The objective of this school project was to audit a company and propose improvements. We chose to focus on Ikea, a company known for offering a pleasant shopping experience to its customers. We started our audit with an in-store observation phase, which was followed by several customer interviews to identify potential pain points. As a result of this and other data collected, we identified that one of the major frictions, which is not currently addressed by the Swedish company, remains the waiting time at the checkout. So we decided to do something about it.
It's really annoying to stand in line at the cash register for 30 minutes on a Sunday afternoon and scan all 24 items by yourself!
Testimonial from an Ikea customer on the Internet
To solve this problem, we suggested equipping each product in IKEA stores with an RFID tag, a technology already used in some pioneering department stores such as Mark Spencer and Décathlon. Thanks to this label, IKEA customers would no longer need to scan items at regular or self-service checkouts: they would simply have to position their shopping cart in an airlock equipped with an RFID reader. Automatically and most importantly instantly, the volume and price of all their purchases would be displayed on the screen. In addition, customers would no longer have to handle heavy furniture when they came to the checkout. To support this innovation, we have decided to completely review the touch payment interface in order to adapt it, as well as simplify its use and improve its UI.
To validate our solution, we made projections and estimated that the installation of this solution would reduce the checkout time by 80% on average for the customer. For the company, the installation of RFID tagging should increase the turnover by 4 to 8% and allow to automate the inventory, reduce theft, and free up time for the team, among others.