Furniture & Homewares Industry Report 2019

Furniture is going the same way as fashion; fast and frivolous. Whereas you might have once commissioned a dedicated craftsman to create your furniture, now you can pick up quality pieces of furniture and homewares in the same shops you go to to buy your socks and t-shirts.

Fast furniture isn’t a particularly new phenomenon, IKEA has been flying the flag for low price, short lifespan furniture for close to a century now. And lots of other retailers have kept pace, driving down their price to appeal to first-time home owners, renters and students who want to furnish their homes relatively cheaply.

What is relatively new, though, is the diversification of traditional fashion brands into this sphere. According to Fashion Network, “Customers are now approaching the homeware category in the same way they buy their clothes: trend-oriented, impulsive and seasonal”.

Traditional providers such as DFS, John Lewis & Partners and Oak Furniture Land find themselves face to face with brands like Zara, H&M and Oliver Bonas, who offer furniture and homewares at a substantially more ‘high street’ price. This appeals to consumers who don’t want to sink hundreds of pounds into furniture that will last longer than the fast furniture alternative for fear of their purchases going out of fashion.

As traditional and new-wave retailers battle it out for a slice of the industry, which is expected to grow to £12.9bn in the UK by 2020, are fast furniture brands eating traditional retailers’ lunch, or do consumers still value quality and craftsmanship over convenience and value?

While the furniture industry undergoes these shifts, we dig into the top 10 brands recalled across the furniture and homeware industry, paying particular attention to the qualities consumers associate with these popular brands. Read on to find out who is leading the pack, and who is falling behind, in 2019.

Click here for a note on the methodology used to compile this Brand Index Report

Sizeable shifts in recall

Recall refers to Unprompted Brand Recall, or the first brand that comes to mind within a named industry.

This quarter, IKEA – consistently the most recalled brand in our Furniture & Homewares Brand Indexes – manage to increase the number of consumers recalling them first by a sizeable 5.6%, to 34.9%. This shift is instrumental in driving up their overall Total Brand Equity score to 3,030 (from 2,670 in Q4 2018), putting them ahead of their next closest competitor – John Lewis & Partners – by 2,460.

John Lewis & Partners have risen from a Total Brand Equity score of 140 to 570, as they more than double their Unprompted Brand Recall score, from 2.4% to 5.1%.

Unprompted Brand Recall is an important figure to secure in order to break into the top echelons of the furniture and homewares industry, with the two brands who dropped out of the top 10 this quarter – Homebase and B&Q – scoring well in Q4 with 1.4% and 1.8% respectively.

This quarter the baseline for entering the top 10 rises higher, with no top 10 brand scoring an Unprompted Recall of less than 1.9% – a score which goes to newcomer Wayfair. The other newcomer to the top 10, SCS, enters with a respectable 2.3%.

Slipping NPS for top brands

Net Promoter Score (NPS) refers to how likely a respondent is to recommend the brand they recalled to a friend or colleague. Amongst the top 10 brands, average NPS rises overall from 19.7 to 23.7. But this rise does not reflect the fact that Q4’s top 5 brands all drop in NPS over the succeeding three months.

The rise in average is largely explained by John Lewis & Partners’ significant jump from an NPS of 16.7 in Q4 to 54.9 at the start of 2019.

The brands who came 9th and 10th overall in Q4, Oak Furniture Land and Harveys, both improve their NPS in Q1, securing a rise to 8th and 9th places respectively. Harveys, who received the lowest NPS on the board in Q4 (-15.8%) now hold a respectable NPS of 25.0. Oak Furniture Land have also made their own small improvement from -14.3 to -5.4.

While the brands at the lower end of the leaderboard are more likely to be recommended this quarter than they were last, the five brands at the top in Q4 all see their NPS drop in Q1. IKEA’s NPS drops from 43.7 to 36.7, Next Home’s from 44.6 to 32.4, Argos’ from 51.4 to 36.8 and the trend continues for the brands that placed 4th and 5th in Q4.

The two newcomers to the leaderboard have very different fates. While SCS enters with considerable recall (2.3%), they only secure an NPS of -4.3. On the other hand, Wayfair enters with second highest NPS on the board after John Lewis & Partners, 52.6.

A different story for Purchase Intent

Purchase Intent refers to the percentage of respondents who were ‘very likely’ to recommend the brand they previously named.

In direct opposition to the dropping NPS for Q4’s top five brands, each of those brands see a rise in Purchase Intent. In fact, every single brand that remains in the top 10 from Q4 into Q1 has a rise in Purchase Intent. All this contributes to a rising leaderboard average, up from 39.1% to 46.2%.

The biggest increase is for Argos, from 43.2% in Q4 to 63.2% this time around. This puts Argos in top spot for this metric, stealing the crown from Homebase who’ve since dropped out of the leaderboard.

Despite consumers being less likely to recommend Q4s top five brands to friends or colleagues, those consumers are more likely to purchase from those brands this quarter.

Key attributes

In 2019 we’re asking respondents to rank the brand they named in our ‘Unprompted Recall’ question for a variety of qualities in order to establish which brands are best known for their service, product quality, and value for money, as well as five other industry-specific factors.

Here’s how each of the top 10 brands ranked, for the eight key attributes addressed:

1. QualityDespite the rise of fast fashion, each of the brands within the top 10 scored well, with the lowest weighted ranking going to Argos – 76.4%.

John Lewis & Partners, at the other end of the scale, score highest on quality, securing 93.6%.  

