IKEA Wants To ‘Spend Your Time’ During Purchasing Via Google Maps

IKEA becomes the first retailer to let customers pay using time in the new ‘Buy With Your Time’ campaign.

If you want to spend a little time with IKEA, the brand is offering customers discounts based on their Google Maps Timeline and the directions for arriving the stores which are a bit of outside the city areas. As the stores often located far from city centers, customers spend a lot of time getting there. A new initiative from IKEA allows you ‘Buy With Your Time’ – with the time you’ve spent going to their stores.

To find out how much time customers spent Memac Ogilvy and the Swedish furniture company used the Google Maps Timeline, a feature inside Google Maps that tracks and records all the routes you take every day. So consumers only had to find the last time they visited IKEA and how long it took them.

The price of an hour was based on the average wage in Dubai. Where one hour is AED 105. And they added all the prices in time to all IKEA products.

The initiative is only operating in Dubai, with one hour of travel adding up to AED 105 (about $28), based on the average Dubai salary. Working on IKEA’s Dubai prices, though, this means shoppers traveling for 49 minutes could net a free Lack coffee table, while a longer one hour and 55-minute trip would be the equivalent of a Billy bookcase. Even a five minute trip is good for a veggie hotdog.

Whether the program will roll out to other countries — it may well be the case that Dubai’s unique economy means such an offering isn’t really feasible elsewhere. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting use of the Google Maps Timeline function, and demonstrates future potential for brands looking to leverage this type of digital service to help boost brand engagement.

IKEA spokesperson commented about the campaign,

Before the birth of this campaign, we realised two things: time is precious today, and many loyal IKEA customers spend a significant chunk of it visiting our locations, which are sometimes away from the city centre,” said an IKEA spokesperson. “We think it’s only right to reward our customers’ efforts by repaying them for the time spent reaching us. It’s our way of helping the Dubai community make the most of every minute.

After Müpolash, another ad campaign from the brand an interesting use of the Google Maps Timeline function, and demonstrates future potential for brands looking to leverage this type of digital service to help boost brand engagement.