Bedding Industry: One in Three of the Households Don't Buy

The article "buying gap data reveal big bedding opportunity" reported by FurnitureToday shows that the bedding has the third highest buy-shop ratio of 71%.

What does that mean? 71% of people who shop for bedding actually bought the item. This does look like a good number to most of the marketers. However, if we look at the other side of the story, there are 29% of people who just walked away. An estimated of 4.8 billion was lost last year in the bedding category.

That does represent an opportunity to the bedding industry. Before we start thinking about how the marketers can further bump the ratio up a bit, let us take a look at the main reasons that caused the "walk away without action taken":

• Many consumers are confused by the shopping experience. They see beds have very similar components but offer only slight differences
  
• They see beds that are almost the same with a large price gap
• They walk away for more choices, but at the end, they decide to delay the purchase

We should wait to see how the industry would handle this situation and whether they can make an improvement on the buy-shop ratio.