PertanikaJ. Trop. Agric. Sci. 29 (1 & 2): 9-14 (2006)ISS : 1511-3701

©Universiti Putra Malaysia Press

Wooden Household Furniture: Does Brand Matter?

SHUKRI MOHAMED & SUHAIDI ABDULLAHDepartment ofForest Management, Faculty ofForestry,

Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

Keywords: Wooden, furniture, household, brand, consumer

ABSTRAKPengguna menilai sesuatu keluaran berdasarkan kepada pelbagai atribut apabila membuat satu keputusan pembelian.Atribut yang diambil kira berbeza di antara individu serta keluaran. Makalah ini melaporkan penemuan daripadasatu kajian penerokaan terhadap kepentingan jenama dalam ktputusan pembelian perabot kayu isi rumah dalamkalangan pengguna di Malaysia. Satu soal selidik berstruktur digunakan untuk mengumpul data daripada responden.Keputusan menunjukkan pengguna tidak menitikberatkan jenama malahan lebih mementingkan harga serta atributketara perabot kayu isi rumah berkenaan. Kebiasaan jenama dalam kalangan responden adalah rendah. Makalahini membincangkan bagaimana pembuat perabot kayu isi rumah boleh menjenamakan keluaran mereka denganberkesan.

ABSTRACTConsumers evaluate a product based on various attributes when making a purchase decision. The attributes consideredand their importance varies among individuals and differs between products. This paper reports the findings from anexploratory study on the importance of brands in wooden household furniture purchase decision among Malaysianconsumers. A structured, self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. Resultsindicated that the respondents are not concerned about brands, but are instead price-conscious and placed more importanceon the tangible attributes of the wooden household furniture items. Brand familiarity among the respondents was low.

This paper discusses how the wooden household furniture manufacturers can brand their product in an effective way.

INTRODUCTIONThe wooden furniture-manufacturing sectorin Malaysia has experienced an impressivegrowth in recent years. The impetus andpriority given to the sector in the nationalindustrial development programs during thepast decade saw more than 3,500 woodenfurniture manufacturing mills established inthe country Qegatheswaran, 2002). Thesemanufacturing mills, which range from smallcottage operations to large automated plantswith sophisticated machinery, sell theirproducts both to the local and export markets.

In addition to the large number ofmanufacturers, there are also some salientcharacteristics of the sector that contribute to

the intense competItiOn among themanufacturers serving the local market. Thereis a common practice in Malaysia wherebysome popular designs are continually beingmade by many manufacturers, plus theirtendency to copy designs from one another.Furthermore, a large number of furnitureworkshops/dealers obtain their supplies ofunfinished furniture from the samemanufacturing mills, thus resulting in productssold in the market being of similar designs.

As competition intensifies, the woodenfurniture manufacturers have to find ways ofdifferentiating their products from each other.There is an emerging trend among thesemanufacturers to give and promote the brands

SHUKRI MOHAMED & SUHAIDI ABDULLAH

of their products, using either the company'sname or specific name for a particularfurniture design. An evaluation of a brand'sinfluence on consumer decisions to purchasewooden household furniture is thereforehelpful to the furniture manufacturers inmarketing their products in the local market.This paper reports the results of an analysison the importance of brands in consumers'wooden household furniture purchasedecision. The following section discusses theimportance of brands to consumers. Themethodology adopted in the study is explainedin the third section. The fourth sectionpresents and discusses the results from thestudy. The paper concludes with a discussionon implications of the findings for marketersof wooden household furniture in theMalaysian market.

UMPORTANCEOFBRANDSTOCONSUMERS

Many products found in the market are notonly offered with problem-solving functionssought by the consumers, but also with otherforms of tangible attributes such as color, size,style and quality. These products would alsocarry other less tangible features like productwarran ty and after-sales services. Thus,seemingly similar products with a similar corebenefit may become differentiated to theconsumers with these augmented features.

Consumers employ criteria such as price,tangible and intangible product attributes, andplace of purchase when evaluating productalternatives (Buell, 1985). Consumers varywith regards to which attributes they considerrelevant, and they will pay most attention tothose attributes connected with their needs(Kotler and Armstrong, 1997). Effectivemarketing, therefore, begins with anunderstanding of the needs and wants of theconsumers. In essence, to provide a productthat meets the needs of the consumers,marketers must assess the importance ofvarious attributes of the product from theperspective of the consumers.

