06 News
By necessity, the travel + hospitality marketing team at Criterion Global are WTM-veterans
1 OCTOBER, 2016 | HOSPITALITY | 
276
As online shopping eclipses bricks and mortar, Americans are getting used to the idea that we can buy our lamps, sofas and area rugs from our iPhones, too. While we’re still more likely to buy an Xbox online than an end table, home furnishings now make up a sizable portion of our digital purchases, with $35 billion in sales in 2014, according to Statista. In 2017, home furnishings accounted for 12 percent of our online purchases, a figure that Statista predicts will grow to 13.9 percent by 2022.
For a company like Wayfair, our increasing willingness to buy a bed without ever testing it out has translated to traffic. In 2017, the company had 11 million active customers, up 33 percent from 2016. Sales grew by 40 percent in 2017, to $4.7 billion.
But buying a coffee table online is not the same experience as buying a blouse. If the blouse doesn’t fit or the turquoise is really more of a teal, you can leave it on the kitchen counter until you get around to shipping it back.
Even the most diligent shoppers can be led astray. Brigette Parsons, who lives near Gainesville, Fla., thought she had done her homework when she bought a headboard on Wayfair in 2014 for the master bedroom she shares with her husband, Steve Parsons, 40, a state police officer. She had spent hours scouring the internet, reading through dozens of customer reviews.
But there’s an art to reading online reviews, the crowdsourced equivalent of asking everyone in the mall: What do you think of that dress in the window? Is the fawning praise really deserved? Is that lone critic a soothsayer or just a crank?
276
As online shopping eclipses bricks and mortar, Americans are getting used to the idea that we can buy our lamps, sofas and area rugs from our iPhones, too. While we’re still more likely to buy an Xbox online than an end table, home furnishings now make up a sizable portion of our digital purchases, with $35 billion in sales in 2014, according to Statista. In 2017, home furnishings accounted for 12 percent of our online purchases, a figure that Statista predicts will grow to 13.9 percent by 2022.
For a company like Wayfair, our increasing willingness to buy a bed without ever testing it out has translated to traffic. In 2017, the company had 11 million active customers, up 33 percent from 2016. Sales grew by 40 percent in 2017, to $4.7 billion.
But buying a coffee table online is not the same experience as buying a blouse. If the blouse doesn’t fit or the turquoise is really more of a teal, you can leave it on the kitchen counter until you get around to shipping it back.Even the most diligent shoppers can be led astray. Brigette Parsons, who lives near Gainesville, Fla., thought she had done her homework when she bought a headboard on Wayfair in 2014 for the master bedroom she shares with her husband, Steve Parsons, 40, a state police officer. She had spent hours scouring the internet, reading through dozens of customer reviews.
But there’s an art to reading online reviews, the crowdsourced equivalent of asking everyone in the mall: What do you think of that dress in the window? Is the fawning praise really deserved? Is that lone critic a soothsayer or just a crank?
Previous 
Next
Next
Contact Us
Thank you for your message
We'll be in touch with you shortly!
First Name
Email
Last Name
Phone Number
Comments
SEND
© Criterion Global 2018