The future of finding tradespeople

Homeowners need trusted tradespeople for a wide range of maintenance and improvement jobs.  A new report from Eureka Research highlights that the way homeowners find installers, plumbers and electricians is rapidly changing before our eyes. 

Online trade directories, such as Checkatrade and Rated People, are an established route to market in this category – these services have a significant reach, Eureka! estimate around 4.8 million homeowners would currently use free-to-access online trade listings if they needed a tradesperson. 

Retail brands such as Amazon and John Lewis are looking to get a piece of the action and have recently launched new services giving their customers access to a pool of vetted tradespeople and service providers. 

Eureka’s results indicate that homeowners are reasonably warm to eRetailer brands entering this space – 1 in 10 would pay for such as service today if needed and around one in five homeowners are particularly receptive to this proposition going forward.  The lucrative higher earning homeowner segment appear to be most likely to trial such a service.

Eretailers need to tackle some key barriers if they are to take a big slice of the cake. Eureka! point out that personal recommendation remains the single biggest driver in this category and a perceived lack of familiarity is a key weakness of the Amazon model.  Four in ten consumers also think that this would end up being more expensive than conventional routes.

The full 20 page Eureka! report ‘The Future of Finding Tradespeople’ can be downloaded for free here. 

Dave Ruston, Director at Eureka! Research observes “We are in the middle of a transformation of how homeowners will discover and select tradespeople for jobs in the home.  Our exclusive research highlights that consumers are open minded about the Amazon model but we will be tracking how this plays out in coming months as homeowners begin to trial this new service”

The full results of the survey can be downloaded here.

The online survey was with a sample of 327 homeowners in August 2018.

Source : Eureka! Research

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