Design by IKEA: A Cultural History

Kristoffersson, a Swedish design historian, examined IKEA as a cultural and branding phenomenon rather than as a retail business.

Her central argument is that IKEA's Swedishness was constructed rather than inherited. The company operated for decades without emphasising national origin. From the 1980s it deliberately built a Swedish identity into the brand: the blue and yellow colours of the national flag, Swedish product names, the food hall selling meatballs and lingonberry, references to Swedish nature and light, and a marketing narrative connecting the products to Swedish social values including democracy, equality and simplicity. Kristoffersson traces when each element was introduced and by whom, and shows that the identity was designed by marketing departments including non-Swedish ones.

Her second argument concerns the relationship between that identity and the actual business. IKEA presents itself as democratic design, meaning good design available to everyone, and connects this to Swedish social democratic values. Kristoffersson notes the distance between this and the company's actual arrangements: manufacturing largely outside Sweden including in Poland and Asia, the foundation ownership structure in the Netherlands and Liechtenstein that placed the company beyond takeover and outside conventional taxation, and Ingvar Kamprad's own politics and his youthful involvement with a Swedish fascist movement.

She also examines how the Swedish state and Swedish institutions came to treat IKEA as a national representative, which she argues involved the country adopting a corporate brand's account of its own identity.

The book is academic cultural history and does not analyse the retail model or the economics. Readers wanting those should go to Torekull's authorised history, also in this reference, and read the two against each other.