Home improvement popular for 2021
[12th March] Sofa giant, DFS has revealed huge half-year sales as people focused on home improvements as a result of restrictions. In the six months to 27th December, the retailer posted an uplift of 17.3%. In addition, the order bank was over £65 million higher than the previous year.
This trend reflects those which we have seen elsewhere, with rapid changes to our lifestyle priorities over the last year. City living now seems unattractive, with house hunters seeking more outdoor space, and provision for home offices. Likewise, for those with gardens, investment in them is popular with Google Trends showing huge uplifts in searches for terms including firepit, patio heater, garden room and outdoor furniture since Spring 2020.
While the desire to purchase homewares is strong, the ability to do so is more challenging. Stores selling building materials, e.g. B&Q remain open, many other homeware outlets e.g. IKEA are closed. Click and collect isn’t available for the majority of shops as yet, however Argos is operating the service via Sainsbury’s outlets. Looking at the Deloitte Covid Tracker, 55% of people in the UK intend to purchase home furnishings online in the next four weeks. Of those, 12% are planning to pick up their order, while 43% prefer delivery.
OOH can attract new customers to order online
While many physical retailers remain closed, there are lots of options for online purchasing. Despite a wider choice of retailer, for large and bulky items, often people will prefer to shop locally, even if the transaction takes place online. Out of Home advertising delivers an opportunity for these retailers, which can sometimes be overlooked, to open up their normal catchment and seek potential customers further afield.
Where showrooms are closed, travel times become irrelevant, yet delivery and customer services remain of high importance. Through our React study, we demonstrated the effectiveness of Outdoor advertising to drive audiences to websites. Almost half of those surveyed will go online to learn more about a product after seeing it on OOH, while 29% will make an online purchase as a direct result of seeing a campaign.
