Written by: RBA Insights — Posted on: April 15, 2025

The customer walking into a furniture store tomorrow will not think, shop, or pay exactly like the customer walking in today, even if they fall into the same age range, income bracket, or lifestyle category. Age is a moving target, and every generation carries its own distinct habits and expectations into each stage of life. A 40-year-old in 2035 will not approach a purchase the way a 40-year-old in 2025 does, because their worldview, their financial habits, and their exposure to technology will be entirely different. They will bring with them the buying DNA formed in their younger years, shaped by the payment tools they used, the economic conditions they lived through, and the digital convenience they took for granted. This is why understanding customers is not a one-time effort. It is an ongoing discipline that requires looking ahead as much as it does observing the present.

Furniture retailers who anchor themselves only to today’s customer profile risk creating a blind spot in their future revenue stream. The reality is that even if a store maintains the same target demographic for decades, say, adults aged 35 to 60 with household incomes above a certain level, the people moving into that bracket will not behave like their predecessors. A store that sells high-end sectionals today may find that in ten years, the same age group places more value on modular furniture they can expand over time, or on items with integrated tech features. This isn’t because the store’s “ideal customer” changed on paper, but because the people who become that ideal customer changed in practice.

The most effective way to prepare for this evolution is to treat every emerging age group as a preview of your future clientele. The customers who are 20 years old today will eventually reach the age and income level your store targets, and the habits they form now, from how they research products to how they expect to pay, will follow them into your showroom. If they’re used to splitting payments into interest-free installments with a tap on their phone, they won’t abandon that behavior simply because they’ve grown older. If they’ve developed a habit of comparing prices online before setting foot in a store, they won’t suddenly decide to buy the first thing they see without checking reviews. By paying attention to these behaviors early, furniture retailers can align their systems, payment options, and even product selections to match the expectations of the customers they will have in five, ten, or fifteen years.

Knowing your customer is not just about age and income, it’s about understanding the cultural and technological context they live in. It’s about knowing what influences their perception of value, how they make decisions, and which experiences win their trust. That requires more than demographic surveys; it means observing real-world behavior, studying shifts in payment adoption, tracking what drives product interest, and being willing to adjust strategies when the evidence shows a change. This could mean introducing more flexible payment solutions ahead of demand, curating products that reflect emerging lifestyle trends, or rethinking how the store experience integrates with digital research and selection.

For furniture retailers, the opportunity lies in being the store that already understands tomorrow’s customer when they arrive. This does not require abandoning current customers or changing the essence of the brand, it requires expanding awareness and being ready before the shift happens. When customers feel that a store “gets” them, not just in what they want to buy, but in how they want to buy it, loyalty grows naturally. Whether your store is a single-location independent retailer or a multi-state chain, the principle is the same: the customer will evolve, and your success depends on evolving with them. The stores that thrive will be those that treat knowing their customer not as an occasional marketing exercise, but as a continuous, forward-looking commitment to staying relevant in a changing world.