Mattress Shopping (from the Couch)

My wife and I needed to buy two twin mattresses for our son's new bunk-bed, so yesterday we went mattress shopping. From the comfort of our couch. We began by typing "twin mattresses" into Google; if a website didn't appear on the first page of the search results, it didn't even get the chance to earn our business. (Marketers, take note!) Many traditional retailers appeared, but either their pricing was higher than we wanted, or their poor reputations prevented us from considering them further. (Sears? No, thanks.) Some upstarts also appeared, but were discounted for various reasons. In the end, we found exactly what we needed at Amazon, from a company named Lucid. (I wasn't familiar with them, but they had a 4.3 / 5 rating from 110 customer reviews.) Two memory-foam mattresses for just $380. Free shipping. If I didn't like them, I could send them back, for free. And they'll arrive at my doorstep tomorrow. A decade ago, shoppers might hope to get a comfortable mattress at a good price from a retailer who would make the buying process easy.  Today, we want all of that and more. An easy-to-use website. Honest customer reviews. Free shipping. Hassle-free, no-cost returns. Consumer expectations have increased dramatically.  Retailers need to keep up if they expect to survive.


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