This blog post summaries a case study on IKEA, and how they have used big data to improve areas of their business.
Recently, IKEA, a large multi-national group of companies commenced a project with The Socializers, a company who are focused on people and technology. Although IKEA are extremely successful, and operate globally across 45 countries, they wanted to ensure that their different business units across the world could come together and make social media valuable to the firm. Over a three month trial period, social media was monitored by the Digital Development team at Brandwatch, a social media listening and analytics technology platform. There were 19 different areas investigated by Brandwatch for potential improvement, including an investigation into complaints across the US and the UK. Using analytics, IKEA were able to identify that 36.5% of US customers complained on Facebook, whereas only 5% of UK customers complained on Facebook, with the majority of UK complaints being posted on forums. Using this information, IKEA could take action and target these areas, using various business units and encouraging them to work together.
One thing that was interesting to see from this case study is that although large firms, such as IKEA, are constantly monitoring social media, they were previously unaware of how social media websites, such as Facebook, are used differently from country to country. Additionally, it was interesting to see how big data can be used by a company to gain an understanding of their customers and how companies such as Brandwatch use analytics to gather their results.
The use of big data across all businesses is increasing rapidly, as companies begin to see the advantages of using it. Every second of every day, people across the world are leaving a digital footprint, which companies are able to use to excel themselves competitively. Overall, the experiment proved to be such a success for IKEA because their employees across all departments were able to see how effectively using social media can improve customer satisfaction, which in turn will ensure that IKEA maintain their competitive edge.
References:
https://www.brandwatch.com/ikea/