Where is the exit?

Everybody knows how an Ikea store works. You follow the arrows – the only path available. First you will go through different kinds of rooms designed with a mix of Ikea furniture and accessories, feeling tempted by how nice these look put together. Next to these rooms you will browse through the complete line of furniture offered by the store. After some time, the accessories section will start with maybe bathroom, kitchen, lighting, etc. one after the other. The formula is a real success.

But what happens when a customer who does not know the concept enters?

That’s what I observed the other day in one of the Ikea store in Hong Kong (Causeway Bay). After some time browsing through the products I turned as I heard: “How the hell do we get out of that thing!” A mother and her daughter were running around shouting and cursing. Maybe they had gotten inside just to take a quick look and now they were like imprisoned not knowing how to escape. Remember the movie “Cube”? Intrigued, and always on the look-out for consumer stories, I followed them as they were going through their struggle.

They continued running around the shop shouting (and for sure not looking at the products). Finally finding a shop assistant, they asked: “Where is the closest exit please?” Then the shop assistant had the best answer to calm down the ladies: “It is pretty far you know…” and then just let them continue their journey along the dreadful arrows. The two poor customers were fuming and just continued to follow the arrows until they finally reached the exit.

The interesting thing about this is that the shop has actually two floors. The store has a first basement floor with all the furniture and then another floor below with basically all the accessories. At the time the ladies were already looking for the exit, they were on the first floor somewhere in the middle. It would have taken only a short time to escape by turning around and heading to the entrance. But with the layout of the store maybe, and with these arrows everywhere, both the ladies and the shop assistant did not even think about this solution. Somehow they had to move forward.

In a way, it means the store is really well designed, as the clear aim of Ikea is to get customers to go through the whole store every time. Nevertheless in this instance this lead only to more frustration for our two ladies; especially when they reached the escalator to go down to the second floor. At this point there was only a glass to separate them from an escalator going up, the exit and the much looked after day light, and they had no choice but to go further down… quite sadistic in a way, no?

In the end these two may not be returning customers… at least not in for while.