IKEA Selling Discounts With Time

Hey JessIKEA

As we become lazier and want everything done for us with online shopping giants like Amazon have been making a killing and the traditional store is under threat. Why get dressed, get in your car, walk through the aisle and pick out an item, take it to your car and drive it all the way home when I can click a few buttons on a smartphone or laptop and have it brought to my house?

There has been no incentive for the middle class and the wealthy to get their butts to stores these days and stores that rely on these people as their form of income are feeling the pinch. I was always wondering how they would fight back, I simply assumed many of them would close or sell out to the big online boys and be subsidiaries in this world where monopolies and oligopolies are the way to go.

Image source: - retailtouchpoints.com

Take your time...And redeem it

Well IKEA Dubai looks to have found a way to fight back with its new campaign which involves selling your time to them. Its a program like frequent flyer miles and basically shoppers travelling to IKEA stores can show associates their Google Maps timeline at checkout to be credited for the amount of time they spent travelling to IKEA stores, with the discount pegged to the average Dubai salary.

I assume IKEA feels this helps offset delivery costs and removing other 3rd party costs like insurance and its actually worth giving it back to the customer and get that sale. Customers get a discount for their "Labour" lol can you believe it? We have become so lazy that we see going to buy goods like labour, gosh what a privileged world we have become.

Time is money

We've all been told time is money since most of us sell our time for money but the money we're getting is worth a lot less and that means our time is worthless. As currencies continue to inflight and decouple from the time versus money argument we either have to get money for our time or augment time spend, provide incentives for the time used and have better compensation plans for time.

In a world where banks are offering negative interest rates, their time has no value in fact it has negative value so incentive plans like these may start to catch on in those regions.

I can easily see people being paid to take public transport to get them out of cars which saves everyone more time.
I could easily see people getting credits for time it takes to wait in line to be served to keep them in the queue and ensure that sale.
I could easily see sites giving you a share of their ad revenue to encourage you to give them more of your time
I could easily see restaurants ditching staff paying their patrons to clean their own table and cutlery for a discount or payment in a time currency

It may sound weird and far fetched now but it's only impossible until someone tries it and it starts to catch on. Stranger things have happened and I don't discount the human drive for self-interest and getting some reward for the things they do.

Sources

Have your say

What do you good people of steem think? WIll time rewards become commonplace?

So have at it my Jessies! If you don't have something to comment, comment "I am a Jessie."

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