Spurred by Karol Boudreaux's comment, I decided to assemble a post about the lack of IKEA-hatred. Before we get started, let's look at the magnitude of the hatred. Right now, "I hate IKEA" turns up 766 Google hits, while "I hate Wal-Mart" turns up 7000, and "I hate Walmart" brings up 4000. That's 11,000 to 766, or 14 to 1 more hatred for Wal-Mart than IKEA (from English writers; I haven't tried Spanish, German, Swedish, or any other language). So IKEA-hatred is dwarfed by Wal-Mart hatred. Why?
Since Wal-Mart hatred doesn't have a simple economic explanation, the lack of IKEA-hatred shouldn't have one either. And since cultural explanations are notoriously fickle, everyone can come to some sensible position on their own. So here's mine:
First of all, in many places worldwide where a new IKEA has been proposed, there IS opposition by locals opposed to big-boxes in general, IKEA's not so good customer service, increased traffic around the site, etc -- just like opposition to Wal-Mart. (See, for instance, Red Hook). But IKEA opposition rarely brings out the organized interests.
It seems to me the primary reason is that IKEA's footprint in the US is small -- only 24 stores! Really (see map)! But they're in California, Chicago, Seattle, Houston, Dallas, and the Northeast bringing a European simplicity, exclusivity, and style to the "coastal elites" and other cosmopolitan types -- a combination of low-cost and internationalism not available in the rural, so-called red-states. In contrast, Wal-Mart is perceived by those self-same people as bringing "hick" values -- and garbage goods -- to big-cities.
(IKEA has only 216 stores and 84,000 employees worldwide. Wal-Mart has that many stores and employees in each of several US states [FL, TX]), and overall Wal-Mart has 25 times the number of stores, and 20 times the number of employees of IKEA.
Also, coroprate culture is important: IKEA has a culture of social democracy, and its executives will kow-tow to unions (Australia, Japan, France, the UK, Austria, ...) when it needs to; Wal-Mart has a culture founded in liberal democracy and fights to retain its independence, giving into the bare minimum of outside influence on worker-employer relations. WM extends and pushes its own value system wherever it goes internationally, while IKEA almost-happily melds with the local methods of the State. For some people, the distinction is subtle: Wal-Mart has everday low prices and always low prices; IKEA has a "low price but not at any price" vision.
That is not to say IKEA is an anti-Wal-Mart. Like Wal-Mart, IKEA is notorious for doing everything it can legally to lower its tax burden. It's also interesting that IKEA purchases 19% of its goods from China and 12% from Poland. Buy IKEA, so Chinese and Poles (and in exchange, Americans) work!
Posted by Kevin on August, 31 2005 at 12:01 PM
brandon weber wrote:>Wal-Mart has a culture founded in liberal democracy
It does?!?! Coulda fooled me!
-- September 1, 2005 06:53 PM ∞
Kevin Brancato wrote:Liberal democracy is a form of representative democracy where the ability of elected representatives to exercise decision making power is subject to the rule of law and moderated by a constitution which emphasizes the protection of the rights and freedoms of individuals and minorities (also called constitutional liberalism), and which places constraints on the extent to which the will of the majority can be exercised.I used this with implicit emphasis on restraining the majority.-- September 2, 2005 12:13 PM ∞
Bob wrote:I hate Ikea, but more so because I don't particularly like Euro furniture than their policies. I find it funny that their founder lives in Switzerland to avoid taxes.
-- September 5, 2005 02:31 PM ∞
