I’ve said it before, and it warrants repeating: Mattresses are the most confusing category consumers make when furnishing their homes.
The jumble of components is not always easy to understand; foam vs. latex, foam density, spring count, natural materials, cooling fabrics and on and on. And, most consumers are leery of being “sold to” during the process of shopping for a new bed.
My guess is that the purchase has always been intimidating; however, the Internet, rise of search engine optimization, an abundance of review sites and the explosion of affiliate marketing has flooded the web with mattress information and, in some cases, misinformation.
That same Internet is where consumers turn to start their mattress shopping journey to find a mind-boggling amount of top-5 or top-10 best mattress headlines. Sometimes those headlines include brands rarely known to industry insiders.
My Outlook inbox is filled with Google alerts that tout the best mattresses for back sleepers, side sleepers, tossers and turners, the best mattresses for sex or some other euphemism, and more. A quick Google search pulls thousands of results — some paid advertisements and some organic — and if you dig a little deeper into the links, it gets quite interesting.
Of course, there’s Consumer Reports, long the standard bearer for consumer products reviews. The publication and website reviews everything from earbuds to cars to home appliances to pillows and, yes,…
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