In recent years, buying habits have seen a change: even if traditional shopping in the store has remained the main channel, online shopping has become increasingly important. Hypermarkets have experienced the benefits of online commerce, but the trend is to expand these features in the store. With a digital buy assistant equipped with location-based personalization, a hypermarket can offer a new and enhanced experience to customers entering the store with a smartphone. The digital shopping assistant can be the tool that helps the hypermarket better know the customer and develop a strong relationship with him/ her.

In this article we aim to analyze the preferences and opinions of European furniture buyers in the context of Germany, Italy, Poland, France and Austria being among the top 10 world furniture manufacturers, accounting for over 19% of the world production and 60% of the European one. We have developed this research given that the furniture industry is an important sector in the economy, employing about one million people at the level of the European Union, in 130,000 companies in the field. The furniture segment is also well represented in the field of innovation also, accounting for 12% of the applications for design registration in the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).  This also reflects on the production of furniture, currently 2/3 of the world’s leading peak production coming from Europe. The research is of a quantitative nature, the technique adopted is the interview, and the research tool is the questionnaire. The purpose of the research is to identify the way and the level at which European consumers’ value furniture accessories in the general context of furniture quality assessment in conjunction with the need for accessory information.

In this article, we aim to identify the views and attitudes of major furniture manufacturers in the European Union on the current situation and trends of the European furniture market and furniture accessories. If for the furniture market has been made more studies and research along the way, for the furniture accessories market this is the first qualitative research to be carried out both at national and European level, a initiative caused by the fact that we have not identified other secondary sources with the exception of data taken from a representative producer, which supplies over 80% of furniture accessories to major furniture manufacturers in Europe. National and European statistics do not highlight the market for furniture accessories, although in our opinion it is of great importance for the reference industry. In this context, a qualitative research has been carried out whose main objective is to identify the role accessories have in the ergonomics and design of furniture of all categories, regardless of their destination (house, office, hotel, restaurant etc.). The specific objectives of qualitative research are: to identify the opinions and attitudes of the managers of the major furniture manufacturers on the importance of furniture and furniture accessories at the industry level; identifying the views and attitudes of the furniture managers in the furniture industry on the specific market trends in terms of the dynamics of consumer preferences on this market.