May 24, 2016 Based on what I see and what I know, the answer is NO. Let me explain why. I spent the better part of a day searching for information on furniture brand relevance, trying to find out if brands matter in the consumer’s path to purchase. Most of the information and research I found were a few years old, and that is disturbing. It seems no one outside our industry cares enough about this $100 billion category to spend the time and resources to study it. I can probably figure out why. Only a handful of manufacturers invest in brand marketing to consumers, so we’re invisible. We brand our category by a race to the bottom with a marketing mantra of 30%, 40%, 50% off everything, which gives us no credibility as it pertains to brands. I’m still working on number three. I think No. 1 and No. 2 pretty much cover it, for now. In 2012, Google Compete did a study entitled “The Role of the Digital Furniture Shopper Path to Purchase.” It contained a couple of eye-opening statistics: “65% of consumers were not sure what retailer to purchase from and were not sure what brand they would purchase.” Shame on us!

1. CONFESSIONS OF A FURNITURE MARKETING MAD
MAN
Brand Rant Part I: Do Brands Matter In The Furniture
Category?
Bill Napier
May 24, 2016
Based on what I see and what I know, the answer is NO.
Let me explain why.
I spent the better part of a day searching for information on furniture brand relevance, trying to find out if
brands matter in the consumer’s path to purchase. Most of the information and research I found were a
few years old, and that is disturbing.
It seems no one outside our industry cares enough about this $100 billion category to spend the time and
resources to study it. I can probably figure out why.
Only a handful of manufacturers invest in brand marketing to consumers, so we’re invisible.
We brand our category by a race to the bottom with a marketing mantra of 30%, 40%, 50% off everything,
which gives us no credibility as it pertains to brands.
I’m still working on number three. I think No. 1 and No. 2 pretty much cover it, for now.
In 2012, Google Compete did a study entitled “The Role of the Digital Furniture Shopper Path to
Purchase.” It contained a couple of eye-opening statistics:
“65% of consumers were not sure what retailer to purchase from and were not sure what brand they
would purchase.”
Shame on us!
Fully two-thirds of consumers had no “top of mind” brand they might search. Think about that for a
minute. When you shop for cars, appliances, clothes, shoes or anything of significance that reflects on
“you,” do you start that search totally ignorant of any potentially trusted brand or product?
I bet you don’t, because somewhere, somehow, you were exposed to a brand or experience that caused
you to search for them again to gain additional knowledge and ultimately develop trust along your path to

2. purchase. Yet our industry seems not to care about this, deeming this type of consumer purchase
behavior, that all of us perform, as irrelevant.
But it gets better … I mean worse:
“Only 18% of consumers knew what retailer to buy from but weren’t sure what brand to purchase.”
And worse still …
“9% of consumers were not sure what retailer to purchase from but WERE sure what brand they wanted
to purchase.”
At least brands had a rating, although an embarrassing one.
So 91% of consumers have no clue about what furniture brand they sought, wanted to learn about or
possibly purchase? And we wonder why we’re losing tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, thousands
of retail stores and more.
But there is some good news for you optimists, (admittedly, I’m not one of them):
“8% of consumers were both sure of what retailer and what brand they wanted to purchase from.”
OK, so you’re saying this study was done four years ago and a lot has changed. I fully agree, but not for
the good of our brands because, with technology, consumers can find anything they want in seconds.
Remember this about “the-research-is-old” argument: There are many more “connected” devices today
than four years ago. Additionally, the average consumer has four connected devices, so the odds are that
your brands are that much less relevant today than four years ago.
So what can we do about it? Stay tuned for Part II.