QVC Inc. claims that it stands for "Quality, value and
convenience." Last week, respondents in a survey of online shoppers agreed.
The online counterpart to the $2.4 billion (annual revenue)
home shopping network,iQVC, was named top cyberdog,
scoring the highest level of overall customer satisfaction among online consumers in four
of 11 product categories: electronics, apparel, toys and health/beauty.
The results were announced recently as part of Harris Interactive'sinaugural "ecommercePulse" survey of 103,127 consumers
who use the Internet.
Steve Hamlin, vice president at iQVC, alluded to new plans
to keep network- and Web-site-integration momentum going.
"We are in the process of designing new initiatives on
our Web site that deal with the integration of our two mediums," he said. "There
will be much more video on our Web site, and we will have more of the look of QVC."
The ecommercePulse study encompassed charting satisfaction
of cyber shoppers from more than 180 e-retail sites in just 19 days from its proprietary
database of 5 million respondents..
The study captured buying behavior by providing competitive
performance data and tracking brand awareness, site traffic, buyer conversion rates,
online and offline spending and customer satisfaction for each Web site covered. All of
the key e-commerce players were covered within a category.
The report also claims to be the first research study that
tracks offline revenues generated by shoppers who used the Web to find product
information, then consummated the transaction on the phone or at a retail store.
Moreover, Harris' methodology accounted for workplace
respondents, as well as home respondents.
QVC's tack is representative of the strategic emphasis that
many cable-TV home shopping channels have placed on developing synergies online.
Former QVC chief Barry Diller, now chairman of Home
Shopping Network parent USA Networks Inc., recently tried to buy Internet search engine
Lycos Inc. to beef up USA's e-commerce properties, Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch Inc.
NBC bought a 20 percent stake in ValueVision International
Inc., and it is spinning off an online unit called NBC Internet, or NBCi. That unit
includes Internet portal Snap, which is co-owned by the "Peacock Network" and
CNET.
Other winners in the ecommercePulse study included:
eBay Inc.
for auctions
Amazon.com Inc.and Books-A-Million Inc. tied for
books
Apple Computer Inc. and Dell Computer Corp. tied for computer
hardware.
ZDNet, Parsons Technology and Multiple Zones
International Inc.'s Mac Zone were
recognized in a three-way tie for computer software
DVD Express Inc., Amazon.com and CDNOW Inc. tied in the music/video
category.
Travelzoo.com Corp. took honors
for general travel
Mothernature.com Inc. tied with
iQVC in health/beauty.
Analysts that recommend Comcast Corp., which controls QVC,
have pointed to iQVC as an underappreciated asset.
The unit's revenue in the first quarter of the year more
than doubled, to $16.6 million, suggesting an annual run rate of $66 million, a recent
report from Banc of America Securities LLC noted.
