I’ve said it before, and it bears repeating: mattresses are the most confusing category for consumers when furnishing their home.
The mix of components is not always easy to understand; foam vs latex, foam density, crumb count, natural materials, cooling fabrics, etc. And, most consumers are wary of being “sold to” during the process of buying a new bed.
My guess is that shopping has always been intimidating; however, the internet, the rise of search engine optimization, the abundance of review sites, and the explosion of affiliate marketing has flooded the web with mattress information and, in some cases, misinformation.
This same Internet is where consumers turn to begin their mattress shopping journey to find a mind-boggling amount of top 5 or 10 mattress toppers. Sometimes these headlines include brands that are little known to industry insiders.
My Outlook inbox is filled with Google alerts offering the best mattresses for back sleepers, side sleepers, tossing and turning, best mattresses for sex or some other euphemism, and much more. A quick Google search brings up thousands of results (some paid ads and some organic) and if you dig a little deeper into the links, it gets pretty interesting.
Of course there are Consumer Reports, long the standard bearer for consumer product reviews. The publication and website review everything from headphones to cars to appliances to pillows and, yes, mattresses.
You may or may not be familiar with sites like Best Products, Good Housekeeping and WireCutter, owned by The New York Times Co., all of which have built a business model around product reviews, and that model is being reinforced by affiliate marketing: consumers click. and purchase, the site earns a commission for the sale.
Even CNETlong known for its tech and consumer electronics product reviews, has jumped into the mattress review business.
Some of the sites don’t even test the mattresses themselves and instead rely on a wide range of review stories from other outlets. How does this make sense?
I guess because there is money to be found from affiliates, the playing field for mattress reviews has become more crowded and will continue to do so. Page after page scrolls through search results, a gateway to how consumers access search.
Try it. You will find media names like Forbes, US News & World Report, Rolling Stone, why? — and Popular Mechanics. What do music industry experts know about mattresses and how well or poorly they are made? It’s curious to me, and again, confusing or misleading to consumers who rely on the media for unadulterated information to help inform their purchases.
And let’s not forget the consumer reviews that populate websites like Amazon, Wayfair and other direct-to-consumer e-commerce players.
The point is, it’s noisy out there, and weeding out both legitimate information and fake information is becoming more and more difficult for consumers who are simply looking for a new mattress to help them get a good night’s sleep.
What’s a retailer to do? Train your teams to have open and honest conversations with consumers when they walk into your store looking for the latest “Clapton” mattress that got five stars on some random website. (No, it’s not a real mattress brand that I know of. It’s the name of one of our pets.)
What is your alternative? What is the best mattress you have that fits your budget and how does it compare to the Clapton brand? Make it real for them and help guide them to a mattress that offers a solution to their wants and needs…without the affiliate marketing money.
It’s cleaner that way.
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