What is the Cheapest Mattress?
Is it possible that the cheapest mattress may be your best budget buy, or does “cheap” necessarily mean “cheap and nasty”, implying that something cheap is invariably nasty or inferior too?
What’s your opinion? At Ericssons Mattress & Pine, we’re faced with several questions which we’d pose to individual persons who want an answer to this issue, since, in our view, there is no “one size fits all” type of answer.
What’s the Cheapest?
You may wonder why, with more than 50 years of experience in dealing with numerous aspects pertaining to mattresses, including the relative prices and comparisons between various types, brands and their respective advantages, disadvantages and quality, we’re still unable to come up with one, stock standard answer to the basic premise, as indicated above.
People Are Different
The main reason for not committing ourselves to one product has to do with people – our customers. People are all different; no two are the same, nor do they have the same incomes, expenses, budgets, and funds to spend on furniture. One person’s “cheap” may be the next one’s “quite pricey”.
Budget, Affordability, and Price Range
Before providing any kind of answer, one must determine what the customer can afford. Needless to say, questions about money and affordability must be approached with tact and diplomacy since inadvertently offending and alienating a customer is the last thing on earth that one would wish to do. Suppositions or preconceptions about customers’ perspectives of “cheapest” or “most expensive” mattresses should be avoided.
Rather than being that direct – and potentially insulting – one might rather ask: “What is your budget?”, “How much do you wish to spend?”, or better still, “What is your price range? Is it flexible or fixed?” By utilising such or similar techniques, the sales consultant will be able to get a reasonable, relatively accurate idea of monetary figures with which to work.
He or she will also understand which mattresses the customer considers sufficiently cheap and affordable. This gives the salesperson an indication of which mattresses to show the customer first. After the salesperson has been asked for the cheapest product, it’s clear that the customer’s budget is a priority and is possibly a deciding factor.
Uncovering Preferences and Problems
Nonetheless, the Q & A may continue again because people differ from one another. Now, the emphasis is on personal preference, comfort, level of support required, hardness or softness of the mattress, and uncovering information about existing problematic medical conditions, such as backache and preferred sleeping position.
What type of mattress is currently being used? How old is it? How does the person feel in the morning, after spending the night on the existing product – rested and refreshed or still weary and unwilling to arise? If applicable, how does their partner feel? Does movement by either party disturb the other during the night?
The answers to all these prompts reveal a great deal about what the customer wants and needs, which must be weighed up against the very cheapest of cheap bedding options.
At Ericssons, we regularly feature mattresses on special, at prices that beat our normal, already low-priced sleep solutions. There’s something for everyone at Ericssons, irrespective of customers’ individual perceptions of “cheapest” or “expensive” items.
