The Image of IKEA’s Online Portals in Times of COVID-19 With Regards to its CSR and Experiential Marketing- Exemplified by IKEA Austria

Sammanfattning: As a response to COVID-19, IKEA Austria is trying to encourage its customers to rediscover their homes via its online shop. It is making an enormous effort to translate the in-store activity to the digital world, so that its customers may still experience an emotional customer journey. This is done via new online features that call for co-creation and CSR image campaigns that inform about IKEA’s COVID-19 charity projects. The information and online shopping features addressed to IKEA customers reach them through diverse platforms, among them the website as the main online communication and distribution channel (Burt, 2011, p. 192). The analysis of this transition considers the impact of COVID-19 on offline and online shopping modes and includes the reflective interviews with recurring IKEA Austria customers. It ought to describe IKEA’s journey towards online experiential marketing, how it is connected to the company’s recent CSR activities and what effect this has on IKEA’s image. Affordance theory and uses and gratification are applied to analyze and discuss the interviewees’ perception (Norman, 2013; Gao & Feng, 2016). The results of the study showed, that the interviewees’ answers clearly point at a need for further customization of the online experience by IKEA Austria, by adopting virtual shop simulation, or employee assistance features. Since the online experience requires high levels of cognitive involvement on part of the customers, being offered very targeted features can make them experience “uses”, to then derive gratification from such distant visits to the shop. They further showed, that offline retail settings continue to offer an environment in which the customers can discover the products’ affordances without risking the distortion of their senses and thus perception of false affordances. Concluding, the respondents believed, that enforced COVID-19 CSR measures and experiential marketing activities triggered their positive image perception of IKEA Austria.