Unity Marketing’s new Home Luxury Report details major changes in purchase of home luxuries and how marketers should respond

Stevens, PA  July 14, 2010 –  In the category of home luxuries –  items for one’s home, like art and antiques, garden and outdoor items, and linens and bedding — 2009 was a rocky year.  Far fewer affluent consumers purchased items from this category, finds the new Home Luxury Report 2010 from Unity Marketing. However, those who made purchases spent on average 50 percent more than they spent on luxuries for their home in 2008.

The latest report is based upon surveys among 4,739 luxury consumers with an average income of about $220,200.  This sample is representative of the approximately 22 million affluent households in the country.

“The contraction in the percentage of affluents buying home luxuries — from 52 percent in 2006 to 41 percent in 2009 — is a cause for concern for marketers,” says Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing and author of the report.  “However, significantly higher levels of spending from affluents who did make a home luxury purchase should have a moderating effect for marketers.”

Trends in the market for home luxuries

Key findings on the market for home luxuries include:

• In art and antiques, the big story is original art.  Affluents want — and are willing to pay for — that one-of-a-kind piece.
• In home electronics, televisions were the big mover.  In electronics brands, both for home and personal electronics purchases, it is no surprise that Apple is luxury consumers’ favorite brand.  Bose is another popular electronics brand, especially among the most affluent shoppers.
• For home decorating fabrics, window and wall coverings, interior decorators significantly increased their penetration in this market in 2009, ranking as the second most popular source for these goods.  The Internet too rose in importance for shoppers.
• Affluent home owners invested in lots of new lamps and lighting accents in 2009.  Home improvement stores gained share of affluents’ retail sales in the furniture, light and rug category as a result.
• All things luxury for outdoor living got a boost in 2009.  From outdoor furniture, power equipment, lighting, water features and barbecue grills, luxury consumers invested more in their outdoor living spaces.
• Perhaps in response to less dining out, affluents moved their home cooking up a notch in 2009.  They invested more in cook’s tools such as small kitchen appliances, cookware, cutlery and bakeware.  They also turned to specialty gourmet cooking stores as their #1 destination for their housewares purchases, knocking department stores into second place.  The Internet was the third more popular destination.
• Affluents also invested more in their kitchens by buying luxury kitchen appliances and other kitchen equipment such as cabinets, countertops and sinks.   Specialty appliance dealers benefited strongly from these investments, ranking as the second most popular destination for luxury shoppers after the big-box home improvement stores.
• Affluents slept better in 2009, at least as measured by greater spending on mattresses and box springs and bed linens.
• Affluents who purchased luxury tabletop declined in 2009, but those who bought spent over 50 percent more.   Specialty gourmet stores and the internet picked up market share of affluents’ spending on tabletop, while department stores and specialty home furnishings stores lost share.  For the first year in luxury tracking, Waterford beat out Lenox as the top tabletop brand.

“As we can see from some of the major take-aways from this most recent home luxuries study, those affluents who are still buying home luxuries are spending more, but their spending patterns have shifted to new items, new brands, and new channels of distribution,” says Danziger.  “The home luxuries marketer is charged with navigating new terrain, and this kind of consumer intelligence research can serve as a much-needed road map.”

About the Home Luxury Report 2010

Unity Marketing’s Home Luxury Report 2010 is the ultimate guide to the U.S. market for luxury goods for the home. This report focuses on the buying and spending habits of the nation’s affluent households — the top quintile or 20 percent of U.S. consumer households — of high-end or luxury products and services.

The Home Luxury Report examines consumers’ buying behavior and spending habits related to these key categories of luxury purchases:

• Art & Antiques
• Electronics & Photography Equipment
• Home Decorating Fabrics, Window & Wall Coverings
• Furniture, Lamps, Rugs & Floor Coverings
• Garden, Outdoor, Lawn & Patio
• Kitchenware, Cookware, Cook’s Tools
• Kitchen Appliances, Bath & Building Products
• Linens & Bedding Products
• Tabletop, Dinnerware, Flatware & Servingware

The report contains details on these nine luxury goods categories bought by affluent consumers, including annual spending, where these products were purchased and details of the types of products and services bought.  This years report contains trend data covering 2007 through 2009.

The Home Luxury Report 2010 is written by Pam Danziger, an internationally-recognized expert on the luxury market and is based upon the kind of in-depth consumer research for which Pam Danziger and Unity Marketing are known.

Guides luxury marketers to shifts and changes in their target customers’ attitudes and shopping behavior

This report provides vital data about what luxuries affluents are buying, how much they are spending, where they are making their purchases and what brands they favor.  This report provides invaluable information about the mindset, attitudes and spending habits of the affluent consumers that luxury marketers target.  This is not just report about  people with high incomes, but affluents who buy luxury goods and services.

>> Luxury Marketers:  This is a report about your customers & your target customers

The Home Luxury Report 2010 is a compilation of the quarterly luxury tracking surveys that Unity Marketing conducts every three months with 1,000-1,250 affluent consumers who purchased one or more luxuries in the study period.  Unity’s luxury tracking study is the only longitudinal study of its kind that tracks the luxury consumer market, what they buy, how much they spend.  The survey sample of 4,739 luxury consumers surveyed in 2009 with an average income of about $220,200 is representative of the 22 million affluent households in the country.

