Furniture & Homeware Industry Brands Report

According to Statista, the UK spent £17 billion on furniture in 2016. That’s the equivalent of about 34 million sofas! And with the number of first-time home buyers reaching a decade high (365,000 in 2017), it’s likely that furniture and home furnishings will continue to be a significant portion of the UK economy in years to come.

Consumers are also seeking a wide variety of services, giving the industry lots of opportunity to innovate and adapt. From flat-pack furniture, to DIY tools and paints, to item-specific outlets, there is huge scope within the industry in what people are looking for.

Perhaps surprisingly given the famously woeful British weather, people are more determined than ever to enjoy the sunshine. The past few years have seen an overall upward trend of outdoor living furniture sales as people look to get outside.

And with a changing British workscape, filled with people looking to find that elusive work-life balance, more and more of us opting to work from home. This is reflected in our furniture buying habits, with a noticeable increase in home office furniture sales in recent years.

Which brands are winning a share of this varied market, and what else can we learn about the Furniture and Homeware industry from Attest’s first Furniture and Homeware Brand Index?

A market led by one frontrunner

In total, 86 different brands were named by UK consumers. This figure is relatively low, with an average of 100-200 brands named in other industries.

This is partly because the market is firmly dominated by one especially well-known brand: Ikea.

IKEA achieved 40% of the total unprompted recall: a veritable triumph. With an estimated 1 in 5 British couples having an IKEA bed; with IKEA’s 20 enormous outlets across the country—which usually involve a full day trip; and with their regular and playful TV ads, it’s likely that most people in the UK will have at least heard of the furniture giant.

Making up the rest of the Top 13: there were item-specific furniture stores (DFS, ScS, Oak Furniture Land), more general furniture stores (Harveys, Furniture Village), and shops like IKEA that sell both furniture and homeware (Habitat and Dunelm). A few department/clothes stores also made the list as they have well-known homeware sections (John Lewis, Next, Argos), and two DIY stores were also included (Homebase, B&Q).

It is significant that DFS—a store primarily selling one item—had highest recall after IKEA (11.5%). This perfectly reflects the market (DFS is the UK’s second-largest furniture retailer after IKEA) and perhaps that, for these big-ticket items, consumers are more attached to larger, reputable brands. This could also be explained by the two stores’ correspondingly large marketing budgets, with adverts appearing on billboards and televisions frequently.

That Next and John Lewis achieved the 3rd and 4th highest recall respectively is impressive from companies whose homeware departments are not their primary focus. Though both are retail stores—with John Lewis department stores selling everything and anything, and Next focussing on clothing—they are both clearly excelling in promoting their homeware sections.

John Lewis has realised the potential in this area, and has unveiled plans to raise revenues of their homeware range to $1 billion by 2020. Having invested £14 million in their flagship Oxford Street Home department, and opened Home Hubs in their Horsham, Basingstoke, Birmingham, Leeds and Chelmsford stores, they are well positioned to fight for ground in the industry.

They are using visual search technology (where customers can search for products similar in colour, shape or pattern) to create an interactive shopping event, perhaps having monitored the success that an unusual and engaging shop-floor experience has brought in IKEA.

Highly Varied NPS

The industry shows a high variance in the likeability of the brands in our top 13. Some scored highly, with John Lewis, Next and Argos all enjoying NPS above 50%. At the other end of the scale, four brands within our top 13 scored a negative NPS, showing that brands were recalled for a number of reasons, and not solely because of positive perception.

The lowest NPS in our leadership matrix is held by Oak Furniture Land with -20%. With 2% recall, they were the 6th most memorable brand amongst our 1000 respondents, but unfortunately not for the right reasons.

Another low-scoring top 13 brand was Homebase, with an NPS of -12.5%. Since its takeover by Australian group Wesfarmers, the benefits do not seem to have materialised, with the recent announcement that up to 40 stores will be closed across the UK.

The Guardian note that changes in product lines, including reducing the (furniture and homeware) options available from popular concessions Laura Ashley and Habitat, are responsible for these store closures, perhaps also explaining why consumers have soured towards the brand as well.

This mix induced an average NPS amongst the top 13 brands of 19.04%. This is slightly down on the industry-wide NPS of 26.3%. This illustrates, again, that just because a brand was memorable, did not mean that perception of this brand was positive.

Taking the industry as a whole, NPS was slightly lower for men, at 21.8%, and higher for females at 30.7%.

Those under 40 were also less satisfied, with an average NPS of 24%, while those aged 40 and over rated the furniture and homeware brands they recalled with 33.3% NPS.

NPS varies dramatically by location, with the lowest score coming from Wales at 2.7%, and the highest from the North East with 47.6%. It is clear, then, that there are many factors influencing NPS, and that feelings towards furniture and homeware retailers vary significantly across the country.

Strong Purchase Intent

John Lewis is a clear winner in this metric. Their high levels of customer service and public commitment to never being undersold presumably encouraging loyalty throughout their customer base.

They are frequently near the top of the table for the UK’s favourite retailer. In the yearly national survey of 13,000 UK shoppers, John Lewis has come in at second place for the past six years (in 2017, it lost out to M&S, and in the five years before that it was always Amazon who took the top spot). Significantly, IKEA also frequents the top ten and, in the past seven years, it has been the only furniture retailer to do so.

