Ikea may open large stores in city centres as it seeks to adapt to changing shopping habits. Javier Quinones, UK boss of the Swedish furniture giant, said the stores would be "in between" the size of its new smaller city centre format and its big out-of-town stores. "There are many formats we can try and will try," he said. The retailer plans to add 4,000 staff to its global workforce over the next two years as part of a business revamp. In total the company is creating 11,500 new posts, but eliminating 7,500 other jobs by 2020 as it focuses on e-commerce and the new smaller city stores. As many as 350 jobs are likely to go in the UK, mainly in head-office functions. The firm has been relatively slow to move to online shopping, but he said it had to respond to a fall in car ownership and consumers' desire for shopping to be convenient.The number of visitors to Ikea's website rose 10% to 2.4 billion, higher than the 3% rise in store customers to 838 million.
