The Places of IKEA: Using Space as a Strategic Weapon in Managing Resources

The purpose of this paper is firstly to discuss the spatial aspects involved in handling resources like products, facilities, organizational units and business relationships, and secondly to develop an analytical framework over the interplay between places and resources in a business network context. This framework is developed on basis of IKEA’s experience in using space as a strategic weapon to affect resource costs, revenues and development. The focus is on the spatial features embedded into resources and on how IKEA exploits these features over a complex network of resources that cross the boundaries of many firms and countries. The heterogeneous and constructed nature of space and places is reflected into many, also contradictory, facets transmitted to resources. The proposed analytical framework is grounded on a distinction between micro-places (e.g. retail stores or factories), meso-places (e.g. areas within cities) and macro-places (i.e. whole regions or countries).