Cocooning in new luxury style

Affluent Americans Are “Cocooning” in a New Luxury Style that Combines Fashion and Function

For Home Furnishings Marketers…

New Research Reveals How to Grow Your Business by Targeting the Top 20%

The U.S. home furnishings market underwent a major overhaul during the recession. Today’s home furnishings customers are constructing a new home furnishings market that suits their preferred method of shopping and new styles of decorating. Unity Marketing’s latest report, Cocooning in New Luxury Style, shows the way to cater to your best target customer — the Affluent Top 20%.

Not until 2013 did the home furnishings market recover its losses from the recession of 2008-2009. The market for home furnishings left in the wake of the recession is very different than the market that went into the recession.

Results & analysis of a new affluent home study delivers information that will give you new insights into how the affluent are buying for and decorating their homes

Affluent Americans are “cocooning” in a new style that combines fashion and function to create a safe, comforting and stress-free environment. And they are turning more often to specialists to furnish their homes, than generalists that sell across a wide-range of home goods.

Marketers need insights about these new customers, their wants and needs, in order to prosper in the future.

Home Marketers’ Hope for Growth: The Affluent 20% Account for 43% of Total Sales

The home furnishings market is heavily weighted toward the affluent consumer segment. The affluent (top quintile based on income which starts at about $100k today) make up only 20% of total U.S. households, yet account for over 40% of the industry’s sales. These are the ‘heavy-lifters’ in the consumer economy.

Not only do the affluent make up a far greater share of industry sales, they also are the ones with discretion to pay a premium for new home furnishings.

This is the consumer segment that home furnishings retailers and marketers must cultivate for growth now and in the future.

The New Report Delves into Affluents’ Needs and Motivations in Home Purchases

Unity Marketing’s latest trend report, Cocooning in New Luxury Style, delves deeply into the affluent consumer segment and their home furnishings needs and desires. In July 2014 Unity Marketing surveyed n=1,200 affluent consumers to discover their recent home furnishings purchases, what they bought, how they shopped, what motivated the purchases, their spending levels, use of design professionals, their style preferences and much more.

The results of that survey provide a road map for growth to home marketers, retailers and designers by profiling the needs and desires of their best potential customers.

Plus the report includes a competitive analysis of how marketers as diverse as IKEA, West Elm, Wayfair, Restoration Hardware/RH, Design Within Reach, LG, Ekornes, Saatva, Ethan Allen, La-Z-Boy, Sleep Number, Houzz, Parachute and others have successfully tapped the greater spending potential of affluents and how they’ve done it at all different price levels.

Click here to order your copy of Cocooning in New Luxury Style today to start planning how to grow your home furnishings business in the new post-recession home furnishings market.