Furniture and floorcoverings are an essential part of everyone home, whether rented or owned, and larger pieces represent a major item of expenditure in setting up, moving or refurbishing the home making every homemaker a potential customer. The difficulty for retailers is that replacement cycles can be quite long and some people view furniture merely for its function rather than for what it adds to the overall appearance and ambience of the home.

This review looks in detail at homemakers' attitudes to replacement cycles and what the key motives are for buying new items of furniture as a means of highlighting how opinions and attitudes might be influenced to shorten replacement cycles and increase the importance of furniture in people's lifestyles.

There has been considerable instability among retail companies operating in the category that was triggered by the downturn in the economy. Here, YouGov SixthSense shall assess whether the traditional store-based retail model still has relevance in the context of research into how homemakers like to choose and buy furnitur

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