy was carried in many countries. Then the marketing strategy had
to be a niche marketing strategy for the targeted consumers, because they are not just a segment
like for example men and women, but they’re a very social and relatively small niche. After knowing
their competitive advantage and marketing strategy, Dis Ables focuses on what would be a possible
value proposition. TO disabled users, IKEA´s add ons ARE a new accessible and inclusive alternative
THAT converts regular furniture into furniture disabled people can comfortably use. The core value
of their product is not only its great quality and high technological aspects, but also the set of benefits
it gives to consumers making their life better and easier. The branding work is greatly done, as its
clearly done a positioning work and analysis using its benefits and values (innovative, functional,
affordable, beautiful, meaningful, necessary), then it selected the appropriate name DisAbles which
is a name easily associated with the positioning, related with sponsorships, it shows in its marketing
strategy disabled people actually using the products and could further on sponsor any regular event
or an event with disabled people, hospitals, organizations, etc (B2B business model is possible) and
last, it managed appropriately being a brand extension (new prod, existing brand).