Since the legislation in favor of TV shopping industry development has been released in the USA in 1980s, TV shopping has developed prosperously, the global well-known TV shopping companies like CVN, QVC, and HSN have set up one after another.
Currently, TV shopping accounts for 8% of American's total retail sales, while the figure is only 0.2% in China. China's TV shopping program has also increased rapidly since 2004, from 28,000 hours in 2004 to 93,000 hours in 2007, which up 82% compared to 2006. The TV shopping programs are usually scheduled at non prime time like midnight, noon and evening, and the local channels are the main platforms for TV shopping programs.
China's TV shopping industry scale was about CNY10.5 billion in 2007, of which the TV direct-sale and shopping-focus channels accounted for 59.1% and 40.9% respectively. With the standardization and support of national policies, the TV shopping industry chain composed by logistics, information flow and capital flow has been initially formed.
About 10% TV shopping audiences in key cities fulfilled a purchase. According to our investigation in ten cities, about 71.11% of TV shopping audiences make a phone call to sellers, more than 50% audiences believe that the product attractiveness, price and product performance are main reasons to determine whether to buy, while the exaggerating advertisement will make them refuse to buy. Moreover, audiences are lack of confidence in TV shopping, and only 17.65% of the audiences have firm belief in TV shopping.
The household appliances and mobile phones are the best selling products. According to our investigation, the popular products from high to low are as followings: household appliances, mobile phones, beauty products, digital products, computer, sports & healthy products and garment & jewelry, the average shopping expense is about CNY1396.6. The products are selling in TV are mainly durable consumables, and fast consumables, however, influenced by the markets of Taiwan China and South Korea, the non-material products, like travel products, finance and insurance products, have also launched moderately.
The sales of China' s TV shopping will reach CNY20 billion in 2008. Meanwhile, with the growth of China's total retail sales in the following ten years, TV shopping will account for about 3%, that means it's sales will increase to CNY500 billion.