Marston echoed this empirical finding. “On average, the prices would go down, from year to year, 1 percent overall,” she said. “Some prices could go down with a huge jump. Other prices may increase slightly. But overall, year on year on year on year, we’re trying to reduce prices.”
Some mysteries persist. One is the company’s international pricing discrepancies. “They’ll sometimes reduce prices in the United States and make them go up in Canada, which makes even Canadians mad,” Baxter said. (The horror.) Marston said each country has “its own unique competition profile” that influences how the company prices its goods.
Some of these oddities may be explained by one principle: Ikea is sui generis — in a class by itself. The company navigates largely uncharted waters for traditional economic strictures. “Ikea continues to be nearly unique,” Baxter said. “I would’ve told you that they would have competitors all over the place by now, 15 years ago. I would’ve been horribly wrong. There’s only them.”
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