Trends will come and go, but one thing that’s always been consistent about the construction industry and markets for building products is that it is highly fragmented. A product manufacturer’s success in one of the many market segments almost never indicates if they can or will be successful in another market. Buyers of materials have very different purchase journeys, depending on whether it is for a production home, non-residential building, infrastructure project, home remodeling done by a professional, or a do-it-yourself undertaking.
The graphs below on brand use of interior paint are an extreme example of this—market leaders vary considerably depending on whether the paint is for new homes or for a remodeling project.
Source: Home Innovation's Annual Builder Practices Survey, 2017
Source: Home Innovation's Annual Consumer Practices Survey, 2017
As you can see, Sherwin-Williams dominates the market for paint for new home interiors, followed distantly by the Benjamin Moore and PPG brands. However, in home remodeling, Behr leads with a third of the market, and Sherwin-Williams, Valspar, and Benjamin Moore follow.
Being successful in any market requires a keen understanding of the purchase journey and decision factors of the market you wish to address. It also requires adjusting your company’s marketing mix specifically to that particular market(s).
To help manufacturers keep track of their marketing performance in specific market sectors, Home Innovation Research Labs fields two major annual surveys to assess purchases of building materials for new homes and remodeling. The Annual Builder Practices Survey, which received about 1,450 completed and valid responses from builders this year, represents purchase of materials for new homes in the past 12 months. The Annual Consumer Practices Survey, with more than 100,000 completed responses received this year, gathers details about home repairs, improvements, and remodeling. These surveys help us understand the differences in market demand between these major building sectors.
Combined with a time-tested tabulation methodology that balances for home and builder size and consumer demographics, our Builder & Consumer Practices Surveys provide data that paints an accurate picture of market demand for hundreds of building materials—including material types, styles, and brands.
The complexities of construction product brand usage studies can be enormous once you start peeling back the layers. Complicating factors include geographic and demographic representation of the survey sample, differences in purchase volume and repeat purchases, and high margins of error for some hard-to-get buyer segments. While some manufacturers are able to develop their own tracking systems and account for all these variables, for most it is way too time-consuming (and therefore costly) to develop. There’s also the risk of trying to gather this complex data, not getting it quite right, and ultimately putting your credibility on the line due to lack of confidence in your findings.
Fortunately, you don’t need to devote a big chunk of your life to brand share tracking to get reliable data. Home Innovation Research Labs, a veteran of product usage and brand share research, has broadly expanded our Builder and Consumer Practices Reports to include brand share of 30 building material categories.
The 2018 Brand Reports are now available for our Consumer Practices Reports for remodeling purchases. Our 2018 Builder Practices Reports for new homes will be available within a few weeks. Let me show you how you can better track your brand’s (and your competitors’) performance with this valuable data. Contact me today for a complimentary consultation on how you can get started.
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