For suppliers and retailers looking to stay engaged with customers, meet their quickly changing needs and inspire them to buy in challenging financial times, the International Housewares Association (IHA) has just released its 2023 IHA Market Watch Report, which is designed to assist the home and housewares industry with connecting to consumer values.
The report is based on the IHA Market Watch Survey, which was conducted by CivicScience last December and surveyed several thousand adults. The respondents expressed how they are feeling, what they want and need and what motivates them to buy items for their homes, as well as what they learned during the pandemic and how they see their home lives evolving in the coming year.
As consumers adjust to a post-pandemic world, the report takes a deep dive on five key drivers or motivating factors in consumers’ purchase decisions for home and housewares products: Wellness, time, space, experience and responsibility.

Wellness: In 2023, wellness is an extremely important driving force in people’s lives and a motivating factor in many of their home-related purchase decisions. According to the report, 81% of survey respondents said wellness was very or somewhat important to their daily lives at home. In fact, while all five of the survey’s drivers are important to respondents, wellness emerged as the overwhelming top priority. When asked which was most important to them at home, 47% said wellness. That was followed by time (19%), experience (14%), space (11%) and responsibility (9%).

Time: Consumers feel that time is not on their side. More people are returning to the office for work, and commutes are cutting into their days. Others have hybrid work arrangements, juggling two profoundly different types of workdays and time considerations. What’s more, kids are back to school and all their activities, which brings a whole different set of time-related challenges. According to the report, 70% of survey respondents said they wished they had more time or more resources to save time. In fact, 23% said they always wished they had more time; 18% said often and 29% said sometimes.

Space: Space challenges remain now that some consumers have permanent work-from-home arrangements, either every day or on some days of the week. And now that consumers have spent so much time at home—and have come to understand the impact that their living space has on their wellbeing—they are craving affordable and easy ways to update, change or improve their living areas. According to the report, 60% of survey respondents said they experience some kind of space-related challenge at home; 17% said “many,” 21% said “a few” and 22% said “sometimes.”

Experience: People are craving experiences after the pandemic limited so many of them. While many industry forecasters predicted this would drive spending away from home and housewares, the current economic climate is making restaurants, travel and other out-of-home experiences cost-prohibitive for some consumers. As a result, retailers and suppliers can promote home-based experiences that can be enjoyed at a fraction of the price. For example, there is a significant pent-up demand for at-home entertaining. According to the report, 10% of consumers “often” try to create new experiences at home, such as meals or social gatherings, and replicating paid activities like going to a spa or movie theater. But the IHA Market Watch survey indicates there is an opportunity to engage with consumers who are interested in these experiences but may have barriers such as time, money or simply feeling out of practice or unsure of how to get started.

Responsibility: Responsibility has historically focused on environmental issues, but in recent years consumers have become increasingly concerned about social responsibility. Many expect the companies they buy from to be committed to both environmental and social solutions. According to the report, 67% of survey respondents said they’re socially/environmentally conscious at home, either often (33%) or sometimes (34%). This response offers retailers and suppliers an opportunity to lower some barriers to entry—namely price and convenience—in order to connect with more consumers, especially those who answered “only if convenient” and “not yet, but want to.”