IKEA is a multinational group originating from Sweden, that designs and sells ready-to-assembly furniture for customers. The company operates in 45 countries with 365 stores, employing around 160,000 people across these stores. The Socializers is an agency that employs people that are like-minded to help aid and pioneer social change within the IKEA organisation. these individuals are focused on people and technology and how they interact within the organisation.
IKEA saw an opportunity that social media raised to build and forge a deeper relationship with its customer base as they provide a fairly similar experience in all regions. A solution to IKEAs problem was to implement a Listening Hub to aid the company in becoming a socially intelligent business. IKEA and the Socializers selected Brandwatch Visia as the technology to power its proposed hub; which allowed the stakeholders of IKEA to be able to see what customers were saying about the brand itself. The Listening Hub showed that people had very different opinions on the brand in different regions. It also showed that social media and the internet was used largely to make complaint about the brand as in the US (2014) 36.5% of complaints was made via Facebook; compared to the UK (2014) only 5% were made. As the UK use online forums to make complaints as 31% was made in 2014. IKEA Listening Hub
