Almost in all the cities where I lived there is an IKEA store: KL, Brisbane, Perth, Groningen. Now there is one in my current city Bandung. IKEA was a unique experience for me. DIY furniture and Swedish food. Googling on IKEA impact the Swedish GDP I found that back in 2013, according to Statistics Sweden (SCB) and the National Accounts 2008, the manufacturing of furniture sector constitutes 0.63% of the national gross domestic product (GDP) or about 3700 Million USD which would rank 173th in the world (larger than Burundi in Africa.
IKEA is a multinational group of companies that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture (such as beds, chairs and desks), appliances and home accessories. As of April 2022, there are 466 IKEA stores operating in 63 countries. The store in Bandung that I visited today is one the 11 stores in my country.
Once you visited an IKEA store you could say that you have visited all. The architecture is standard. If you only saw photo of one corner of the store (without any description to the name of the item) it would be hard for you to guess where the store is located. It could be in any of the 63 countries.
However you would taste the difference in the cafeteria. The one that visited this morning is very different to the ones I have been abroad. To be honest the taste is on lower end of the spectrum. Even the ones in KL - which is in the neighboring country of Malaysia taste better. Not sure if the distance to Sweden matters as the ones in Australia are better.
Not sure if I was bias, some kind of inferiority complex. Or it could also be due the more zeroes that I saw on the price tag. Using my quick math, converting the euro or ringgit, I could see that the price is pretty much on par But not the taste.
IKEA are the same here, there and everywhere, but NOT its cafeteria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
http://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators
https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/case-studies/the-greening-of-industries-in-the-eu/sweden-ikea-of-sweden-ab-case-study
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_IKEA_stores
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