The Impact of Interactive Media on Consumer Buying Behavior

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,0, , course: Direct Marketing, language: English, abstract: In Germany, the market for home shopping is booming. Television constantly gains importance for direct marketing activities. In 2000 the turnover of Germany's three most successful television home shopping companies Home Shopping Europe (HSE), QVC and RTL Shop reached a total of ?392 million; in 2004 it increased to approximately ?871 million. Today, statistically speaking every sixth German has ordered a product or service from a television home shopping channel, 5,6 million of them even do it on a regular basis. Television home shopping today gains ?1,2 billion and the market research institution Goldmedia in Berlin expects a ?1,6 billion turnover until 2012. The television home shopping companies achieve better results than they had ever before. The company QVC, based in Düsseldorf increased its turnover in the last year and achieved its second best result since its formation twelve years ago. The television home shopping channel 1-2-3.tv GmbH currently closed its business year with the best result since its formation four years ago and the market is not saturated yet. This market situation leads to the fact that in spite of the economical crisis companies invest a lot of money in the development of home shopping. For example QVC plans to invest ten million Euros in 2009, mainly in developing Internet and IT-systems. In the past it has improved its logistics and achieved to shorten the delivery period to the customer by twenty percent. Not only in Germany television home shopping is considered to be a growth market. In the United States the market for home shopping and mail order grew by 10% to a value of over US$172 billion in 2004. The European home shopping market grew from ?67 billion in 2003 to more than ?68 billion in 2004. This paper deals with the question why television home shopping, as a part of interactive media, is so successful and what specific impact it has on the consumers' buying patterns. This paper will concentrate on home-shopping channels. They will be analyzed exemplary, because above all shopping within these channels is one of the most interactive ways of home shopping and reveals some intriguing and interesting results concerning consumer manipulation techniques and consumer behavior. The main objective is to find out why offering products and services via television has changed the consumers' buying behavior until now and what can be expected for the future.