In Attest’s brand index, IKEA’s Purchase Intent was correspondingly high (52.24%). Their strongly established service (it is a worldwide company and celebrated its 30th UK birthday in November) combined with the low cost and high durability of its products, mean that it’s a safe bet in the eyes of many UK customers.

Surprisingly, Oak Furniture Land, who bottomed-out on the NPS table, do not come last in Purchase Intent. This spot is instead held by Homebase, with a measly purchase intent of 12.5%. This is to be expected, though, as the publicised closure of Homebase stores throughout the UK was bound to cause a level of distrust and disinterest amongst, even once-loyal, consumers.

While recall was not strongly correlated to NPS, recall does seem to be more strongly correlated to Purchase Intent, with the average Purchase Intent across the top 13 most recalled brands 37.98%. This strong number indicates that, although perception of the top 13 brands might not be overwhelmingly positive, there is still a likelihood to buy from these memorable brands.

How well-known a brand is (indicated by how easily recalled it is) is one of the most important driving factors in furniture buying, as these large-ticket items can be an investment for many – with each item intended to last a number of years. Hence why consumers are happy to buy from the names they know and can recall, and so the Purchase Intent is high amongst our top 13 brands.

Key Attributes

What do consumers associate with the most recalled furniture and homeware brands?

Looking at our wordcloud, there’s an interesting array of consumer priorities when it comes to buying furniture and homeware.

It’s fascinating, and almost paradoxical, that two opposing words were the most popular choices. While some consumers associated brands with being ‘cheap’, almost as many thought of their chosen furniture and homeware brand as ‘expensive’.

This demonstrates that whatever people’s budgets, furniture-purchasers are concerned with price. This is unsurprising considering we’re looking into a largely big-ticket industry, where purchases will be a part of your daily home life for years to come. This could also indicate the split between our two top retailers: IKEA, who produce simple, flat-packed designs that aim to be as low cost as possible, and John Lewis who are higher-end and higher-quality.

‘Advertised’ is also prominent, demonstrating the success of the marketing within this industry. John Lewis’s famous Christmas advert which has become a marketing event in its own right may be largely to do with this, as well as the frequent DFS adverts on television, nestled amongst prime time slots for all the family to see.

People are noticeably less concerned with ‘look’. Where words like ‘trendy’, ‘fashionable’, and ‘stylish’ have made their stamp on the wordclouds for the sports and luxury brand indexes, for example, here people are more concerned with ‘quality’.

We can perhaps conclude from this that for more long-term purchases, the average consumer is not concerned with items being in vogue. They are instead preoccupied with ‘quality’, and are satisfied with it meeting their own tastes, rather than the fashions of the moment. We may also surmise that ‘quality’ is a byword for ‘durability’ too.

Furniture and Homeware Brand Leaders

The overall leaders of our first Furniture & Homewares Brand Index were as follows:

You can see how this looks plotted as both Total Brand Equity (TBE) and against the matrix of ‘well known and well liked.’

Key Takeaways for the Furniture and Homeware Industry

There is huge potential: this is an industry of big-ticket items. What’s more, these big-ticket items are no longer seen as once-in-a-lifetime purchases. Home ownership is on the rise; a large proportion of the population are going to university; and the rental market is booming, which all contributes to a climate of disposability.

If a furniture and homeware company can entice a consumer to their brand, and cultivate brand loyalty, there is a strong chance that they will repeatedly bring them business.

Additionally, with the disruption of traditional office jobs, and more people choosing to work from home, there is a huge opportunity in the short term to fight for this business.

The shopping experience also appears to have an effect on consumers. Both IKEA and John Lewis have interactive technology so that you can better envisage and choose furniture. As it is often difficult to imagine how something will look and feel in your own home, a physical shop-floor experience is also recommended.

The industry is also notable in that NPS is highly variable across brands and, notably, geographical locations. Certain areas of the UK are far more satisfied with the furniture and homeware brands available to them than others. The importance of in-store shopping for furniture might explain this variance.

Purchase Intent was largely more favourable for larger and more established brands, demonstrating the expected conclusion that amongst more expensive items, shoppers prefer brands they know and trust.

The priorities of shoppers were equally varied, with both ‘cheap’ and ‘expensive’ being the most mentioned terms. Interestingly ‘advertised’ also features prominently, indicating that consumers are aware of the brands spending most in their advertising budgets, and are driven to spend with these well-trusted names.

In Conclusion

IKEA has, for many UK consumers, become synonymous with furniture. It dominated unprompted recall, and broadly, it performed well across the spectrum. With its instantly recognisable blue-and-yellow design; its reliable, and broadly appealing range; its uniquely interactive shopping experience (rarely would people take a whole day to visit one shop); the cult-like appreciation of its meatballs; and its astonishingly low prices, it’s clearly made an impression on UK consumers.

That said, it’s apparent that this industry is varied in nature with both high-quality, high-price retailers sitting next to budget offerings on numerous metrics. Clearly, there is room in this market for a wide variety of players to meet these broad consumer needs.

If you see your brand’s name included in this report, and you’d like deeper, more targeted data on which aspects of your strategy need work, get in touch to find out more about how we can help. Measuring these key metrics is crucial to maintaining a healthy brand that will keep you in the upper echelons of the industry.

And if your brand wasn’t featured, we can help you run a tailored brand equity matrix specific to your category or target consumer (e.g. just for DIY products, or just for home furnishings).

Get in touch with us to learn more.