A trip to Ikea could save your marriage (no, really)

The queues for the car park are enough to push many couples to breaking point. But a new book claims that a shopping trip to Ikea improves marital harmony.

The queues for the car park are enough to push many couples to breaking point. But a new book claims that a shopping trip to Ikea improves marital harmony.

The book, published later this month, attributes much of the store's success to the fact that its self-assembly furniture allows men to reclaim their hunter-gatherer roots, and so keep their relationships healthy - by demonstrating to their wives and children that they are capable of masculine tasks.

Great Ikea! A Brand for All the People also reveals that Ikea's restaurant has become the first choice for many couples dining out on Valentine's Day. One couple in Canada even held their wedding in Ikea.

An estimated 10 per cent of Europeans are now conceived on the store's beds. Elen Lewis, the book's author, said many Ikea staff believed that the brand was good for a couple's sex life because of its obsession with flatpack design.

"I spoke to a lot of people [in Sweden] about Ikea and it is actually quite common at the end of a stag night that the man's last job is to assemble a piece of Ikea furniture," said Ms Lewis, editor of Brand Strategy journal.

"Building furniture themselves enables men to regain their hunter-gathering instincts and be perceived in a more traditional light as males. Not many brands can change your life in the way that Ikea can."

A weekly trip to the retailer has become a ritual for thousands of British couples since the first branchopened 20 years ago. Even the ugly spectacle of shoppers rioting over bargains at Ikea's branch in Edmonton in north London in February did little to affect the store's popularity.

Ikea's founder is the reclusive Ingvar Kamprad, who is one of the world's richest men. The book reveals that he will sleep in his car rather than pay for an expensive hotel and that he has been known to charge employees for staying at his home.

Relate, the relationship guidance charity, said shopping was a major source of conflict for couples, although improving their home environment was a way of increasing domestic harmony.

"My experience of couples visiting Ikea is that it has caused a great deal more arguments and frustrations," said Denise Knowles, a marriage counsellor for Relate, who is not a fan of Ikea.

"In a sanitised world, about the only way people can show the practical side of themselves is through DIY. But I think that it is more about improving their environment. That is why places like Ikea work for families."

Ikea said it had not consciously conceived its flatpack furniture as an aid to improvesex lives but said that its designs aimed to improve relationships and socialising.

"We are selling solutions to needs, and that includes relationships and socialising," said Peter Jelkeby, marketing manager for Ikea UK.