Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

CHANGING THE RETAIL LANDSCAPE 73
from its core values and culture including its people, ambiance,
programs, and philosophy. It would be impossible for Macy ’ s to
carve out a section with a subbrand and deliver the Muji spirit,
lifestyle, and products. It just could not happen.
The brand Muji has a most unusual brand story — a nonbrand
that delivers emotional and self - expressive benefi ts. Today ’ s
trends make the story even more interesting. Consumers have
seen the downside of the excesses of debt - driven materialistic
purchasing. There is almost a craving for simplicity, a move
away from prideful and self - absorbed brand benefi ts toward
more satisfying values. Desires for fewer additives in food, for
entertainment systems that that are easy to operate, for less
product confusion, for sustainable consumption, and on and on
are becoming visible. It may be that the simple and unassuming
may become more of a mainstream formula rather than a niche
strategy. If so, the Muji brand may become a role model toward
which others look.
IKEA
The founder of IKEA started selling pens, wallets, and
other products at low prices as a seventeen - year - old boy in a
village in Sweden in 1943. By 1953 he had added inexpensive,
locally made furniture and opened a store to demonstrate the
quality of his goods in the context of a price war. Three years
later an employee removed the legs of a table in order to get
it into a car. That event led to the concept of packing furniture
in easy - to - transport containers and outsourcing assembly to
customers.
Today IKEA, with over three hundred stores, is the largest
furniture retailer in the world. Like Muji, IKEA features affordable
products with materials selected with cost in mind and with
designs that are simple but of high quality. There are also sharp
differences between the two. IKEA delivers fewer emotional and
self - expressive benefi ts than Muji, and buying at IKEA is not a