Online
spending may be increasing, but the venerable catalog is doing anything but
fading away. In fact, it is still an important part of business for retailers.
“It’s
basically a marketing tool,” said retail analyst Eric Beder, a managing
director at Brean Murray, Carret & Co. “The beauty of a catalog is that you
don’t have to go online to see it, so you can use it anywhere.”
More
than 12.5 billion catalogs were mailed out to homes in the U.S. last year,
according to the Direct Marketing
Association, the largest global association for the
marketing community. And there are still those who use the catalog for
what it was originally intended for: More than 89.6 million Americans bought an
item from a catalog last year.
A
couple of years ago, some retailers decided to cut back on publishing catalogs
in order to save money. That move proved to be a hard lesson in the power of
the catalog, said Ken Ebeling, senior vice president of membership at the
Direct Marketing Association.
“Sales
plummeted,” he said. “They realized if they don’t keep their catalogs out
there, their e-commerce will decline.”
In
fact, some businesses that have never published catalogs before have decided
now they want in.
