I love to shop. If I can sneak a few hours to myself on a Saturday afternoon, sans hubby, child, and dog, you’ll find me at Nordstrom, indulging in a new pair of black shoes, maybe a couple of tops, and heck, since I’m alone and in a good mood, I’ll splurge on (yet another) cute dress for my daughter.
For the most part, however, I’d much prefer to shop online or via catalog. Webvan has saved me from the Fourth Circle of Supermarket Hell, and as you already know, Amazon.com is my good friend, especially around the holidays. I buy all my linens from Lands’ End Coming Home and The Company Store catalogs, and Hanna Andersson is a staple in my family’s wardrobe.
Now, being the geek that I (hate to admit) I am, you’d think I’d be pleased as punch that many of my favorite catalogs and stores have gone online with e-commerce. In truth, while I have visited their Web sites, I shun those SSL-protected order forms in favor of a good-old fashioned 800 number. But my husband, a far bigger geek than I (he’s an engineer, need I say more?), looks at the catalogs that come in the mail and then launches Netscape to order online. It makes me wonder about the future of catalog merchants, in particular, and whether I’ll still be receiving printed catalogs in the mail five or ten years from now.
Companions Needed
We all know Internet retail sales are booming — they’re poised to hit $29.3 billion in North America in 2000, up from $16.8 in 1999, according to GartnerGroup. But direct merchants are doing well, too: According to the Direct Marketing Association, U.S. catalog sales have almost doubled in the past decade, to $94.5 billion in 1999, and growth is projected to continue to $143 billion by 2005. Virtually every consumer and business catalog has an online presence, and most of them are even making a profit from Web-site sales. That’s great news, especially considering the current shake-out in the dot-com economy, but it shouldn’t be surprising, given the fact that direct merchants have preexisting relationships with customers who trust their customer service and order-fulfillment capabilities.
But the incontrovertible fact is that the majority of shopping is done off-line, and that’s not going to change any time soon, research also shows. The Web for most consumers is a resource, a place to find product information, reviews, and comparative data, but actual purchases are usually done in a retail store or through a catalog. That’s why most online retailers have at least one other sales channel, and why so many current online-only businesses are launching companion catalogs — including Garden.com, Awards.com, women’s athletic goods marketer Lucy.com, and Canadian retailer Kidstoysplus.com.
Reaching Out
Indeed, there are many ways online retailers can market their companies, through both electronic and print means, but the successful ones are making sure print is an essential component of their strategies. Online banner and pop-up ads are easily tuned out (or clicked closed), and although e-mail marketing is getting more technologically sophisticated, it’s not necessarily effective, either. Direct e-mail can include embedded digital images, DHTML that allows recipients to shop without launching browsers, and streaming media that offers a more interactive experience. But most consumers trash direct e-mail before they open it, or don’t have the bandwidth or the software to receive such rich content.
Print, on the other hand, remains the best way for online merchants to market themselves — and print advertising, direct mail, and catalogs are all thriving thanks to the e-commerce craze. Catalogs are particularly complementary to e-commerce sites because offset-printed photography shows off products better than 72-dpi monitors, and because they let consumers shop at their own leisure, opening the pages when they’re in the mood to sit down, relax, and shop. Plus, the mailing lists are more mature and on target than e-mail.
In fact, Lands’ End last year found out how essential printed catalogs are to online sales. The direct merchant divvied up its online shoppers and mailed its regular catalog to one group, a smaller catalog to a second group, and no catalog to a third group. Guess what? Those who received a catalog bought more online, and the larger the printed piece, the better the response.
Final Sale
Will bigger always be better? In a few years, catalogs will become an even more valuable marketing tool as merchants glean consumers buying habits from the data they amass online and otherwise, pipe it through a database, and leverage short-run printing technologies to produce more targeted pieces.
So it looks like I’ll still be getting my favorite catalogs in the mail for the foreseeable future, although I may wish for a reprieve come December. Online merchants can blast me with all the direct e-mail they want, but they’re wasting their time on me. I’d rather peruse a glossy, four-color offset catalog any day.
Read more by Anita Dennis.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on August 9, 2000
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