Answer:
It can be a smart strategy if the country has a significant amount of soft power (power not on military or economic terms, but on cultural and social terms).
Explanation:
For example, Sweden is a country that enjoys a high level of prestige around the world, because it is a very well developed country, with a very high standard of living, an economic model that many people admire (the Nordic Model), and several cultural exports like Volvo cars, or ABBA, that enjoy popularity around the world.
IKEA, in that sense, is like another Swedish cultural export, and when people go to an IKEA, they go expecting to find something "Swedish", so in this sense, the strategy can clearly pay off because of the soft power that Sweden has.