More details about products and brands included in Home Luxury Report 2010

Details about what these luxury consumers bought, how much they spent, where they made their purchases, and in certain categories the luxury brands they patronized are reported in four major categories of luxury. Significantly more product categories and more brands were included in the current surveys, notably:

Home Luxuries

• Art and Antiques (Specific data is collected on already-framed reproductions; unframed reproductions; custom-framed art or reproductions; other custom framing; original art; sculpture, statues, 3D art; antique furniture and collectibles; wall decor)
• Home Electronics (Home Desktop Computers; televisions; DVD/video players; audio equipment; home entertainment systems)
• Furniture, Lamps and Floor Coverings (Lamps and lighting; upholstered furniture; wooden furniture; rugs and floor coverings)
• Garden and Outdoor (Patio furniture; grills; lighting accents; fencing; power gardening equipment; decorative pots; garden statues; chimeneas and outdoor stoves; garden shelters; water gardens; porch and patio decorative accents)
• Home Decorating Fabrics, Wall and Window Coverings (Wall coverings, such as wall paper; ready-made curtains, drapes; window coverings, such as blinds, shades; home decorating fabrics for custom upholstery, curtains, drapes, etc.)
• Kitchen Appliances, Bathroom Equipment and Building Products (Kitchen appliances, such as stoves, ovens, refrigerators; bathroom equipment, such as tubs, showers, toilets, fixtures; kitchen equipment, such as cabinets, countertops; air conditioning/filtration systems; water systems)
• Kitchenware, Cookware, Housewares (Small appliances; cookware; bakeware; cutlery; storage and organization; barware)
• Linens and Beddings (Sheets and pillowcases; comforters, spreads; pillows and pillow accents; bath linens; mattresses and box springs; duvets and shams; feather beds and mattress covers; table linens)
• Tabletop, Dinnerware, Stemware, Flatware (Dinnerware, including fine china, ceramic or stoneware, serving ware and decorative accents; crystal and glassware decoratives, stem ware, serving pieces, barware; flatware, including sterling silver flatware, serving pieces, decorative accents and other flatware)

Provides marketers with facts and data that support strategic decisions

Now you can make critical business decisions based upon facts — not beliefs, assumptions or fantasies

This report provides the facts and figures you need to develop winning marketing and business strategies. By working with the facts, not fantasies, you have a much better chance of success marketing to the luxury consumers. This report gives you a horizontal view of the luxury market, recognizing that luxury marketers compete not just with companies within their vertical product niche, but across all luxury categories as well.

Within each category of luxury, the key drivers for purchase are studied, such as role of luxury brand in purchase decision; the influence of sales price on purchase; where the shopper bought their last luxury; why they bought luxuries; whether their luxury purchases were made a gifts; and other motivational factors.

This report doesn’t stop with the data — It pushes further to help marketers and retailers put the information to use

Translate the data into information that marketing executives can use to make critical strategic decisions

This market research report helps make the research data and findings accessible and useable.  It provides marketers with three powerful perspectives:  “The What”, “So What” and  “Now What.”  This report is filled with advice and guidance for luxury marketers to take action on the research findings revealed.

Special feature: Find out which of the five different types of luxury consumers are your best customers

A special feature in Unity Marketing’s Home Luxury Report 2010 is a psychographic profile of five key types of luxury consumers. These include:

• X-Fluents (Extremely Affluent) who spend the most on luxury and are most highly invested in luxury living;
• Butterflies, the most highly evolved luxury consumers who have emerged from their luxury cocoons with a passion to reconnect with the outside world. Powered by a search for meaning and new experiences, the butterflies have the least materialistic orientation among the segments, yet they spend nearly as much as the X-Fluents on luxury;
• Luxury Cocooners who are focused on hearth and home. They spend most of their luxury budgets on home-related purchases;
• Aspirers, those luxury consumers who have not yet achieved the level of luxury to which they aspire. They are highly attuned to brands and believe luxury is best expressed in what they buy and what they own.
• Temperate Pragmatist a newly emerged luxury consumer who is not all that involved in the luxury lifestyle.  As their name implies, they are careful spenders and not given to luxury indulgence.

Special investigations into luxury consumer market

Each quarter Unity Marketing’s luxury tracking survey conducts a special investigation into topics of interest to luxury marketers.  Included in the Luxury Report 2010 are results of the following special investigations of interest to home marketers:

• Luxury consumers and their luxurious homes — What they have, what they own, what they buy, plans on remodeling and redecorating.
• Luxury consumers and their charitable giving — Investigates how affluent consuemrs are giving back to make the world a better place for us all.
• Luxury consumers and the current economic crisis –Learn about the changes luxury consumers are making to their luxury lifestyles and their shopping behavior in response to the current economic crisis.
• Luxury consumers and green marketing — What role does the green marketing practices of retailers and brands play on the luxury consumer and their buying behavior.
• Loyalty marketing and the luxury consumer – Research into the participation of luxury consumers into loyalty programs and how marketers can create more effective loyalty programs targeting the luxury consumer.

Pam gives luxury marketers “All Access” to the mind of the luxury consumer.  She uses qualitative and quantitative market research to learn about their brand preferences, shopping habits, and attitudes about their luxury lifestyles, then turns these insights into actionable strategies for marketers to use to reach these high spending consumers.  Unity Marketing is the voice of the luxury consumer for such clients as PPR, Diageo, Tempur-Pedic, Google, Swarovski, Constellation Wines, Luxottica, Orient-Express Hotels, Italian Trade Commission, Marie Claire magazine, The World Gold Council, and The Conference Board.

She is currently working on a new book, Putting the Luxe Back in Luxury, to be published in late 2010 by Paramount Market Publishing.  Her other books include Shopping: Why We Love It and How Retailers Can Create the Ultimate Customer Experience, published by Kaplan Publishing in October 2006;  Let Them Eat Cake: Marketing Luxury to the Masses—as well as the Classes, (Dearborn Trade Publishing, $27, hardcover) and Why People Buy Things They Don’t Need: Understanding and Predicting Consumer Behavior (Chicago: Dearborn Trade Publishing, 2004).