Research Findings

The team was able to survey 67 Chinese people, 37 of them were females and 30 males. Most of our respondents were middle-aged. 54% of respondents have a salary between RMB 10,000 to 50,000 and 42% between RMB 2,500 to 10,000.

Demographics

We asked respondents what European furniture brands they know and most couldn’t name any brands. Only some of them know Ikea and high-end Italian DaVinci group; only 3% of them know Stressless brand.

Recall &
Recognition

We asked respondents which brand among Natuzzi, Stressless, Rolf Benz, and La-Z-Boy they recognized. Based on the results collected, most of the respondents are not familiar with Stressless brand. It means that brand recognition rate is low for Stressless, with only 15% of respondents that know the brand. 45% of respondents didn’t recognize any brand at all; 19% were familiar with the American brand, La-Z-Boy.

Which brand do
you recognize?

Most of the items produced by Stressless are recliners. However, after analysing results from the survey, we found that 70% of the people prefer having sofas. It means that the company should adjust to demand and offer a wider range of sofas in the Chinese market.

Brand
Performance

According to the results, Stressless meets customers’ needs in regards to health care. 30% of the respondents said that it is very important to them that sofas can adjust to their body; for 17% of them, it is extremely important.

As for recliners, for 22% of people surveyed said it is very important that recliners can adjust to the body, 18% said it is extremely important. However, 40% think that it is not very important.

However, most of our respondents are not willing to buy a sofa for more than RMB 50,000 or a recliner for more than RMB 30,000.

73% of respondents claim that a promotion increases their desire to purchase furniture.

We asked respondents what words comes to their mind when they hear the brand name Stressless. The most common words that came up were “comfort”, “relax”, “lazy,” and “soft”. This indicates that Stressless’ image as “the innovators of comfort” is very strong.

Brand Imagery

However, 33% of respondents claim that if they were offered to purchase a brand new sofa, with adjustable back, premium quality contruction materials and leather, timeless design, and crafted by a traditional furniture company in Norway, would they consider spending more than 49,000 RMB. This number was 19 % for recliners for more than 18,000 RMB. These prices are for the cheapest models offered in China. These results are in contrast to the prices most of the respondents are willing to pay and show that if offered the right product, they would be more inclined to consider in making an expensive purchase. The reason why the number for recliners is lower than for sofas is that recliners are less likely to fit in every household and more people would not consider to purchase a recliner anyway.