Catalog shopping: Technology and the Internet
Catalog shopping: Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck
Catalog shopping: Postal Innovations and Growth Spurts
During the 1980’s, the catalog industry experienced record growth. The use of sophisticated computers and software aided companies in better targeting their customer mailing lists and managing inventory. A greater number of working families and the elderly enjoyed the flexibility of shopping from home. Acceptance of credit cards streamlined the payment process, and the prevalence of toll-free “800” numbers made ordering easy and economical for consumers.
By the early 1990’s, the catalog business had matured and revenues were flat. The arrival of the World Wide Web, however, transformed the industry during the mid-1990’s. Online mail-order companies such as Amazon.com, Cyberian Outpost, and eToys proliferated. Many such companies failed when the dot-com bubble burst, but those left standing proved both lucrative and influential.
The success of online catalogs such as Amazon. com prompted traditional catalog houses to develop their ownWeb sites. Many companies not only mailed their catalogs but also published them online. At first, paper catalogs produced more sales than didWeb sites, as the established customer base of paper catalogs did not immediately transition to online sales. Eventually, however, the situation changed.Web browsers became ubiquitous, encryption technology (necessary to safeguard credit card numbers from computer hackers) improved and was more widely trusted, and companies began offering “Web only” specials—specific products or discounted prices that were available only online. As a result, Internet sales caught up with, and in most instances outpaced, those of print catalogs.
The success of the Web catalog in conjunction with search engines such as Google began to transform the retailing landscape, since—unlike print catalogs—Web catalogs are universally and instantly available to anyone with a computer and Internet access. Consumers need not subscribe to or receive a catalog to have access to an online company’s products. They are also able easily to compare a brick-and-mortar retailer’s prices with those of online companies. Thus, the advent of Web catalogs greatly broadened the field within which an individual business must compete to sell its products, making every bookstore, for example, a rival of Amazon.com.
