Television Shopping Research Articles

Herding Among Retail Shoppers: the Case of Television Shopping Network

Herding behavior refers to the behavior of individuals behaving similarly as a group without directions to coordinate. Herding can demonstrate rational characteristics. When consumers believe that others may have private information about a product, they infer unobserved information through other people’s behaviors, thereby engaging in similar actions themselves. While rational herding behavior has been found mostly in high involvement environments such as the financial markets, this paper provides evidence that such behavior may also occur in a comparatively lower involvement environment such as retailing. To demonstrate herding behavior and test shoppers’ rationality in such, the authors employ a unique dataset from a major TV shopping channel. In this setting, information about other buyers’ purchase decisions is only sometimes observed by shoppers. Evidence suggests that herding happens among shoppers and the herding behavior appears to exhibit rationality. The authors find that herding effects (1) are stronger when relative price discount is smaller, (2) are more prominent for a product category with less digitalizable attributes, and (3) appear to happen mainly in the earlier part of a sales pitch when shoppers have less information about a product and are more uncertain about their product valuation.

Exploring the synergy effect of trust with other beliefs in television shopping

PurposeTelevision (TV) shopping has notably changed human shopping behaviors. However, despite its significant advantages, TV shopping still faces many challenges in promoting customer purchase behavior. The purpose of this paper is to explore the synergy effect of trust with other beliefs on purchase intention in TV shopping. Other beliefs, including perceived media richness, perceived price fairness, perceived convenience and perceived host interaction, were tested as the synergy factors in the proposed model.Design/methodology/approachA hierarchical moderator regression analysis was conducted, and data on the TV shopping habits of 428 customers in Taiwan were examined.FindingsThe findings of the study revealed that trust synergizes perceived price fairness and perceived host interaction rather than perceived media richness and perceived convenience to enhance purchase intention in TV shopping.Research limitations/implicationsThis study confirmed the assumption that trust synergizes the beliefs (i.e. perceived price fairness and perceived host interaction) to enlarge purchase intention in TV shopping.Practical implicationsThis study suggests that service providers need to prioritize concerns to build trust with customers to encourage purchases during TV shopping. They should also actively promote fair prices and invite famous people to serve as hosts to motivate purchases in TV shopping.Originality/valueThis study advances the knowledge of the trust theory and the synergy model by examining the synergy effect of trust with other beliefs in TV shopping.

Television Shopping at Home to Alleviate Loneliness Among Older Consumers

Television Shopping at Home to Alleviate Loneliness Among Older Consumers

Television Shopping at Home to Alleviate Loneliness Among Older Consumers

Despite widespread awareness of the importance of a middle-aging and older consumer market, it is surprising that very little research has been conducted on their in-home shopping behavior. Therefore, this study focused on middle-aging and older female television home shoppers and examined the effects of persuasive mentions of the show host and parasocial interaction on social involvement, perceived loneliness, mood, perceived risk and unplanned buying tendency. A total of 109 middle-aged and older female television shoppers responded. Results of path analysis revealed that persuasive mentions did not influence parasocial interaction. However, as middle-aging and older consumers more para-socially interacted with the host, they were likely to use television shopping for alleviating loneliness. Practical and theoretical implications were discussed.

A study on factors that increase customer value when conducting television shopping

This study examined the factors that influence customer value in a TV shopping context. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) was then applied to obtain the weights of these factors, and their importance was decided based on this. The results reveal that the top five important factors are as follows: payment security, private data security, commodity discount, short delivery time, and product usage security. Among these, payment security, private data security and product usage security are within the category of cost of security/safety. The results suggest that TV shopping operators should pay attention to their reputations in order to maintain a good corporate image and reduce doubts about security/safety. Meanwhile, logistics efficiency should be raised in order to shorten delivery times, and offering more discounts will act as an incentive to attract more shoppers and enhance customer value.

Applying Kansei engineering to design logistics services – A case of home delivery service

Home delivery service (HDS) has grown fast in recent years because more and more customers engage in Internet and television shopping. Moreover, due to the rising competition in the HDS sector, service providers need to put more concentration on the continual improvement and differentiation of service to maintain the competitive advantage. After experiencing the current services, customers are always expecting the new ones. Thus, the idea of new service design never ends. Designers always have to insight into the real feelings of customers so that they could design the new service, which is able to meet customers' expectation. Kansei engineering is a means to transform real voices of customers into the product and service design. This method is able to quantify the relationship between feelings represented by simple words and design elements. In this study, the Partial Least Square (PLS) is used to analyze the relationships between the real feelings of customers and characteristics of HDS. Finally, this study combines those characteristics, which are strongly related to important feelings, to obtain the original idea of new design of HDS. Relevance to industryAs stated in this abstract, our study offers an exemplification on applying Kansei engineering to design service in service industries. Specifically, along with the application of Kansei engineering, the research findings offer a technique for service design of service industries.

