Is QVC Falling To eCommerce Shopping?

Shopping from home wasn’t always synonymous with eCommerce and mobile commerce. Before smartphone ubiquity, buy buttons and Amazon voice ordering, there was once a time when the only way to buy from home was to order products off the television using a phone with a cord. Recently the home-shopping business model, such as the case of QVC, may be starting to feel the effects of retail’s digital push.

QVC reported that their U.S. sales fell 6 percent in its third fiscal quarter. In November, executives reportedly warned the declines had extended into the crucial holiday quarter. The low sales numbers have also hit QVC Group’s shares, which lost a quarter of their value last year.

QVC’s business model does have a few things going for it. The company says the average viewer ranges between ages 35 and 64, with 87 percent of its U.S. customers being women and 88 percent homeowners. The average age ranges between 35 and 64 years. QVC says that once shoppers start buying from QVC, its customers buy an average of 24 items a year.

But Mike George, CEO of QVC, reportedly attributes QVC’s sales drop to a number of factors, including an increased number of department store promotions last summer, round-the-clock election coverage and the Summer Olympics competing for viewer attention, and problems with specific brands.

“I never discount Amazon on anything, but I don’t think they’re trying to do what we do,” George was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal. He noted that if competition from Amazon and other online retailers were to blame, the effects on sales should have presented more gradually. Two-thirds of QVC shoppers regularly shop on Amazon, the company says, but for different reasons.

And it’s not like QVC has abstained from cultivating an online presence. QVC acquired flash sales site Zulily for $2.4 billion in a cash-and-stock deal back in 2015 to build up its omnichannel reach and shift from its televised home-shopping approach. In late 2016, the company launched Beauty iQ network, a cross-platform beauty shopping experience.