Hide'n'Seek at IKEA

Recently, IKEA, the Swedish furniture retailer, has had to plead with patrons to stop playing adult hide and seek in the stores. A Belgian woman wanted to play hide and seek in an IKEA store before she reached her thirtieth birthday. It was all fun and games when it involved at most a few dozen people. But now the game has gotten out of hand.

A game in Amsterdam attracted over 19,000 people to a sign-up for the event. The game has taken on a life of its own as it spreads across Facebook. Games have been planned in other places in Europe and in Canada. Participants in the games have hidden in closets, in refrigerators, under shopping bags in carts, and in any other place that provides cover. A few participants have gotten trapped in their hiding places. And a few regular patrons have been distressed to find human beings concealed in their potential purchases.

The company has issued a plea on Facebook and asked the participants to take their games outside. It appears that the players will cooperate. But what in the world produced this strange happening?

One element is certainly the mixing of social norms and market norms. The IKEA stores are efforts at creating community as much as they are retail outlets. The store cafeterias are built to put strangers together at tables. The displays give one the experience of walking into another's living room, bedroom, kitchen or office. The layout leads one on a journey through the store, complete with a map of the path. And as you make your journey, you tend to walk with the same traveling companions.

Many of the items for purchase have a sort of "do it yourself" quality to them. Assembly is usually required. That assembly creates the sense of being a partner in the enterprise rather than being a customer. All of these elements are clearly intentional, and for the most part they serve IKEA's bottom line very well. Except for the hide and seek. 

The stores have skillfully blended market norms and social norms. In fact, the social norms provide excellent camouflage for the market norms. A journey through an IKEA store feels more like a family adventure than a trip to the furniture outlet. But, as Dan Ariely points out in Predictably Irrational, this blending has its risks. "If you're a company," he writes, "my advice is to remember that you can't have it both ways. you can't treat your customers like family one moment and then treat them impersonally--or, even worse, as a nuisance or competitor--a moment later when this becomes more convenient or profitable" (page 87).

It doesn't appear that IKEA customers will penalize the store for this pull back from the social norms. More to the point for our purposes, here is an illustration of the power of social norms when they are clearly communicated. IKEA perhaps did too well, as a store, in creating a socially normed experience. On the other hand, what could churches learn from the IKEA model to enhance the social norming of their own operations? 

The store provides a skilled welcome and orientation to newcomers. There are clear signs and directions. There is a simple path forward that is well marked. The tenor of the store is informal and relatively self-guided. And yet there are invitations at every moment to be a participant and a partner in the process. All mentions of money are subdued and in small print (but still available). And there is no sense of hurry.

IKEA may not want hide and seek games in its stores, but I would be glad if people wanted to spend that much time having fun in our church communities.