Buying a sofa can be a tension-filled task
By Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, July 19, 2004
High Point — Buying a sofa is a happy experience. Right? Well ... maybe.
Most women are full of apprehension when they start their quest for a sofa or other piece of upholstery, according to Elena Salij, who heads a research and consulting firm of the same name.
"The process for buying furniture is more tense and much less joyful than you might imagine," said Salij, who has studied consumer behavior for Proctor & Gamble, AT&T, Chase Manhattan and home furnishings majors Rowe Furniture, Ikea and Williams-Sonoma.
"What we know is that, roughly, people will buy about three cars for every sofa they buy," Salij said. "Which means that a typical woman (who makes 80% of all upholstery purchases) knows more about buying cars than sofas."
Salij says that women know the price of cars, what options they want, what's important to them and what their needs are — precisely because they buy them more often.
"So buying a car, which is notoriously nervous-making, is still not as bad as buying a sofa because, frankly, the shopper we're talking about, the woman, has less experience at it."
Women also feel very responsible for the way things look in their home.
"If a sofa is great, she feels good," she said. "If it's not, she feels bad. I've never heard a woman not apologize for her furniture. It has a lot to do with the curious socialization of women, even so-called liberated women of this day and age."
Women are carrying that extra baggage when they walk into a furniture store, Salij said, and they don't want to make a mistake. Some of the apprehension lies with design magazines, which show pristine rooms filled with fine furniture, beautifully propped and wonderfully lit.
"It's the equivalent of supermodels wearing gorgeous clothing," Salij said. "So when the average woman buys a dress, she feels inadequate. How could she not? That's what a woman carries in her head when she walks in one of these stores."
It becomes a bigger issue with upholstered furniture, especially custom purchases, because most stores will not take returns.
"Not only is she buying something quite expensive, she hasn't done it in a long, long time, and she doesn't know what to expect with price, construction and quality," said Salij. "And there's no safety net in the process.
"My own suspicion would be that women would buy a lot more custom products if stores were more accommodating in taking returns."
If she could give advice to furniture retailers, Salij would tell them to put the upholstery shopper on solid footing by showing her a variety of products, providing lots of options, and — most important — allowing her to take the product home to see if it's what she wants. Salespeople might even pay a visit to the prospect's home to take measurements, and provide help in selections.
"If someone goes to that much trouble to get you up to speed — and takes measurements and makes Polaroids and drawings — then of course you're going to buy from them," Salij said. "How could you not? They've gone to a lot of trouble and you feel some kinship with them."
The return on this effort might be larger than the profit on a single sofa, Salij added. "You have to remember that every change you make in your house starts to reverberate. You change the rug and suddenly that chair doesn't look so good. You change the table and you wish the coffee table was more similar to it."
Salespeople need to remember that buying furniture is an emotional process, she said. "It has to do with renewal. It should be associated with positive things. But there is so much unhappy emotional baggage.
"I think retailers can tap into that," Salij added. "There are many opportunities to do that in small and big ways."
