I don't know if there's any merit to this, but I've always felt the mattress industry benefits from being a "soft target" like the wedding, funeral, education,

I don't know if there's any merit to this, but I've always felt the mattress industry benefits from being a "soft target" like the wedding, funeral, education, child <anything> industries. The old "You spend 1/3rd of your life sleeping! Don't be stingy" marketing strategy is so convincing, consumers do not behave rationally. Higher price is assumed to be better, so there's little pressure to lowering price.