Understanding Home Improvement Shopper Behavior for Growth

The home improve­ment indus­try finds itself in a unique posi­tion after a sig­nif­i­cant surge in demand dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Now, it faces chal­lenges from ele­vat­ed inter­est rates and weak­ened con­sumer demand. Although the industry’s out­look remains pos­i­tive, with poten­tial for stronger growth on the hori­zon, cau­tion is advised due to ongo­ing uncer­tain­ty about under­ly­ing con­sumer demand. Gain­ing a deep­er under­stand­ing of home improve­ment shop­pers will enable brands and retail­ers to bet­ter nav­i­gate a range of poten­tial outcomes.

One way to under­stand their needs is by ana­lyz­ing the com­po­si­tion of their shop­ping baskets.

Cross Category Purchases Have Declined

In recent years, we’ve noticed a slight decline in cross-cat­e­go­ry shop­ping trips, as con­sumers seem to be mak­ing more delib­er­ate choic­es, like­ly focus­ing on one project at a time.

Percent of Purchases That Contain More Than One Major Home Improvement Category 

Unit­ed States, Online + Offline Sales, 2020 — 2023

Cross Category Attachment Rate by Major Category

Unit­ed States, Online + Offline Sales, 2023

Across major home improve­ment cat­e­gories, we’ve observed a steady decline in the rate of cross-cat­e­go­ry pur­chas­es between 2020 and 2023. Cer­tain cat­e­gories, such as light­ing, elec­tri­cal, and stor­age, have expe­ri­enced dou­ble-dig­it declines, while oth­ers, like floor­ing and indoor gar­den­ing, have seen rel­a­tive­ly min­i­mal declines.

Opportunities for Driving Cross-Category Purchases Still Exist

Despite the over­all soft­en­ing in demand and the decrease in bas­kets con­tain­ing mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories, oppor­tu­ni­ties to dri­ve incre­men­tal sales still exist. As an exam­ple, we see that buy­ers of ceil­ing fans often pur­chase items in light­ing cat­e­gories, as well as in elec­tri­cal and paint­ing cat­e­gories. In 2023, near­ly ¹⁄₁₀ cus­tomers who pur­chased a ceil­ing fan pur­chased light bulbs and inte­ri­or light fixtures. 

Ceiling Fan Orders — 2023

So should brands and retail­ers begin bundling or cross-pro­mot­ing these prod­ucts? It like­ly depends on the specifics of the cat­e­gories, brands, and prod­ucts involved, but eval­u­at­ing the most com­mon­ly attached brands and prod­ucts may help pro­vide valu­able insights. 

As we dive deep­er, we can see that shop­pers who pur­chased a ceil­ing fan most com­mon­ly pur­chased a GE light bulb. If we zoom in on the spe­cif­ic light bulbs that were attached, we can see that many are dim­ma­ble bulbs. 

Giv­en a chal­leng­ing macro­eco­nom­ic back­drop, brands have to find ways to not just under­stand the per­for­mance of their prod­ucts but the rea­son they’re buy­ing. Bas­ket vis­i­bil­i­ty sheds light on the con­text for the pur­chase and the prob­lem your buy­ers are actu­al­ly try­ing to solve. Find­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for prod­uct bundling and cross-pro­mo­tion cre­ate bet­ter solu­tions for shop­pers which yield stronger results regard­less of the mar­ket environment. 

Get More Home Improvement Insights

If you’re ready to learn more about the cur­rent state of the home improve­ment mar­ket, join us for a com­pli­men­ta­ry wel­come lunch before HIRI Sum­mit ses­sions kick off. Lunch will be held from 12:00 – 12:45p on Sep­tem­ber 18 at the HIRI Sum­mit, hap­pen­ing Sep­tem­ber 18 – 19, 2024 in Chica­go.

About YipitData

With over 205M home improve­ment data points annu­al­ly, Yip­it­Da­ta has cov­er­age across 8,000 dis­tinct brands and key retail­ers, includ­ing Home Depot and Lowe’s, giv­ing you the vis­i­bil­i­ty you need to make bet­ter busi­ness deci­sions. Our pro­pri­etary approach com­bines data (physical/​email receipt, cc, web-scraped, etc) with pre­dic­tive mod­el­ing to give you the most accu­rate and gran­u­lar read on your mar­ket per­for­mance with only 7 – 10 days of lag.