TV Shopping Dreams Exposed as a Nightmare

BEIJING --- When the official China Daily reports on the "promising state of an  industry" it is often a sign that a previously hot growth area is under threat.  And so it was recently when the English-language mouthpiece turned its attention to the subject of TV shopping, which saw massive growth from 1994 to 1997, but which has suffered badly over the last twelve months. 

The China Daily, the government's English propaganda newspaper, is famous for  adding a couple of vaguely worded sentences on "problems" to its reports on the  state of the nation which is done in an attempt to satisfy foreign readers who tend to prefer some balance in their news.  

Unfortunately, the paper's recent "investigation" into TV shopping which presented the industry a prime area for growth came at the same time as a  prominent Chinese language publication "Business Times" revealed results of a  survey conducted by the China Economic Monitoring Center (CEMC) which showed a  very different picture. 

The 1,230 people CMEC survey conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi'an,  Chengdu and Wuhan indicated that Chinese city residents have little interest in TV shopping. Although more than 80 percent "knew about" TV shopping, 57 percent said they seldom watched the programs. 

While the China Daily pinpointed Zhujiang TV and Guangzhou TV as the first to  introduce the concept to China in 1992 and the region that propelled the  national growth that has followed, the Business Times report concluded that Guangzhou consumers were the least interested in TV shopping with only 22 percent of respondents giving a positive answer. 

While both papers focused on Beijing TV's Home Shopping as a leading example  among the over 100 TV shopping services now operating in the mainland (93  percent of Beijing respondents to the CEMC survey said they watched TV  shopping), only 4 percent declared themselves "very interested".  

This poor response from the buying audience backs up statements from BTV Home  Shopping itself which told CMM that after three years of constant growth, 1998  sales will be down on the 1997 total of RMB 120 million (US$14.5) attractively  posted by the China Daily. 

In BTV Home Shopping's case, the main reason for the reverse in fortunes is poor product supply. All the Chinese broadcasters that have moved into TV retailing  have faced problems in importing and distributing as well as achieving the  volume purchases needed to compete on price. Fierce competition has also come  from discount warehouse operations, many of which are foreign backed and operated and the subject of their own China Daily articles.  

In fact, the main reason given by the China Daily for the popularity in TV shopping (its convenience) fared badly in the CEMC survey with only 24 percent of respondents saying they preferred this type of shopping because it was  "convenient."  

Indeed, the very China Daily vision of millions of couch potatoes adopting TV  shopping as their preferred means of purchasing non-essential products is  contradicted by the most critical question in the whole CEMC survey.  

Asked whether they agreed with the statement "TV Shopping will become one of the major shopping means for me and my family" 64 percent of the respondents  answered "absolutely impossible".  

Of course, in its problem section China Daily did touch on some of the key issues such as the high prices, inferior after-sales services and misleading advertising. It even complained about the use of sexy pictures when some  commodities are introduced, noting that all these problems damage the credibility of TV stations.