Air beds and air mattresses have been used for years throughout hospitals and nursing homes since they do a wonderful job of alleviating pressure from the body. Air beds and air mattresses are capable of distributing weight across the surface unlike foam and inner spring mattresses. All that foam or inner spring mattresses can do is absorb weight; they can not displace body weight like an air bed or mattress! Air beds and air mattresses utilize a fluid, that fluid being air! Air beds and air mattresses displace weight very efficiently, lowering the pressure against your body, allowing you to sleep more comfortably.

Select Comfort successfully introduced adjustable air beds and air mattresses to the consumer bedding industry over 5 years ago. Up until that time, the consumer bedding market was predominately inner spring mattresses. Unfortunately for consumers, the high cost of creating this air bed awareness in the mattress marketplace is passed along to the consumer at the retail level. Select Comfort is a public company and they were able to sell an amazing 250 million dollars worth of air beds and air mattresses last year. Unfortunately for them and consumers, the prohibitive cost of advertising resulted in this company losing 4 million dollars. With this new awareness in the bedding industry for air beds and air mattresses, many other mattress manufacturers have jumped into the market.

Nautilus Sleep Systems, Comfortaire and others have opened up this market and now you see the prices are lowering drastically. Similar to the visco elastic memory foam market created by Tempur-Pedic, more competition means greater savings to consumers. The adjustable air mattress is now a commodity product and consumers are able to save significant amounts of money by shopping around.

Local and regional mattress retailers can pass along these savings to their customers since there are no markups involved through infomercial's and print media. Internet mattress marketers even have a greater advantage by offering greater savings to consumers for the exact same air mattress! Knowledgeable consumers have the upper hand when it comes to sorting through all the hype and are able to make sound purchasing decisions while saving a lot of money!