2. Price

In an industry that’s dropping prices and hosting sales near-constantly – Boxing Day, Spring, Summer and Black Friday all serve as good excuses for sales on furniture – price is a key point of differentiation between brands.

Arguably the founder of fast furniture – they even admit themselves “Low prices are the cornerstone of the IKEA vision, business idea and concept” – IKEA takes the crown as the best priced furniture brand of the top 10, with a weighted ranking of 83.0%. The Swedish brand has struck the right balance between price and quality, as they also scored a respectable 82.3% in the quality metric.

The brand considered to have the least value for money is DFS, who, despite promoting near-constant sales, receive a weighted ranking for price of just 71.0%. This is perhaps unsurprising, when IKEA can and do offer products for less than half the price of other furniture providers.

3. Service

Buying a new sofa, bed, or wardrobe is something consumers do relatively infrequently. It’s a big commitment and a big decision – you’ll sit on or use each piece of furniture on a daily basis for the foreseeable future. As such, Brits spend three times longer choosing a new sofa than deciding on a new house to put it in.

Service is key, then, to supporting consumers through that initial buying period and throughout the upkeep of the items.

The brand with the best service in the market is John Lewis & Partners, with a weighted ranking of 93.6%.

To match their poor prices, DFS also takes the last place for the service category. Questionable sales tactics might have had some impact on these rankings, as representatives at the furniture retailer were found to be adding optional extras to the final bill without consulting the customer.

4. Trend-setting

With more and more fashion brands opening homeware lines, parlaying their reputation in the fashion industry to their  home department is important.

The most trend-setting of the top 10 brands is, unsurprisingly, IKEA. With their low prices they encourage a lifestyle where furniture and homewares are bought and replaced often, making the industry newly seasonal.

Argos, on the other hand, is deemed to be the least trendy brand in the market.

5. Trust

Adding another title to their name, John Lewis & Partners was also crowned as the most trustworthy brand from the top 10, with a weighted ranking of 94.1%.

The least trustworthy brand is DFS with 73.8%.

6. Reliability

The most reliable brand – an attribute that could refer to the longevity of the furniture, the expertise of representatives, or the dependability of in-store stock – is John Lewis & Partners, who received a score of 92.2%.

The least reliable brand in the top 10 is DFS with 73.8%, making a total of four attributes where this brand received the lowest score of any of the brands in the top 10.

7. Memorable branding

A weighted ranking of 88.2% makes John Lewis & Partners the most memorable brand on the leaderboard. With this brand’s multi-million pound Christmas advertising campaign in recent memory, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the brand does so well in this metric. This gives John Lewis & Partners a total of five top places across the eight attributes measured; they also didn’t come last in any metric.

Dunelm, however, bottom out with a weighted ranking for their branding of just 68.1%.

8. Convenience

Giving the retailer their only win of the eight attributes, Argos takes the crown as the most convenient brand with a score of 88.8%.

Oak Furniture Land receive their only bottom place score in this metric, with 72.3%.

Furniture & Homewares Brand Index leaders

The overall leaders of the Q1 Furniture & Homewares Brand Index were as follows (ranked by Total Brand Equity).

Total Brand Equity (TBE) is a measure of how well thought of each brand is in relation to how well recalled it is, and Brand Strength refers to how well a brand is thought of in the market:

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

• IKEA manage to increase their lead on their next closest competitor. With a 5.6% increase in Unprompted Brand Recall and a 2.7% rise in Purchase Intent, the flat-pack king’s Total Brand Equity score is now more than 5 times that of their next closest competitors – John Lewis & Partners and Next Home with 570 compared to IKEA’s 3,030.
• The top five brands in Q4 of 2018 all lost NPS over the succeeding quarter, however the leaderboard-wide average increased because the brands in the lower half of the leaderboard grew their NPS over the same period.
• Conversely, the top five brands from Q4 all see rises in Purchase Intent in Q1. While consumers are less likely to recommend these brands, they’re actually more likely than previously to shop with the brands in question.
• Newcomers to the leaderboard, SCS and Wayfair, enter in strong positions with at least 1.9% of the recall each. These brands push two DIY-specific brands out of the top table: Homebase (6th position in Q4) and B&Q (8th).
• John Lewis rises from 8th to joint 2nd place overall, thanks to large jumps in all three metrics – Total Brand Equity rises from 140 to 570. They’re also the brand with the highest product quality, level of service, trust, reliability and most memorable branding.

Conclusion

As the furniture and homewares industry moves further and further towards low priced, semi-disposable, and seasonal products, we see IKEA increase their lead in the market. As a brand that exemplifies this new-wave of furniture and homeware, this paves the way for other affordable brands to move into this industry. While Next Home is the only traditionally fashion-based brand to currently sit in the top 10 in Q1, it’ll be interesting to see whether other fashion brands break into the top of the market as 2019 progresses.

With increasing competition, furniture and homeware brands will need to keep a close eye on ensuring they score highly for memorability, NPS and Purchase Intent, or else risk leaving the leaderboard. Even 6th place overall isn’t a high enough score to ensure you still find yourself in the top 10 next quarter, as was proven by Homebase this time around.

As such, checking in with consumer perception about your brand needs to take place on, at least, a quarterly basis. Tracking shifts over time will allow you to spot the areas for improvement across your brand, and focus attention for the following months.

If your brand wasn’t featured in the leaderboard here, let’s have a chat: we can help you run a tailored brand equity matrix specific to your category or target consumer.

Get in touch with us to learn more.