Retail: "The Shockingly Strong Staying Power Of Home Shopping"
From PYMNTS.com:
A little under a year ago, a strange rumor began to make the rounds
in the commerce ecosystem: Amazon was about to buy a TV home shopping
network. Specifically, stories emerged that the eCommerce company was
in acquisition talks with Evine Live, a cable home shopping network beamed live into about 87 million households per day.
The deal never went anywhere, but at the time, it left plenty of
people scratching their heads: What on Earth would Amazon want with a
small, questionably profitable cable home shopping network? Amazon had
more Prime members than the network had viewers. What would a company as
innovation-focused as Amazon want with something as outdated and
unfashionable as cable home shopping? Had they suddenly come into a lot
of Diamonique jewelry they needed to unload?
But because it’s easy to take shots at cable home shopping with
jokes, it can also be easy to forget that good old-fashioned,
host-driven, televised shopping programs actually work when it comes to
moving merchandise. QVC Retail, Inc. – the parent firm to the two
largest home shopping networks, QVC and HSN – brought in $14.1 billion in revenue in 2018,
with 2 percent year-on-year growth. And, far from being displaced in
the digital age, QVC shoppers seem to have transitioned smoothly. The
majority (59 percent) of QVC’s revenue in the U.S. came via online sales
in 2017, and by 2018 that had grown to 62 percent. Of those digital
sales, 66 percent came in via mobile app.
Customers still like getting the TV’s stamp of recommendation, but they are mostly migrating away from phone orders.
And the format is gaining traction outside of the traditional cable
channels. QVC’s Jill Martin reportedly brought in $60 million in
eCommerce revenue for the Today Show last year via her “Steals & Deals” segment, according to Fast Company.
During Thanksgiving week alone, she reportedly pushed $12 million in
online sales. And for those who wonder whether she is getting too much
credit for generating those sales, NBC’s in-house analytics show that
purchases on its eCommerce platform go up whenever a product is
associated with an image of her face.
“People want to buy something from someone they trust. I have established that trust with the viewer,” Martin said.
Trust is an invaluable commodity in retail these days – particularly
as Instagram is increasingly choked with influencers of uncertain bona
fides and sometimes questionable honesty. The bright line cases make the
headlines: the Instagram influencer who marketed “influencing classes,”
took payments for them and then never showed up to teach, or the USC
student whose contracts with sponsors were yanked after it turned out
her parents may have purchased her a seat at USC. But even beyond the
more shocking cases, consumers increasingly have questions
about the influencers they watch, and the effects their relationships
with sponsors have on their recommendations and product reviews.
Televised home shopping, on the other hand, can’t help but come off as incredibly genuine, as a Vox reviewer
found after watching several hours of Martha Stewart Live on QVC. The
experience wasn’t exciting, she noted, but it was highly watchable and,
over time, incredibly convincing.
“It was so informative, it was almost as though you didn’t have a choice,” she wrote.....
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