Ausgelagerte Heimwerkerarbeiten könnten das Spielfeld der Marken verändern

Jahrelang wuchs der Anteil der ausgelagerten Heimwerkerarbeiten, während der Anteil der von Hausbesitzern selbst durchgeführten Arbeiten abnahm. Wie wir in einem früheren Artikel gesehen haben, hat sich dieser Trend von Do It Yourself (DIY) zu Do It For Me (DIFM) nach 2018 umgekehrt. Seitdem ist DIY wieder im Aufschwung, was dazu führt, dass 2021 mehr als 60 % der europäischen Heimwerkerarbeiten von den Verbrauchern selbst erledigt wurden.

Dennoch bedeutet das, dass etwa vier von zehn Heimwerkerarbeiten an andere Parteien ausgelagert werden. Diese anderen Parteien können Einfluss auf die Produktverwendung und den Kauf haben, weshalb es für Hersteller und Marken von Heimwerkerprodukten entscheidend ist, zu wissen, wer diese anderen Parteien sind. Für den Bericht Q4 2021 des European Home Improvement Monitor der USP Marketing Consultancy haben wir 6.800 Verbraucher aus 11 Ländern gefragt, an wen sie ihre Heimwerkerarbeiten ausgelagert haben.

Die meisten DIFM-Arbeiten werden an spezialisierte Unternehmen ausgelagert

As the graph shows, about a quarter of European consumers reported that they outsourced a home improvement job to an acquaintance. Meanwhile, 36% reported that they outsourced to a professional specialised company, while 22% outsourced to professional multi-skill companies or handymen. 18% outsourced to semi-professionals and 10% to foreign professional companies.

Clearly, a vast share of outsourced home improvement jobs is outsourced to professionals. These professionals may influence the process, including decisions on products, brands, and points of purchase. For instance, in the recently published European Handyman monitor, we saw that professional multi-skill companies mainly work for private homeowners and report that they have purchasing power in more than half of their projects.

Professionals use different purchase channels

When professionals hired to do home improvement jobs have purchasing power, they will probably use their familiar and favourite purchasing channels. Depending on the specialisation of the professional and the type of home improvement job, these professional channels will range from general building material wholesalers to specialised wholesalers or even purchasing directly from the manufacturer.

This means that brands of home improvement products that naturally rely on purchase channels used by consumers may miss out when home improvement jobs are outsourced to professionals. Even though the share of DIFM may be declining, the above shows that the share of home improvement jobs outsourced to professionals is quite vast.

These are European averages, though. Shares of home improvement jobs being outsourced differ significantly when zooming in on the countries we covered in this research. Likewise, the types of home improvement jobs and the parties they are outsourced to differ from country to country. For a full overview of consumers’ DIY and DIFM behaviour, including the types of professionals they outsource home improvement jobs to in 11 countries, we refer you to the Q4 2021 report of USP Marketing Consultancy’s European Home Improvement Monitor.