IKEA is all of the above things, but more than that, for the
British, it has been the
shop that has
saved us from
decorating our homes with
chintz and nasty
net curtains, as was pointed out in the IKEA "
Chuck out your chintz"
advertising campaign.
Unfortunately, the common man chucked out everything, and replaced it with wall-to-wall beechwood and chrome, called Smorgenblaad, and Blorkvist, making half of the urban population of England live in what looks like an IKEA showroom.