Integrale Konzeption zur Lösung der «Flächenfalle» im Schweizer Möbelhandel

Continually rising online sales, declining visitors, increasing sales space and negative development in Swiss home furnishings over the past 10 years mean reduced sales space profitability. Many Swiss furniture retailers fall into a "floor space trap" where business-crucial sales space is becoming too expensive. Poor market growth and the strong consolidation of recent years demonstrate the relevance of this topic. Save for the "pure onliner" on the Swiss market, there have been no important new business models or even disruptive approaches.

The Swiss market’s development is being driven by the macroeconomic environment, the megatrends of digitalisation and sustainability, and potential new business models. Digitalisation particularly has a significant influence on the customer journey and severely affects brick-andmortar retail, which has largely lost its role as a source of information and inspiration. The innovation activities of retailers in Swiss home furnishings are primarily limited to the goal of increasing efficiency, with barely any scope for pursuing disruptive approaches. Companies are also developing their business model changes mostly internally, without involving third parties.

Business Model Innovation (BMI) has been identified as a suitable instrument for improving competitiveness. However, BMI is little used in the furniture trade due to methodological, organisational and cultural deficits, along with insufficient market knowledge.

The retail sector’s biggest challenges are improving competitiveness, the shortage of skilled workers and technological developments. BMI was not identified as a methodology used in practice to overcome these challenges.

An in-depth analysis of the customer journey at the transition point between the inspiration and purchase phase is recommended, using primary data. An exemplary business model for the Swiss home furnishings market can represent an important contribution to specific research. The resulting recommendations and their practical justifications are essentially based on a framework for overcoming the floor space trap at a strategic level. In five steps, retailers gain practical, feasible 29.12.2023 Seite 2 von 2 recommendations, supplemented by operational recommendations supporting the specific implementation of the framework. The core aspect of these recommendations for action is the dual business approach (2 S-curves).