MBA Students Connect IKEA to Campus

Students who wandered into Dobie Mall in August were launched into a world of colorful furniture vignettes, patterned carpets and Swedish shelving units. All because Texas MBA students helped bring IKEA to University of Texas territory.
 
A team of full-time MBA students took on the challenge of devising ways to better market IKEA products to univesity students as part of an MBA Plus project. The team of full-time MBAs, which included project leader Jane Hsin and  members Dennis Rylander, Tyler Milfeld, Hazel Hong, Christina Chou, Kate Li and Shena Yang, pitched an idea to bring IKEA to campus.
 
IKEA liked the Plus team’s work so much that it offered Maggie Fogarty, MBA ’08, a summer internship at the Round Rock store and asked her to implement some of the strategies the group recommended.
 
“It was a really good opportunity because I could put what I’ve learned to use in a real situation,” says Fogarty. “It was very much about who the target customer was and how they differed from the normal IKEA customer.”
 
Fogarty’s IKEA On Campus project brought a mini-IKEA store to students for eight days. She also arranged for a temporary IKEA information display at Texas State University and Texas A&M University. The project gave students with limited budgets and transportation options a greater awareness of what IKEA has to offer.
 
So what was the payoff for IKEA’s experiment? Students spent about $25,000 on IKEA products and grabbed nearly 2,000 catalogues. What’s Swedish for “job well done”? —Jennifer Lloyd