IKEA is one those companies openly talking about co-creation with customers as a main driver for product innovation and creativity. Values as a constant desire for renewal  or providing solutions to problems are rooted in their history and how they’ve evolved as a brand and as a company. Those values have probably provided a perfect environment for IKEA to “dare” relying on consumer insights to drive marketing and product ideas.

As for instance in Home Tour, an initiative that is sending five American employees on a yearlong road trip to provide families with makeovers that use merchandise from local Ikea stores. Besides the  obvious Content Marketing strategy (the results are featured in a web video series chronicled by the employees and produced by Ikea), this experience will provide many conversations to understand participants needs and desires that can ignite new product developments.

PSFK talked recently with Rich D’Amico, Deputy Marketing Director at IKEA USA, about Co-creation at Swedish company. These are some of his thoughts on the matter…

“I like to call it anthropological marketing, studying people, getting close to them, going into their homes, having conversations, reading reports, information. Understanding their needs, dreams and desires. Being the brand that helps them fulfill those needs, dreams and desires. I like to call it ‘co-creation’ because I believe that a lot of what we do that drives marketing is co-created with consumers. What we do in terms of product development is co-creation with consumers”.

“Through the Home Report and some other things we have this beautiful opportunity for consumers to tell us what’s going on in their life and how we can help them. We have all that information now that we can feed back to communication, to product development, to a store, an online experience. For me, it comes back to co-creation, collaborative effort between co-workers, consumers and the brand”.

How IKEA Wins Business Through Co-creation & Collaboration

Home Tour: A Home Fixup Campaign for the Web