Shopping on the telly

ahmedabad: want to buy a roti-maker or a health-care product or a folding easy-chair? you can get all these and more without having to go out into a marketplace in this heat. just switch on your telly and we are a phone-call away. this is an oft-repeated promo that is beamed and aired frequently by all tele marketing companies. tele-shopping, though a creditable and reliable industry with whopping turnover the world over, is in its infancy in india.launched in 1995, telly-shopping is yet to attain an industry-status in the country. while its proponents argue that telly-shopping which in marketing terms is called direct response tv (drtv) or electronic retailing is an extremely positive industry which has fast-growth potentials for both the buyer and the seller, the apprehensions, on the other hand, are that the final product may turn out to be not exactly same as that shown and promoted on the telly. as a housewife says, "a kitchen chopper shown on one of the telly-shopping shows seemed useful and attractive and hence, i ordered it. however, what i finally got wasn't exactly like that shown on the tv." adds another housewife, "in one of the shows anchored by sudha chandran, they demonstrated an electronic massager, which seemed versatile. however, when i bought the product, i found that it wasn't shock-proof." with a section of consumers alleging that the final product does not match the description on the telly and the entire information not being given to the viewers during the demonstration in the programme, there is a lot of suspicion about this kind of marketing. however, those in the business of tele-shopping argue that such apprehensions are not based on facts. "initially, when tele-shopping was launched about five years ago, there wasn't good response on the part of the consumers. there were problems mainly because of certain concerns, such as credibility of products, secondly, the after-sales services that were offered and thirdly, the genuineness of the products offered. people were not aware of the concept and hence, these apprehensions were only natural," says a marketing executive of the mumbai-based united teleshopping and marketing co ltd. he insists that the initial idea that people had about tele-shopping being a way of fooling people to buy substandard products, has diminished in the last two years and now more and more people are opting for tele-shopping. after all, he says, it saves their time and energy. in fact, he insists, on an average, there are 50 purchases a day through each of the telly-shopping programmes. and though the exact size of the market is not known, industry sources say that the annual turnover of the telly-shopping industry is anything between rs 75 and rs 85 crore today. telly-shopping, however, is not an easy business, as it appears to be. it involves huge investments in both hardware and software, in telecommunications and warehousing and other infrastructural facilities. as one marketing executive of asian sky shop, a part of zee tv says, "initially we had problem in terms of volume, as people thought we were 'fly by night' operators." in such a situation, the brand name plays a significant role. for instance, asian sky shop had the backing of a brand name, zee tv and this made its initial problems phase out within a year and the programmes on asian sky shop were soon a hit with the housewives, the main target group of tele-shopping. however, with more and more women joining the work-force, soon the telly-shopping companies will have to chalk out new strategies and identify the target group closely. and of course, tele-shopping cannot replace actual shopping, which for most families means an evening out. as one departmental shop-owner says, "tele-shopping can only supplement actual shopping, never replace it. we have a number of customers who enquire about asian sky shop products. most of the time, people see a certain product on the telly, but do not order it immediately; instead, they go to a shop to see the actual product, feel it and then only do they make up their mind whether or not to buy it." nevertheless, telly-shopping by virtue of being a time-saver, is here to stay.