Website review: Chauvinistic Furniture Names: Is Ik...
orangeguru discovered this in Bizarre/Oddities
•3 reviews since Mar 6, 2008
bizarre, ikea
•spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,5397...
People who like this website
StumbleUpon is the best way to discover great web sites, videos, photos, blogs and more - based on your interests.
Everything is submitted and rated by the community. Discover, share and review the best of the web!
Reviews of this website
orangeguru discovered 5 months ago- Emotions against Ikea are running high in Denmark, where researchers claim the wildly popular Swedish home furnishings company only names cheap doormats and wall-to-wall carpeting after Danish towns, reserving Swedish names for its more expensive furniture. The discovery has the proud Danes itching for revenge. Danish researchers claim Ikea reserves Swedish and Norwegian names for its best products, while relegating Danish names to "lesser" products like carpets and runners. Many people have tried to explain the success of the Ikea phenomenon. Unlike any other world-class corporation, the Swedish home furnishings business has managed to surround itself with an aura of lightness. The Ikea people cultivate the unconventional, be it in their advertising or in the design of their stores. They also devote more attention than most to naming their products. A curtain ring, instead of going by an ordinary order number, gets the name "Adele." A floor cushion is named "Amalia." And anyone looking for an asparagus pot in the company's lineup needs search no further than the name "Seriös." And any devoted Ikea aficionado worth his salt knows that a "Smaka," naturally, is a cheese grater. But not everyone is as thrilled by Ikea's use of onomatopoeic product names. In Web forums, like www.supertopic.de, a blogger has analyzed the system behind Ikea's naming conventions. Upholstered furniture, bookcases and multimedia consoles, for example, are named after small Swedish cities, while Norwegian towns serve as the namesakes of beds, dressers and hallway furniture. Names of Finnish origin grace the company's chairs and dining tables. As it turns out, nothing is random at Ikea -- and certainly not light.
- furdis rated 5 months ago
- According to some Danes IKEA's denigrating naming convention symbolically portrays Denmark as the doormat of neighboring Sweden, a country with a larger economy and population"
- ikkepagrasset rated 5 months ago
- Oh no! Swedish imperialism!
