Customer Perceptions of Child Safety towards Residential Furniture

Abstract: With the nature of exploring and less awareness of danger, furniture at home has been causing various kinds of child injury all over the world. Furniture tipping over is one emerging cause among children under 6 years old. Despite of the importance of child safety, it lacks evidence about people’s perceptions of child safety towards residential furniture. Hence, this thesis used the theory of consumer behaviour to identify factors that can potentially effect perceptions and applied quantitative and qualitative methods to find out perceived importance of child safety when people buy furniture and how people perceive child safety in a given case. It has been found that people perceive child safety much less important when buying furniture not specifically for children. Some factors, such as age, income have influence on it. In the given case of chest of drawers, when perceived to be more likely to tip over, people are more willing to anchor a chest of drawers. It has also found that a three-row and shallow type has mixed perceptions. When the weight of a chest is perceived to be more important, people agree more on the statement that a heavier chest of drawers is less likely to tip over. Although anchoring is considered to be an efficient way of preventing tipping over, results showed that it is not a preferred way for most people. Further study is needed to find out other ways. Information of child safety is welcomed by most of the people. More research can be done to find out effective ways of displaying child safety information.