Before you start asking questions, yes, my sociology class had a field trip to Ikea. Why?! Well, because Ikea in China is very different of course. The whole point of our lecture was consumerism in China and how it differs from Western countries. Ikea in China has a problem: TONS of people come to Ikea but none of them buy anything. They eat in the cafeteria, sleep on the beds, read on the couches and leave without buying anything. Ikea has almost become more of a social place than a store. For our field trip we went to go observe these behaviors and partake in a few of them ourselves. The most interesting portion of Ikea was the bedding section. People were legitimately sleeping in the beds and we saw one couple having an intimate pillow talk. Because our beds don’t have mattresses, we spent the most amount of time trying out all of the beds. There was one bed in particular that was SO SOFT. We called it the cloud bed and fit six people on it. Overall, Ikea was an interesting experience and I hope you enjoy all of the ridiculous photos of me and my classmates because that’s the main reason I wrote this post anyway.
Sounds like a trip to Ikea in Kent. I always feel like I’ve entered another world.
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