Consumer Confidence Methodology
EU survey balances, US and UK index transformations, baseline adjustment, amplitude scaling, and interpretation limits for Furnilytics consumer confidence indicators.
Indicator goal
Furniture, kitchens, mattresses and home furnishings are often larger purchases that households can delay. Consumer confidence is therefore useful as an early demand-context indicator, especially when read together with housing-market activity, furniture retail turnover and online product-search interest.
The indicator family is designed for market interpretation, not for forecasting furniture sales directly. A stronger confidence reading points to a more supportive household backdrop; a weaker reading points to more caution around discretionary and home-related purchases.
EU consumer confidence pages
Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland use the European Commission consumer confidence balance published through Eurostat. These are survey-balance indicators. Negative values mean negative responses outweigh positive responses; positive values mean positive responses outweigh negative responses.
EU country pages are the most directly comparable with each other because they use the same harmonised European survey programme and the same balance-style unit.
Country-specific extensions
Some important furniture markets are not covered by the same current Eurostat consumer confidence table. For those markets, Furnilytics uses the closest stable official or widely used source and transforms it into an above-or-below-normal signal. These pages should be read as proxies for the EU-harmonised view: useful for direction and market context, but not identical survey instruments.
United States
The US page uses the University of Michigan consumer sentiment series from FRED. Furnilytics subtracts the 1995-2019 average so values above zero indicate stronger-than-baseline sentiment and values below zero indicate weaker-than-baseline sentiment. No extra amplitude scaling is applied.
United Kingdom
The UK page uses the OECD composite consumer confidence indicator because Eurostat no longer provides a current harmonised UK series. Furnilytics subtracts the 1995-2019 average and multiplies the result by 3.0 so movements are easier to compare visually with European balance-style consumer confidence pages.
UK consumer confidence value = (OECD UK CCI index - 1995-2019 average) x 3.0Norway
The Norway page uses Finans Norge's Forventningsbarometeret, a quarterly household expectations survey. Furnilytics subtracts the 1995-2019 average and scales the result by 0.43 to bring the movement closer to Eurostat country consumer-confidence amplitude. Because the source is quarterly, it should be interpreted as a lower-frequency proxy for the EU-harmonised consumer confidence pages.
Norway consumer confidence value = (Finans Norge main indicator - 1995-2019 average) x 0.43Switzerland
The Switzerland page uses SECO's Swiss Consumer Sentiment index. Furnilytics subtracts SECO's long-term average of -6 points and keeps the scale at 1.0 because the source is already expressed in balance-style points. The API refresh uses SECO's long-series source where available; if the machine-readable attachment is temporarily unavailable, OECD's SECO-based quarterly history and official SECO release pages are used for continuity from 2018 onward.
Switzerland consumer confidence value = SECO Swiss Consumer Sentiment - (-6)Comparability and limitations
The EU, US, UK, Norway and Switzerland consumer confidence pages should be compared directionally, not as identical survey instruments. EU pages are true harmonised balance indicators. The country-specific extensions are transformed proxy signals designed to make above-or-below-normal movement easier to read alongside European pages.
Amplitude adjustments improve visual and analytical comparability, but they do not turn national or OECD sources into the European Commission survey balance. For precise source interpretation, use the source and latest-data table shown on each indicator page.