PART 3
Market Leadership and a Balanced Market Portfolio

In this section, I will discuss some examples from the Ikea global expansion over the past 10 years, focusing on a few important markets. This will illustrate some of the strategic questions and challenges global companies are facing. Then I will draw some conclusions regarding challenges and opportunities the retail sector (and probably other sectors too) needs to consider in order to prosper in a global environment.

Planning for the Future

The 25-year expansion period from 1973 to 1998 had been something of a roller coaster with many ups and downs. But by 1998, sales had grown from $5.7 million (€40 million) to $9.1 billion (€6.3 billion) and stores from 7 to 120. Ikea was ready for the next phase.