However, the consumers may not be fullyaware of all the attributes of the variousalternatives to help them make an evaluationduring a purchase. They would normally usesearch features as indicators of benefits, ofwhich brands have been commonly used as theprimary indicator. Marketers believe brandsare important because they shape customerdecisions, and have been reported to be a keyfactor in purchase decision in both consumerand business-to-business markets of the US,Europe and Asia (Court and Freeling, 1996).

Brands are used to communicate a singleor a range of positive attributes about aproduct or service (Betts, 1994). Brands tellthe consumer something about the quality ofa product, as a brand's reputation is normallyused as a proxy when consumers are notadequately informed about the quality of aproduct (Sullivan, 1998). In addition,consumers buying the same brand know thatthey will get the same quality each time theybuy (Kotler and Armstrong, 1997).Consumers can also reduce the risk they wouldface when buying something they know littleabout by buying branded products(Montgomery and Wernerfelt, 1992).Furthermore, consumers buying brandedproducts often think that they are getting aspecial guarantee that the product meets theirneeds better than other similar products(Seperich et aL, 1994). And it would be quitedifficult to change consumers' brandpreference once they are convinced of thequality and value ofa particular brand (Crispeland Brandenburg, 1993).

METHODSurvey Instrument

A structured questionnaire was used to collectthe responses from the respondents on theimportance of a product's brand, and severalother attributes, in their wooden householdfurniture purchase decision. Thequestionnaire used a five-point numerical scalein which the respondents were asked toindicate the importance ofeach attribute. The

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WOODE HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE: DOES BRAND MATTER?

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

TABLE 1Demographic characteristics of the respondents

scale ranged from a score of 1 (not at allimportant) to a score of 5 (very important)responses.

Relative Importance ofBrandsThe following analysis concerns the evaluationof the relative importance of several woodenhousehold furniture attributes, based on theirmean scores. The list of attributes was by nomeans exhaustive, as the main objective is todetermine whether brand is an important

Brand Familiarity

The respondents were also asked to identifythe brand or names of wooden householdfurniture companies they knew to gauge theirfamiliarity of the various brands existing in the

factor influencing consumer purchasedecision. The mean score was calculated as l:Si/ n, where Si is the observed raw score forthe ith individual in a sample of n respondents.As the scale used in the study ranged from 1to 5, a score above 3 (the midpoint) indicatesthat the attribute is important, while a scorebelow 3 indicates that the attribute is notimportant. Table 2 shows the relativeimportance of the differen t wooden furnitureattributes, as perceived by the respondents.While Table 3 shows the relative importanceof brands for sub-samples of the respondents.

Evidently, brand was not considered animportant attribute in the respondents'wooden household furniture purchasedecision. The unimportance ofbrands is alsoprevalent for the various sub-samples of therespondents as shown in Table 3. Even thoughbrand is not an important attribute topurchase decision of the respondents, the lowhousehold income and mid-aged groups ofrespondents in the study placed a relativelyhigher importance on brand compared toother groups in their respective sub-samples.The results show that the respondents aremore concerned about price and the tangibleattributes of the furniture. Owners ofhousehold furniture in Malaysia are reportedto consider factors like quality, design andcolour; and price in their purchase decision(Anon, 1998). There is, therefore, a need tostudy the consumer's perception on theassociation between these attributes and theexisting wooden household furniture brandsin the market. Further studies can considerthe consumer psychographic variables (Lin,2002) in explaining their brand preference asbrand, and price, are normally used asexpressions of self and/or to indicateprominence and status (Wickliffe andPysarchik,2001).

5.249.545.5

13.049.427.6

66.233.8

Frequency (%)(n = 77)

Gender:MaleFemale

Age:Young « 30 years)Middle (30 - 40 years)Matured (> 40 years)

Monthly gross household income:Low « RM2,000)Middle (RM2,000 - 4,000)High (> RM4,000)

Characteristics

SamplingFrameA convenience sampling approach wasadopted with a goal to include both gender,and a broad range of age and income groups.Seventy-seven personnel ofa public universitywho indicated their willingness to participatein the survey were given the questionnaire attheir workplace. The questionnaires were self­administered and the interviewer was presentto clarify any doubts or queries. All responseswere collected on the spot. Demographicinformation was also collected. Respondentswere asked to indicate their gender, age andincome in the questionnaire. A summary ofthe demographic profile of the respondentsis shown in Table 1.

