Apparent Consumption Methodology
Production plus imports minus exports, with source notes and comparison to retail and production market size.
Why this matters
Furniture markets can look different depending on whether they are viewed from production, trade, or retail channels. Apparent consumption connects those views by asking how much furniture value remains available to the domestic market after imported furniture is added and exported furniture is removed.
Calculation
Apparent furniture consumption is calculated for each country-year as domestic furniture production turnover plus furniture imports minus furniture exports. The resulting value is expressed in million euro and represents an estimate of domestic furniture market availability in current prices.
The method uses complete annual observations. For monthly source tables, Furnilytics aggregates January through December and only publishes country-years where the required components are available.
Source data
The production component is based on Furnilytics furniture production turnover data for NACE C31 furniture
production. The production dataset uses Eurostat structural business statistics where available, including
annual SBS tables such as sbs_na_ind_r2 and sbs_ovw_act, and monthly short-term
statistics such as STS_INPR_M and STS_INPP_M for recent production turnover
movement.
The trade components are based on Eurostat Comext DS-045409 furniture imports and exports. Furnilytics
uses HS4 furniture codes 9401, 9402, and 9403, covering seats,
medical or similar furniture, and other furniture. Import and export values are aggregated by reporting
country and calendar year.
How apparent consumption differs from production market size
Production market size measures the value generated by domestic furniture producers. It is closer to an industry or factory-gate view of output. It includes furniture that domestic producers export and excludes imported furniture sold in the domestic market.
Apparent consumption adjusts that production view for trade. Imports are added because they increase the furniture available to the domestic market. Exports are deducted because they represent domestic production sold abroad rather than supplied to domestic users.
How apparent consumption differs from retail market size
Retail market size measures realised sales through retail channels. Retail turnover is usually closer to a consumer-facing sales value and reflects retail markups, distribution margins, channel mix, service components, and the scope of the retail source.
Apparent consumption is closer to a production-and-trade value. It does not directly measure final consumer spending, retail margins, or sales through specific retail channels. A country can therefore have different trends in apparent consumption and retail turnover, especially when import prices, retailer margins, inventories, wholesale flows, or channel mix change.
Interpretation and limitations
Apparent consumption is a structural estimate, not a direct survey of final household or business demand. It can be affected by inventories, re-exports, wholesale activity, reporting delays, trade-code coverage, and differences between product-level trade codes and industry-level production turnover.
Values are nominal. Growth can reflect price changes as well as changes in physical volume or product mix. The indicator should therefore be read alongside production turnover, imports, exports, import share, and retail market-size indicators.