Mail orderMail order involves the p

Mail order
Mail order involves the purchase of a product featured in a catalogue. It is a very
traditional form of marketing that is also referred to as home shopping. The latter
also includes online purchases and teleshopping, but mail order shopping still
accounts for the majority of the home shopping purchases. Home shopping
has grown rapidly in recent years, in the UK as much as 20 per cent per
year (Brassington and also Pettitt, 2003). Besides mail order catalogues, more
modern media are also used, such as video tapes and CD-roms. Some companies
place the whole catalogue on their website. Sometimes catalogues are sent
by shops. In that case, they are not a home shopping medium but serve as an advertising tool to stimulate people to come to the shop. In non-store catalogues,
the customer has to order the product by mail.
Traditional mail order catalogues suffer from a bad image. Often, the quality
of the products offered used to be low, and the range of products and deals was
often ill-targeted, did not always fit the customers’ needs, and was often regarded
as irrelevant. Catalogues had the reputation that they were only used to seduce
people into buying expensive products that they do not really needed, because
of the seemingly attractive customer credit schemes. Delivery of the products
was often extremely slow. However, sophisticated database technology allows
more careful targeting, and the quality of the products and the speed of delivery
have improved substantially.
On the other hand, consumers tend to like catalogues. They are seen as less
pushy and more low pressure than direct mailing or telemarketing. People can
browse through them at their own leisure and convenience, and they are often
seen as interesting and amusing. They save time, and payments can often be
delayed. Yet the products cannot be seen, touched or tried, and they are not
immediately available. A telephone call and a direct mail have an extremely short
lifetime. Once the call is over, or the direct mail is opened, the impact is gone.
Catalogues have an impact for a longer period of time. Furthermore, they allow
the company to sideline the expensive trade channel. But home delivery requires
extensive and efficient back office logistics. Finally, in business-to-business
marketing catalogues are often essential and accepted selling tools.