Direct marketing is MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS other than direct selling between consumers and companies. Although there is no consensus regarding what constitutes direct marketing and what is ADVERTISING, direct marketing includes catalog marketing, DIRECT MAIL, TELEMARKETING, direct-response television, and on-line retailing. Catalog marketing, begun in the United States by Montgomery Ward in 1872, allows consumers to evaluate choices in a catalog and make purchases either by mail or telephone. There are over 7,000 catalog-marketing companies in the United States. American consumers spend over $100 billion annually on catalog sales. Many consumers in rural areas with few shopping alternatives, those in urban areas where travel is often congested, and people working long hours and only able to shop for personal needs late in the evening prefer catalogs. Catalog marketers maintain extensive databases about their customers, customizing the catalogs consumers receive based on past purchases, mailing catalogs based on the timing of past purchases, and analyzing the effectiveness of each photograph used and number of items per page. Catalogs are expensive, so marketers attempt to maximize the effectiveness of their efforts. Direct mail is the use of letters, brochures, samples postcards and other printed material sent by mail to potential and existing customers. Mailing lists are critical to the success of direct-mail marketing. Most companies maintain extensive databases about their customers, consumer requests for information, and other prospective customers. List brokers rent the names and addresses of magazine subscribers, association members, contributors to campaigns, credit-card applicants, and a variety of other groups. Direct marketers rent lists most likely to include people similar to their current customer groups. While expensive, direct mail allows marketers to personalize messages and focus on those consumers most likely to be interested in their goods and services. Dedicated TV channels and INFOMERCIALs are forms of direct marketing. QVC and Home Shopping Network are the leading direct-response television marketers. Jewelry, housewares, clothing, and electronics products have been successfully marketed using direct-response television. Infomercials and dedicated television shopping networks are expensive but continue to be popular. On-line retailing, often predicted to surpass all other forms of direct marketing, is the sale of products through computer connections. In the late 1990s, many companies created websites, promoted them through banner advertisements and other traditional advertising, and waited for consumers to come. To a large extent it did not happen. U.S. consumers frequently use the World Wide Web to research companies and products but are reluctant to purchase products through computer connections. Even with on-line security systems, only a few product categories— primarily books, music, and travel—are gaining consumer acceptance of on-line retailing. The electronic retailing world is replete with DOT-COMS, which were unable to gain consumer acceptance. Some on-line retailers are adding hyperlinked toll-free numbers at each stage of the on-line buying process, attempting to reduce the “bailout rate” (the high percentage of customers who begin to purchase online but do not complete the transaction). Many on-line retailers are using their websites to increase and improve communications with customers.