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David Perry

Top retailer doubts our 56% figure on high-end spending

This week we reflect upon a very provocative finding about the high end of the market that we shared with you earlier this year: that 56% of all dollars spent on bedding are at price points of $1,000 and up.

That’s what analysis of a broad-based consumer research study we conducted in 2005 told us. And that’s what we told you.

But in the last few weeks, we’ve gotten comments that raise questions about that figure. One of the nation’s top bedding retailers called us and challenged our 56% figure. He was adding up his estimates on high-end bedding sales, based on wholesale shipment figures, and he couldn’t get anywhere close to our number.
My response to him: “We approached this issue from a different perspective. We got our figures from a consumer research study.”

His reply: “The consumers may not be telling you what they are really doing.”

In other words, what they say they are spending is not really what they are spending. Maybe they don’t remember exactly what they spent.

I revisited the issue with our research staff to learn more about the consumer study we conducted. I learned that our 56% figure, which came from a 2005 consumer study, is consistent with a consumer study we conducted a year earlier, which found that 54% of bedding dollars were spent at price points of $1,000 and up.

So the consumers are consistent in what they are telling us. But do they remember what they spent on bedding? Our thought is that they do, since it is a big-ticket purchase.

Our researchers noted that consumers may or may not be accounting for sales taxes they’ve paid in telling us how much they spent on bedding. And we don’t know if consumers are telling us about their total sales ticket — say a sleep set plus pillows — or just the cost of the sleep set. It’s possible the sales tickets they recall include add-on sales.

We will be conducting another major consumer research study later this year, and bedding once again will be one of the categories included. We are eager to see what that study finds.

We also should note that we have gotten some support for our 56% figure from a high-end producer, who says that figure is in the ballpark. And when I recently asked the sales manager for a well-known brand what he thought of our 56% figure, he said it was on target.

I think my retail friend has done me — and all of us — a big favor by suggesting we approach the high-end market from the wholesale shipment side of the equation and see where that takes us. So that will be one of my homework assignments in the months to come.

I’ll let you know what I find out. And I welcome your insights as I fearlessly plunge into the exhilarating but occasionally murky waters of market research.

*For our latest Bedding Today research findings, see our online store at http://www.reedbusinessstore.com/bedding.html