Furniture is a durable product. Even relatively inexpensive dressers, chairs, and beds can last for years. High-end furniture might be expected to remain in people’s houses for generations. But people’s tastes inevitably change, as do their living situations, such that a lot of perfectly good furniture simply is no longer needed or wanted by the consumers who initially purchased it.

In the past, people might have held garage or estate sales or even just put the pieces out on the street, hoping someone else would pick it up. Today, they often post the items on Facebook Marketplace or Nextdoor, which gives them a means to earn some money back but also give someone else the pleasure of living with their furniture.

For most of the people transacting on these secondhand sites, buying and selling furniture is thus both a hedonic and a utilitarian experience. Furniture-loving site surfers enjoy the thrill of the hunt, updating their feeds regularly to see if a mid-century modern credenza or Eames-inspired chair might pop up for sale. When they are lucky, they identify just the right piece for some corner in their house that needed livening up.

But in addition, they are getting the furniture for far less than it would cost in a retail store. One hunter stumbled upon a closing sale by a local Michelin-starred restaurant, posted on Facebook Marketplace, which was offering a 42-inch walnut table, with a retail value of $3000, for just $500. Three years later, when she realized that she was not using it enough to justify keeping it, she sold the same table to another buyer on Facebook Marketplace for the same $500 price. Both of these interpersonal transactions eliminated any retail overhead. They also provided a further hedonic appeal, in that each buyer learned and could tell the nostalgic, comforting history of the table on which their friends eat dinner when they come for a visit. This interpersonal appeal strongly drives e-commerce marketplaces that involve customer-to-customer transactions. It offers a connection to someone else, or many someone elses, depending on how old the furniture is. Buyers can imagine the provenance of an antique dresser, even if they do not have all the details, and enjoy the history that it appears to embody.

To leverage these types of appeals, sellers should showcase the items they want to sell in actual use, with attractive staging. As academic research has shown, people are more willing to buy and pay more for items that are pictured in real-world settings, surrounded by other beautiful décor. Not only does such a presentation personalize the item, but it also gives buyers a sort of inspiration for how they could use and style the piece in their own homes.

Finally, secondhand markets allow people to feel good about their own consumption. They are saving money, reducing overall consumption, and participating in an actual recycle-reuse cycle. They are meeting neighbors with similar tastes, and ultimately, they are winding up with a piece of furniture that they love—at least for now. And when they stop loving it, they can just post it again, for sale to the next consumer.

Discussion Questions:

1. Can other resale markets benefit from the functions of e-commerce platforms like furniture does?
2. How should sellers determine a good price to charge for their used furniture?

Sources: Alix Strauss, “The Tempestuous Lives of Secondhand Furniture,” The New York Times, June 17, 2023