The Television Shopping Service Model Based on HD Interactive TV Platform

The Television Shopping Service Model Based on HD Interactive TV Platform

Consumer product search and purchase behaviour using various retail channels: the role of perceived retail usefulness

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to examine the influences of consumers' perceptions of retail usefulness for product information search and their previous purchase satisfaction on their frequencies of product information search and product purchase behaviours for apparel products. These relationships were investigated in five retail settings – Internet shopping, catalogue shopping, television shopping, local retail shopping, and non‐local retail shopping. One hundred seventy‐six students in a US Midwestern university provided usable responses. The results of causal model analyses showed that the proposed model fits the data well for all five retail channels. Consumers who perceived a certain retail channel more useful for product information search searched for product information more frequently via that retail channel, and purchased products more often via that retail channel. Consumers who were more satisfied with apparel purchases from a retail channel purchased the products more frequently via that retail channel. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Shopping Behavior Among Gay Men

Literature on gay men and body image are examined in relation to shopping behaviors, with hypotheses developed to test whether one's body image affects consumer choices. The researchers studied credit card debt, shopping frequency, amount of time spent shopping, and shopping venue. An online questionnaire was used to collect data from 213 gay men. Results indicate that Appearance Orientation positively affects shopping in a specialty store, shopping in a thrift store, frequency of shopping, and time spent shopping, whereas Appearance Satisfaction negatively affects television shopping. Thus, body image and shopping are linked. For many gay men, shopping may be a means of establishing or reinforcing cultural identity or a way to express individuality and novelty. Findings can be used by academics and practitioners in developing and examining innovative retail environments. Future research is discussed.

Global media, local metaphor: Television shopping and marketing-as-relationship in America, Japan, and Taiwan

Rapid acceptance of the relationship paradigm, within marketing, is in no small part due to the powerful metaphor of marketing-as-relationship. Through observation of localized television home shopping (THS), with its intensive use of communication between salesperson and customer, we examine how local meanings of relationship marketing are abstracted to their constituent values for broadcast over television, extending the metaphor of marketing-as-relationship to more accurately reflect differing values among American, Japanese, and Chinese retailing cultures. Combining observations with historical records, and ethnographic data, we propose culturally specific shopping relationship metaphors that help managers quickly understanding core local values of retailing.

Shopping With Friends: Audience Perspectives on Television Shopping

Despite both the economic success and shear spectacle of television shopping, very little research has looked at what keeps millions of viewers tuned in to what could be considered nothing more than networks devoted to a constant stream of advertisements. Building on the theoretical framework of parasocial interactions, this article devises a typology of television shopping viewers based on in-depth interviews conducted with audience members that range from heavy to light in terms of their viewing patterns. Audience members fall into 3 different categories of viewer-shoppers: skeptical-ironic, practical-hesitant, and expert-compulsive. Each of these categories of viewer-shoppers negotiated different meanings of television shopping programming that challenge ideas about isolated individuals who turn to television shopping networks primarily for companionship.

Dependency in consumer media relations: an application to the case of teleshopping

This paper analyses the teleshopping issue in terms of the Media Dependency Theory. The objective is to verify whether dependency relations between television shoppers and the television medium and television shopping are key variables to explain watching and buying behaviour. A model is proposed that integrates the dependency-viewing-purchase relation, tested on a sample of Spanish television shoppers. The results of the study confirm the direct relationship between the antecedents of dependency, dependency and future intentions of behaviour. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Television Apparel Shopping: Impulse Buying and Parasocial Interaction

The purpose of this study was to explore impulsivity as a motivation for television apparel shopping and to investigate impulse buying, parasocial interaction, television exposure, and television shopping program exposure among television apparel shoppers. One hundred fifty-four questionnaires were returned from television apparel shoppers. A content analysis revealed four broad categories of motivations for television shopping for apparel. Using simple regression analyses, the present research found (a) a positive relationship between impulse buying and television shopping exposure, (b) a positive relationship between impulse buying and parasocial interaction, and (c) positive relationships between parasocial interaction and both television shopping exposure and television exposure.

Personal selling approaches used in television shopping

Television shopping simulates a personalized selling situation: it combines salesmanship with parasocial interaction. Segments of two major shopping channels, Home Shopping Network (HSN) and Quality Value Convenience (QVC), were coded for the use of persuasion strategies by the host, co‐host, or callers. The specific persuasion strategies coded were those identified by Cialdini, strategies that often cause a person to automatically say yes in a selling situation when they might otherwise say no. Although all strategies were evident, the strategy used most frequently in the 104 segments was social proof (35.5 percent), followed by scarcity (28.4 per cent) and authority (18.4 percent).

