Attracting buyers again

Fighting words in the furniture trade: Ikea lowers prices

(Bild: APA/EPA/Axel Heimken)

Domestic furniture suppliers have been struggling for months with the reluctance of Austrians to buy, who would much rather travel than buy new armchairs or beds. Price reductions are needed to lure them back into the stores.

After Ikea has already cut prices on over 50 percent of its entire range in Austria since September 2023, the Swedish furniture retailer is now continuing its reduction program. "Our goal is to reduce prices as close as possible to pre-pandemic levels by August 2025. We want to set a good example. This is not a short-term advertising campaign or sales promotion to boost our sales, but a real paradigm shift in our pricing policy," explains Ikea CEO Alpaslan Deliloglu. The aim is to take a further step towards affordability.

The competition is also active. Kika-Leiner, for example, is launching the low-cost brand OHO! in April and wants to increase its own brand share from 20 to 30 percent. This is because there is more to be earned from these products with fantasy names. Möbelix has long been attracting attention with low prices. "We are proud that we have always managed to be the price leader on the Austrian furniture market," explains Managing Director Christoph Geiselmayr.

6,300 items have already been reduced at Ikea, and this figure is set to rise to around 8,000 by August 2025. The average price reduction is currently 15 percent. Live plants are ten percent cheaper. For example, customers are now paying 20 percent less for the popular Billy shelves and 14 percent less for Kallax.

If you want to know how much you can save, you only need to go to the furniture supplier's homepage, where the old and new costs are listed. For cost and environmental reasons, there has not been a catalog for some time.

Ikea wants to pass on savings
"The most important factor in the counter-financing of the new pricing policy is the deliberate renunciation of our own profit optimization," Ikea states unctuously. All savings are to be passed on to customers in order to support them. As Ikea only offers its own brands, for which it is free to set its own prices, this is easier than for brand manufacturers with a clear pricing policy.