abstract：Footwear industry body the Fédération Française de la Chaussure (FFC) has shared the results of its 2024 consumer attitude study.

Footwear industry body the Fédération Française de la Chaussure (FFC) has shared the results of its 2024 consumer attitude study.

As in previous years, it commissioned market research professionals to carry out interviews with 5,000 consumers in different parts of Europe in the course of March 2024. The focus of the interviews this year was to examine current consumer responses to shoe brands’ sustainability initiatives.

Findings that FFC has highlighted include a statistic that shows a majority of European consumers are satisfied with the length of time their shoes last.

It pointed out that respondents from France were the most demanding, saying that a pair of formal shoes would need to last for four years for them to be satisfied with the length of time the product was in use. For sports shoes, this dropped to three years’ wear.

Another conclusion was that European consumers are not yet too concerned with how much information shoe brands have shared with them about sustainability initiatives or even where their shoes are produced. FFC said that only 10% of French participants in the study cited these factors as important in their buying decisions.

FFC said it expects this figure to go up because initiatives such as 2023 anti-waste law (AGEC) were raising awareness of what it called the ‘Made In’ factor.

The 2024 study also suggested to FFC that there is scope for demand repairing shoes, hiring them or buying them second-hand to increase. The research showed that only 40% of European consumers now insist that any footwear they buy must be new. 

Image: FFC.

Source: footwearbiz