SEOUL, Sept. 15 (Korea Bizwire) – Research shows that Korean teenagers spend an average of an hour and half with their parents, while they wish they could spend more time with each other. Even the hour and half was often spent watching TV together. IKEA, a multinational furniture company from Sweden, conducted an online survey [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean retailers and food manufacturers are expanding their ready-to-eat meal products to cater to the country’s rapidly growing single households who opt to eat in, partly to save time and money, market watchers said Wednesday. Retailers and food makers, in turn, are swiftly moving to increase their market [...]
SEOUL, June 22 (Korea Bizwire) — Prices of couches and wardrobes sold by IKEA Korea, the local unit of Swedish furniture giant IKEA, are 15-20 percent higher than those in other countries, a poll showed Monday. The survey by local consumer advocacy group Consumer Research showed that the price of 126 products sold in the [...]
SEOUL, March 27 (Korea Bizwire) – Before the opening of the first IKEA store in Korea last year, Korean furniture companies were worried about the threat posed by the Swedish behemoth. Many industry observers said the impact of IKEA in Korea would be felt across the industry. Without a doubt, IKEA has been big hit in [...]
SEOUL, March 20 (Korea Bizwire) – Prices at the recently opened IKEA store in Gwangmyeong, on the outskirts of Seoul, are among the most expensive in the OECD. The only country with higher average prices than Korea is IKEA’s home base of Sweden. The global furniture giant appears to have chosen a high-price policy in Korea, [...]
SEOUL, March 19 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean retailers and furniture makers are turning to the homeware business, a nascent industry awakened by the local opening of Swedish furniture giant IKEA that promises big growth ahead as South Koreans begin to renovate and decorate their aging homes. Over the past year, a handful of homeware stores [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – A not-so-funny thing has happened recently, in that the only IKEA store in Korea could not provide enough pencils for its customers. IKEA’s self-service checkout system requires the use of a pencil for customers to write down product numbers or the location of display stands. On February 9, a [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 8 (Korea Bizwire) – More than half of home-furnishing retailers near IKEA’s first shop in South Korea have seen their sales sink for the past two months, hit by the Swedish industry giant’s entry into the local market, a poll showed Sunday. According to the survey conducted by the Korea Federation of SMEs on [...]
GWANGMYEONG, Korea, Jan. 22 (Korea Bizwire) – IKEA Korea was embroiled in controversies over its perceived high pricing policies and its map favoring Japan even before opening its first shop in Korea. However, one month after opening it’s first store in Korea, the business is a resounding success. On January 21, IKEA Korea welcomed its 1 [...]
“IKEA sells not only furniture but also other household products, but it is categorized as a specialty shop for furniture under the current law. Under these circumstances, it is not regulated with regards to operation hour restrictions or forced closures like other big box retailers, which causes controversy in the aspect of fairness.” “Due to [...]