Photograph by Grignon.
Figure 42.—A contemporary dining room grouping made of birch and finished in a light wheat tone. Simply carved with a modernized wheat motif, this grouping relies upon its simplicity for smartness and distinction. The chairs are upholstered in a rose-colored, leather-like fabric and trimmed with small bronze nail heads. The legs of the table and chairs taper gracefully and eliminate the box-like features usually associated with contemporary design. The credenza-type buffet and china have pulls of matching wood.
Dinette furniture, especially made for the dinette, offers a variety of selection and need not necessarily be in keeping with the living room scheme. Light woods are popular for dinettes, maple, oak, birch, and pine being popular for this purpose. When the dinette is replaced by a larger dining room ensemble the dinette set may be used in the breakfast room or in the kitchen. Small size china cabinets and buffets accompany many of the dinette sets.
Junior dining room sets are small scale dining room ensembles and are usually shown in fine cabinet woods in styles found in large size dining room ensembles. The junior dining room sets differ from the dinette sets in that they are usually not as informal as the dinette and are designed for the small-size dining room rather than for the dinette.
ENSEMBLE SELLING
Sales of living room merchandise fall into two classes: Piece sales, involving the selection of one or more pieces for use in a room already partially furnished; and ensemble sales, involving the selection of most or all of the furnishings necessary to equip completely a room, or even a house.
These two types of sales present different problems and require the use of different methods. However, they are alike in two important respects. In all of them the self-interest of the buyer is the determining factor; and competition in one or more forms is inevitable.
THREE FORMS OF COMPETITION
The first and inescapable form of competition is a competition among conflicting desires in the mind of the average buyer. In order to buy one thing, she must give up something else. Furniture dealers and salesmen habitually assume that the woman who enters a furniture store and asks, for example, for an easy chair, has already decided to buy one. The fact is that the customer is often merely weighing the satisfactions likely to come to her through possession of a chair against those offered by other articles or services also under consideration. In this case you must lead her to desire a chair more than she desires anything else before you can sell any chair, however large your stock or low your prices.