Kudos to IKEA for their new “Buy With Your Time” campaign!
The Swedish retail company is causing quite the stir around the world… after it introduced a unique idea that aims to incentivize travel to their out-of-town stores.
IKEA uses time as a new type of payment method for their products… Very reminiscent of the film In Time, in which time was being used as a means of survival. “Buy With Your Time” is a new experiment aimed at easing the difficulties that many buyers have when commuting to and from Ikea stores locations.
IKEA has become the first retailer to make ‘time’ a currency! IKEA Dubai is already allowing consumers to pay for things with their time!
Customers may collect their “time currency” by showing their Google Maps timeline to IKEA’s employees at the checkout to indicate how much time they spent travelling to get to the store. The longer you had to travel, the higher the value of your “time” currency.
Every item in the store now has a tag that displays the price in both money and time.
Before launching this campaign, we knew two things: time is valuable today, and many devoted IKEA customers spend a considerable portion of their time visiting our stores, which are sometimes located outside of the city centre.
An IKEA Representative via Forbes
It was only right to come up with a concept that would compensate customers’ efforts by rewarding them for the time spent driving to the stores. This is definitely a significant step forward for IKEA, as it will make customers feel valued and hence encourage them to visit the store more frequently!
“They say time is money. And for once, that was true.” This is the saying upon which the entire campaign is based. It promotes the idea that time will be worth a lot of money and that it will be the new currency that will revolutionize the way the world works and how we conduct business.
The initiative’s results so far are outstanding – with a 32% increase in buyer turnout! IKEA received $14 million in free media in addition to creating a significant stir in the worldwide retail market. Also, the promotion is now available in Dubai, and it corresponds with the opening of a new IKEA shop, located in Jebel Ali!
This revolutionary concept has the potential to motivate additional institutions and retail establishments to allow customers to pay for items with time.
Here’s to IKEA for making history as the first retail establishment to use time as a new currency!