We Built It And No One Came

from the might-have-helped-to-have-done-some-research-first dept

Here's an article about how some "television commerce" attempts by big name companies in the UK have ended in failure because people just don't want to buy from their television. Of course, that hardly explains phenomena such as the Home Shopping Network and QVC - but perhaps (?) these are uniquely American successes. However, the article does make a good point about big companies with big brands deciding that if they build something, the customers can be marketed into spending money on it. Whatever happened to figuring out what customers really need?
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  1. identicon
    Florian M Unterkircher, 29 Jan 2002 @ 4:11am

    not uniquely American, home shopping != t-commerce

    I hear HSN and QVC are doing very well in Germany. Not sure whether this is really "t-commerce" though since it is not really an interactive service (where you would place an order on your tv screen). One reason why home shopping works as opposed to television commerce is that the majority of buyers will be on the lower end of the intellectual scale, and making a phone call is a lot easier than figuring out what all those buttons on your remote control can do.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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