Consumers have a thing or two to tell us
Carole Sloan, Senior Contributing Editor -- Furniture Today, March 7, 2005
Consumer preferences and influences too often are overlooked in furnitureland. A recent study from Cotton Inc., its annual Lifestyle Monitor, offered some interesting findings, albeit not necessarily about furniture specifically.
The 4,000 shoppers aged 16 to 70 surveyed provided revealing answers to the 115 questions they were asked about shopping and fashion attitudes.
One thing the study does is look at ethnic groups, and how they see themselves as on the cutting edge of fashion. A dramatic shift is evident among Hispanics, with 21% of that group on the cutting edge in the latest Monitor, compared to 12% of those queried in 1994, when the survey began.
African-Americans queried went from 23% in 1994 to 26% last year in the cutting-edge fashion category, while Caucasians stayed the same at 8%. In fact, Caucasians reported that they were either slow to change (35%) or rarely changed (33%) in their approach to styles.
While the study did not ask questions specific to furniture purchases, attitudinal questions about home furnishings drew some interesting responses.
At 44%, the living room was the overwhelming choice as the "most comfortable" room in the house, including for 50% of men and 48% of women. But when broken out by age, the bedroom took top honors in the 16-to-24 age group, with the living room still the most comfortable for all other age brackets.
The bedroom came in second among all respondents and, surprisingly, the family room, kitchen and den/study all ranked in the low to mid single digit percentages as most comfortable.
Interestingly, "traditional" was the leading style of current home decoration at 31% overall, followed by "contemporary" at 23%, "country" at 22% and "eclectic" at 20%.
But if consumers were redecorating, traditional and contemporary tied for first choice at 28%.
