IKEA’s GTM Strategy - How to localise without losing your soul.
IKEA’s GTM strategy is one of the clearest examples of how a brand can stay the same everywhere, yet feel native in each market. At its core is a global promise and personality; around it sits a flexible system that lets local teams adapt products, formats, and storytelling without diluting what “feels like IKEA.”
Dec 8, 2025
Strategy Uneviled
10 mins read
The foundation: democratic design and “for the many”
IKEA’s global go‑to‑market starts from a single, sharp idea: create a better everyday life for the many people, using “democratic design” – balancing form, function, quality, sustainability and low price. This promise anchors everything from product briefs and store layouts to media planning, so GTM decisions are judged less by “Is this on‑trend?” and more by “Does this make everyday life at home easier and more affordable?”
This clarity is reinforced by culture and values that celebrate simplicity, cost‑consciousness, and togetherness, giving GTM teams a shared decision‑making compass. Because the underlying culture is explicit and global, local marketers know how far they can stretch execution without breaking the brand.
One personality, many languages
IKEA deliberately cultivates a friendly, down‑to‑earth, helpful brand personality – the “everyday companion” rather than a distant design guru. Tone‑of‑voice analyses consistently describe it as functional yet welcoming, approachable, and often lightly humorous, mirroring the brand’s role as a practical problem‑solver for the home.
To protect this personality across markets, IKEA uses internal tone‑of‑voice guidelines that specify traits, writing principles, and examples, so copy in any language should sound like a real person talking, not corporate jargon. This is why a catalog line, app notification, or store sign in different countries still feels unmistakably “IKEA” even when the references and jokes change locally.
Standard skeleton, local skin
Academic work on IKEA’s communication describes a “layered replication” or “standardized skeleton + localized skin” approach. The skeleton includes non‑negotiables: core concepts (democratic design, better everyday life), product logic (flat‑pack, self‑assembly), and visual identity (blue‑yellow, typography, product‑first imagery).
The skin is where localization happens: language, visual expression, service offers, and channel tactics flex to cultural norms and expectations. For example, the same storage range might be shown in a compact apartment in one country and a larger family home in another, and DIY may be complemented with stronger assembly services in markets where “do‑it‑for‑me” is the norm.
A 6‑step playbook inspired by IKEA
This playbook translates IKEA’s approach into concrete steps any global brand can use to set GTM and tone across nations without losing personality.
Define a short global promise (what you uniquely do for people) and a small set of design or product principles that guide every launch, like IKEA’s five democratic design dimensions. Codify 3–5 personality traits (e.g., simple, human, optimistic, practical) and explain what each looks and sounds like in behavior, not just adjectives on a slide.
Make this core the filter for all GTM choices: positioning, pricing, features, formats, and messaging should all be testable against “Does this express the promise, in this personality?” If something wins short‑term performance but contradicts the core, it doesn’t ship.
Create principle‑based global playbooks for visual identity, tone of voice, in‑store or product experience, and service standards. These should give clear guardrails (what must never change) plus spaces where markets can interpret, rather than rigid templates that encourage copy‑paste creative.
Supply ready‑to‑use global assets – logos, typography, iconography, layout systems, and re‑usable narrative elements like “better everyday life” – so local teams start from a consistent base. This reduces friction and ensures that even highly localized work looks like part of the same ecosystem.
3. Decide what’s fixed vs flexible
Explicitly separate global constants from local variables, mirroring IKEA’s standardized skeleton and localized skin. For example, fix the brand promise, personality, values, and core design principles, while allowing flexibility in product mix, price bands, channel mix, storytelling, and service levels by market.
Document this in a simple matrix that every team can reference, so debates about localization are about “how” to express the core, not “whether” the core applies. This structure lets a campaign in India and one in Germany look different in execution but clearly part of one brand.
4. Make local teams translators, not re‑branders
Set up a central brand team as guardian of the core and local teams as translators into culture, language, and context. IKEA’s experience shows that the balance of power matters: central sets direction and guardrails; local proposes adaptations grounded in real consumer insight.
Require each market to create a “local play” that shows how it will express the global idea in campaigns, experiences, and support touchpoints, referencing cultural norms and key use‑cases. Reviews then focus on whether the play keeps the promise and personality intact, not on enforcing identical creative.
5. Ground decisions in real people’s homes
IKEA invests heavily in understanding how people actually live – through home visits, ethnographic research, and observation of in‑store and online behavior – and uses this to tune range, messaging, and services per market. This customer‑back view is crucial for deciding where to localize: room types, storage pain points, cooking habits, and family structures often differ more than basic demographics suggest.
Complement this with local testing for language, humor, and visual codes so the tone stays friendly and respectful, not tone‑deaf. In practice, that can mean rewriting copy to remove idioms that do not translate, changing imagery to reflect local households, or shifting emphasis between DIY pride and service convenience.
6. Measure consistency and adapt over time
Global brands often measure local performance, but fewer explicitly track “brand consistency” across markets. IKEA’s approach, as analyzed in communication case studies, emphasizes maintaining recognizability while adjusting tactics. A practical scorecard can combine global metrics (brand recognition, preference, price perception, NPS) with local KPIs (traffic, conversion, online mix, service usage).
Use periodic cross‑market reviews or “brand health clinics” to compare how people describe the brand in different countries and whether they see the same personality. When a localized execution proves both effective and true to the core, feed it back into the global system so the brand learns from the edges, just as IKEA turns local insights into global range or communication updates.
Conclusion
By holding tightly to a simple, values‑driven core and loosely to execution, IKEA shows that a brand can be instantly recognizable in Stockholm, Shanghai, and Singapore – yet feel like it truly belongs in each place. For any company scaling across borders, the lesson is clear: start with culture and promise, then design GTM and tone as a flexible system, not a static rulebook.
