Catalogs and e-Commerce
A recent article (December 4, 2006) in Business Week entitled "Catalogs, Catalogs Everywhere" talks about the changing role of catalogs in the age of Net Shopping.
The article talks about the increasing role of e-commerce or Net Shopping as part of the channel mix of many retailers, and in particular, Catalogers such as Victoria's Secret. Victoria's Secret will mail, according to the article, 400 Million Catalogs in 2006. Also, the article points out that in 2002, 16.6 Billion catalogs were mailed versus 19.2 Billion in 2005. So much for the web killing the catalog business.
What do you think of the role of the catalog in B2B? Changing? How?
What do you think of the role of the catalog in the age of the internet? What should it morph to?
Gene A. Wright
posted by Gene A. Wright @ 2:47 PM
1 Comments:
What do you think of the role of the catalog in B2B? Changing? How?
I think the role of the catalog in B2B is changing in a similar way to that of the B2C market in that I don’t see it going away. One has to consider who the end users are in a business market to understand why catalogs are not going away. For example, in an industrial plant setting, trade services type personnel like to use catalogs because they are easy to use, they can write notes in them for future reference, don’t need to be plugged in or booted up, etc. From an engineering perspective my department maintains a library of catalogs for reference purposes. Many times, catalogs provide detailed technical and performance information that is simply not available on the web. I personally find it much easier to review data in a catalog rather than the web and when I find something I need in a printed catalog I can simply put a post-it note on the page of interest rather than printing a hard copy or back tracking via numerous mouse clicks to see the data again.
What do you think of the role of the catalog in the age of the internet? What should it morph to?
I see the B2B printed catalog role changing so that it becomes a compliment to a web based catalog. Many times I start looking for an item in a printed catalog and then get current information, pricing and availability via the web. As with any tool the web has its place but it is not the end all solution. I can see printed catalogs to continue as being good sources for techical data and ready reference because they are readily available, easy to use and are a tangible reminder of both the company and the products or services it provides. I can also see different types of catalogs. For example, smaller versions sent more frequently can serve as reminders to customers about a suppliers products or special offers and are less apt to be discarded vs an unsolicited email.
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