Companies jump on interactive bandwagon - retail industry

Discount Store News, Dec 6, 1993 by Arthur Markowitz

Interactive electronic shopping is starting to mean more than QVC and Prodigy. In fact, it's exploding as a retailing format as a variety of companies, including Apple Computer and the Time Warner conglomerate, unveil cutting-edge technologies and begin offering services.

The newest players and their activities include:

* ESPN. The sports and entertainment cable TV channel ran NASCAR Shop Talk, a shopping program featuring stock car merchandise and memorabilia, as a half-hour special after the Mountain Dew Southern 500 Sept. 5.

DSL Communications, a marketing and production company, arranged the license deal with NASCAR and handled production, merchandising and order fulfillment. Four of five more shows are porjected for the next year.

* Bloomberg Ltd., the on-line financial information service, launched Bloomberg Shopping Mart in October. The service is accessible by more than 32,000 computers worldwide. Pictures of the merchandise can be viewed on 9,000 color terminals, with more such monitors to be offered to subscribers.

So far only a few specialty retailers like Brooks Bros. and 800-Flowers are on the service. But Bloomberg expecpts to attract other merchants because its terminals are used by stockbrokers and other financial information customers, a highly affluent market with limited time for shopping. The company said shopping was a natural adjunct and service to provide to its subscribers.

* WTTW, Chicago's Public Broadcasting Service channel, aired Chicago Holiday Gift Exchange, a 45-hour teleshopping test presented over two weeks at the end of October. Merchandise came from cultural institutions such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Field Museum and Lincoln Park Zoological Society, which received most of the revenues. WTTW has the highest rating of any PBS station, is carried by about 220 cable systems and claims to reach 6 million viewers.

While some public interest groups said the test degraded the idea of public television, WTTW said the teleretailing didn't reduce air time for its regular programs. WTTW may start a teleshopping service offering goods from cultural institutions if the test is considered a success. Other PBS stations are very interested in its test and the station's next move.

* Ameritech, a regional telephone company, began a shopping test in 40 Birmingham, Mich., homes last month that subscribe to the Interactive Channel on the local cable TV service. Custom Connect TV, the shopping service's logo, provides listings for 2,100 businesses including about 300 that display ads electronically.

Four companies developed the technology. One was Cableshare, Inc., the Canadian company that provided the technology for JC Penney's failed Telaction TV and phone shopping venture in Chicago. Custom Connect TV allows users to select a store in four different ways: alphabetically by name, type, activity or category group, or from a personalized listing of up to 40 businesses.

* Apple Computer, Red-gate Communications, a marketing company, and EDS, an information technology company, this month will distribute a CD-ROM home shopping catalog to about 30,000 home and small business computer owners; the catalog disk, which also includes articles excerpted from a number of books and magazines, is eventually expected to be distributed via other interactive media like cable TV.

The pilot En Passant showcases on CD-ROM 21 catalogs from 18 catalog retailers. Several catalogs have enhanced features like changing colors of clothing and audio descriptions of products. Consumers can also create an order list of items for possible purchase as they browse through the disk. Merchandise is organized into 10 different areas like Fashion Avenue, For The Home, Electronic Gallery, Personal Finance and At The Office. Consumers can access departments or specific retailers.

The test denotes Apple's aggressive marketing of CD-ROM peripherals as part of its push of computers featuring multimedia technology.

* Viacom Inc., a major TV cable operator, and AT&T will test an interactive cable system in mid-'94 in Castro Valley, Calif., that will include a shopping service.

CUC International, the computer and phone shopping service, will provide the actual home shopping feature for the test. Cable viewers will be able to access CUC's 250,000-item database and order goods via the interactive TV remote control terminal. Consumers can also access other CUC services like travel, even viewing hotel rooms using the remote control.

* Eon Corp. (formerly called TV Answer) will provide the order processing service for the wireless digital interactive network that it developed and that is due to be launched by local licenses in mid-'94 in nine cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, Dallas and Houston. These markets contain just over 25% of the nation's TV households.

The Federal Communications Commission is to select the winning licenses for Interactive Video and Data Services (IVDS) by the end of this year. The winners in their market will provide the actual communications service that uses designated radio frequencies to transmit data to and from TV sets. A remote control enables consumers to access and interact with a variety of services, including shopping. A dozen retailers, including JC Penney, 800-Flowers, CUC and Barnes & Nobles Direct, are among the 70 companies that have signed up to provide IVDS services.