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Ikea And Pan Am Case Study

Decent Essays

Introduction
From its very beginning, IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, experienced much success (Loeb). Similarly, “Pan American World Airways, or ‘Pan Am,’ was the principal international air carrier of the United States for most of its lifetime” (Banning). However, when Pan Am went bankrupt in 1991, the company became known as one of the biggest failures in the industry. To examine why IKEA and Pan Am had such different outcomes despite their similar beginnings, one must start with learning the history of each company.
History of IKEA
It all started in 1943, when Ingvar Kamprad opened his first commercial business in the name of IKEA, which derives from his initials and of Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd, the names of his family farm and the parish in which he grew up. At first, it was just a “mail-order business selling pencils, postcards, and other merchandise” (“Milestones”). When the company first introduced furniture as a complement to the general merchandise in 1948, it was an immediate success. As a result, the company “started exploring innovating solutions such as furniture design, self-assembly, and advertising” (“Milestones”).
The 1950s marked many milestones for the company. In 1951, IKEA published the first annual IKEA furniture catalogue, and in 1953, it opened its first showroom (“Milestones”). In 1958, the first IKEA store opened in Älmhult, Sweden. The IKEA brand started to take shape in the 1960s and 1970s, as new stores opened and the company

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