We can distance ourselves from used car salesmen and lawyers. For all of us, whether retailer, manufacturer or supplier, who have chosen the home furnishings arena as a chosen career, it's somewhat disheartening to have research indicate that the American consumer isn't all that pleased with what we do. We've all read enough articles and enough research to know that shopping for furniture, in the minds of the consumer, rates right up there with root canals or income tax audits on the pleasure scale and furniture salespeople are on a level with lawyers and used car salesmen.
Consumers find the shopping experience painful and confusing.
More often than not, they complain that the level of professionalism encountered was woefully inadequate. Be it unknowledgeable salespeople, broken delivery date promises or quality that does not meet their expectations, they tend to rate our collective effort not up to par. By all counts it would seem that we all work hard to alienate the consumer instead of serve them, and yet as individual manufacturers or retailers, most of us would be hard pressed to paint ourselves with this negative brush. Yet if we listed to the consumer, we would have to believe that somehow that is their interpretation of all of our collective efforts. More importantly, many seem to continue to indicate their distaste for the whole furniture shopping process by avoiding it all together.