Gap costs key categories billions
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, September 3, 2001
HIGH POINT — Closing the buying gap in seven key product categories would add almost $14 billion to the industry's total retail sales.
The buying gap last year cost the industry $3 billion in lost retail sales of stationary upholstery, the greatest loss in a single product category. Lost retail sales in master bedroom were next at $2.4 billion, followed by motion upholstery at $2.2 billion, and lost mattress and boxspring sales at $1.9 billion.
Three other categories — dining room, sofa-sleepers and reclining chairs — each lost more than $1 billion in "buying gap" dollars last year.
Those numbers vividly point out the effect of the buying gap, the percentage of consumers who shop for furniture in a given year but don't buy in that year.
To calculate the dollar amounts, Furniture/Today market researchers multiplied the number of households who shopped for a category in 2000 but did not buy, times the median price consumers paid for that product that year. The result indicated lost sales volume last year of $21.3 billion, with seven categories each losing more than $1 billion. Those products are generally big-ticket furniture purchases that generate more dollars per sale than other products.