Motivations for Television Shopping: Clothing Purchase Frequency and Personal Characteristics

The overall purpose of the research was to determine if motivations for shopping from television shopping channels differ as a function of clothing purchase frequency or shopper personal characteristics. A national random sample of 6,000 television shoppers was purchased from a market research firm. Surveys were mailed and 1,598 usable questionnaires were returned. MANCOVA and ANCOVA revealed that age, education, and sex of respondent were all related to motivations for shopping from television. Education was negatively related to television shopping motivations. Older shoppers and women had higher motivation scores than younger shoppers and men, respectively. After adjusting for shopper personal characteristics, analyses revealed that frequent clothing shoppers had higher motivations for shopping from television than either infrequent clothing shoppers or nonclothing shoppers. Infrequent clothing shoppers also had higher motivation scores than nonclothing shoppers.

E‐shopping in a multiple channel environment

In the present study, the authors propose a segmentation schema based on patterns of e‐browsing and e‐purchasing. We examine self‐reports of browsing and purchasing using five specific non‐store channels: the Internet, television infomercials, advertising that accompanies regular television programming, television shopping channels, and print catalogs. Our findings indicate that shoppers who browse and/or purchase on the Internet differ in their use of multi‐channel options related to their perceptions of convenience. Some shoppers clearly want to purchase in the store setting and reject multiple forms of non‐store shopping. Others like to browse various non‐store media and have extended their browsing to the Internet, yet maintain their loyalty to in‐store purchases. Retailers who attempt to “convert” such shoppers to Internet‐only purchasing may alienate the shoppers who rely on the Internet solely for information.

The Influence of Culture on Consumer Impulsive Buying Behavior

Impulse buying generates over $4 billion in annual sales volume in the United States. With the growth of e‐commerce and television shopping channels, consumers have easy access to impulse purchasing opportunities, but little is known about this sudden, compelling, hedonically complex purchasing behavior in non‐Western cultures. Yet cultural factors moderate many aspects of consumer's impulsive buying behavior, including self‐identity, normative influences, the suppression of emotion, and the postponement of instant gratification. From a multi‐country survey of consumers in Australia, United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, our analyses show that both regional level factors (individualism–collectivism) and individual cultural difference factors (independent –interdependent self‐concept) systematically influence impulsive purchasing behavior.

Television Shopping for Apparel in the United States: Effects of Perceived Amount of Information on Perceived Risks and Purchase Intentions

In a two‐part study, the amount and types of information available in television‐shopping segments selling apparel were examined. In Phase 1, a content analysis of 60 segments selling apparel was conducted. In Phase 2, using an experimental format, a convenience sample of 128 middle‐aged women (M = 46 years) viewed a 6‐minute television‐shopping segment selling apparel and assessed perceived risk, perceived amount of information available in the segment, and purchase intentions, and they answered some open‐ended questions about their information‐searching activities. Taken together, results of Phases 1 and 2 revealed that when making apparel purchases, participants needed product and customer service information; however, in some segments, that information was never available or was available in less than half the segments coded. Results also revealed that the amount of information perceived from a television‐shopping segment selling apparel was negatively related to perceived risk and positively related to purchase intent.

Individual Media Dependency Relations Within Television Shopping Programming

This study uses media system dependency theory to review and expand an individual media dependency (IMD) model for television home shopping. The model is extended to account for audience-viewer effects as measured by a newly developed Broadcast Teleparticipation Effects Scale. Viewer relationships with the medium, the genre within the medium, and the genre personae (via parasocial interaction and broadcast teleparticipation effects) are associated with viewing behavior and are highly predictive of purchasing behavior. The act of purchasing serves to reinforce dependencies with the programming, resulting in feedback effects of increasing intensity of persona relationships, exposure, and ultimately, future purchasing. A generic causal model for IMD is proposed, societal implications are discussed, and further investigations are suggested.

Television Shopping

The television shopping phenomenon is analyzed in terms of media system dependency theory. The analysis begins with a discussion of potential changes in structural relationships within the media system introduced by television shopping. We discuss how these structural changes imply changes in microlevel dependency relations. A hierarchy of dependency relations is proposed, with television dependency leading to dependency upon a genre of TV programming and, ultimately, to the development of parasocial relationships with the hosts of specific programs. Using measures of television dependency, parasocial interaction, demographic variables, and buying behavior, a model is proposed and tested upon a random sample of viewer-buyers from a major television shopping service to explain the relationships among the viewer-buyer, the television shopping program, and the television medium. Results indicate that genre dependency plays a central role in the pattern of relationships.