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SHUKRI MOHAMED & SUHAIDI ABDULLAH

TABLE 2Distribution of respondents' responses (in percentages of total respondents)

and mean importance scores

Level of importance

Attributes 5 4 3 2

Price 64.9 11.7 19.5 5.2Design 41.6 37.7 19.5 1.3Wood material 23.4 42.9 16.9 13.0Finishing 33.8 26.0 16.9 10.4Brand 2.6 7.8 24.7 33.8

Mean1 importance score'

- 4.34-4.19-3.69

13.0 3.5631.2 2.17

'Scale of 1 (not at all important) to 5 (very important)

TABLE 3Relative importance of brand in wooden household furniture purchase

decision for sub-samples of respondents

Sub-sample

Genderb

MaleFemale

YoungMiddleMatured

Monthly gross household incomeb

LowMediumHigh

Mean importance score'

2.222.08

1.502.322.08

2.442.221.93

'Scale of 1 (not at all important) to 5 (very important)b ot significantly different (X' test at p= 0.05)

local market. The results of the study indicatedthat brand familiarity among the respondentsis low, as only 35 percent of them were able toidentify several common brands or companynames ofwooden household furniture existingin the local market. Most of them (89.5%)even indicated that the furniture items owneddo not carry any brand or names of themanufacturer. This is reflective of the fact thatbrand is not considered an important attributein the purchase decision of the respondents.

CONCLUSIONThe results indicate that Malaysian consumersdid not consider brands when deciding on apurchase of wooden household furnitureitems. Instead, they placed higher importanceon price and, to a relatively lesser importance,on the other tangible attributes of the product.A casual observation of the manyadvertisements on wooden householdfurniture posted in local newspapers attest tothe greater emphasis on price, and sometimeswith minimal details on the other attributesof the furniture items. However, this does not

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WOODEN HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE: DOES BRAND MATTER?

preclude the importance of branding inmarketing of wooden household furniture toMalaysian consumers.

Although choosing an appropriate namefor a product is important (Rooney, 1995;Kohli, 1997), branding goes beyond decidingon the name. It must be noted that theultimate aim of branding is to build a level ofawareness and knowledge in consumers, so asto create confidence in their purchase decision(Betts, 1994). Except the name is only foridentification purposes, it should then movethrough several phases before a bond is finallycreated between the name or brand and theconsumer.

Repeated advertising and promotion willintroduce the name to the consumers (Kotlerand Armstrong, 1997; Alreck and Settle, 1999).Consumers, up to this point, would be familiarwith the name, and should be able to associatethe name with its content -name recognition­(Court et ai., 1997). arne recognition,however, will not necessarily attract consumersespecially when the product is not readilydifferentiated from those they are currentlyusing or have used before.

The next step is to build preference forthe name, or to be precise, for the productwhich the name is attached to. Alreck andSettle (1999) suggested several strategies forbuilding consumer tastes and preferences,which range from linking the name to aparticular consumer need to providingattractive models for consumers to emulate.For durable, large-ticket consumer productslike furniture, where consumers are highlyinvolved in the purchase decision process, theuse of cognitive processing preference­building strategy is suggested. Whicheverstrategy is adopted, a link between theproduct's attributes with the benefits lookedfor by the consumers has to be established.

The name would then turn into a brandonce the consumers associate a set of tangibleor intangible benefits they obtain from theproduct (Court et ai., 1997). A brand is, thus,everything that a customer gains whenpurchasing a product or service; both the

tangible aspects of the brand includingproduct features and physical attributes as wellas the intangible dimensions of the brand,which include the associations with theproduct (Zajasand Crowley, 1995). Marketersshould then make a conscious effort to ensurethat what they tell about their brands is whatthey actually deliver, if a bond is to be createdbetween the brand and the consumer.

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