Mubasher: Ikea will test selling furniture through online retailers to become more available to customers, according to BBC.

The Swedish company will also start testing smaller city centre stores, online ordering, pick-up points and standalone kitchen showrooms.

The home furnishing retail will begin these moves in accordance with the changing shopping habits of customers.

Ikea has not revealed yet which websites will be part of this test, but Amazon and Alibaba are among the options, BBC added.

Shifting into online retail could be "the biggest development in how consumers meet Ikea since the concept was founded,” IKEA’s CEO Torbjörn Lööf told the Financial Times.

“Traditionally the whole Ikea value chain has been designed to deliver to stores. That is changing and it is challenging a number of ways of doing business,” Lööf added. 

“We want to learn, and know what it is for a company like Ikea to be there. We want to find out how we could keep our identity on a third-party platform,” Lööf noted. 

The firm already sells various products on its official website, but considering the online retail market is recent.

Ikea had recently announced a deal to purchase TaskRabbit, a gig-economy platform that connects users with nearby people to find immediate help with furniture or household chores.

The company also launched an app that allows users to visualise Ikea furniture into their own houses using augmented and virtual reality.