Katalog vs Nätbutik – en studie om produktpresentation av modevaror inom distanshandeln

Abstract

The survey Distanshandeln idag 2005, made by the Swedish postal service, tells us that web shops started to pop up in the 1990´s and began competing with the catalogue sells in the end of the decade. Ten years ago, it was said that the web shops would take over the distance trade market. Today we know that did not happen. Internet shopping accounted for 4, 2 % of all distance shopping in Sweden last year. Our inquiry is guided by the observation that the catalogue is still in use and moreover, it seems to have changed very little from when we were kids. It might be that the catalogue has potentials that the Internet lacks. Hence, this study aims to identify and describe differences between mail-order catalogues and web shops in the presentation of fashion products. The theoretical frame of reference for this study consists of literature on marketing, brands, and fashion marketing by catalogue and Internet. This is primary an empirical study and the literature's function is that of inspiration and support for us in our analysis and our conclusions. The empirical material consists of a survey on the mail-order company Ellos’s spring and summer catalogue of 2009, and their web shop for the same time period. First we constructed a set of mutually exclusive criteria to apply in our analysis (e.g., colour, perspective and information). A number of standard garments were then chosen, and for each of these garments, we applied our model and performed a comparative analysis. To give the reader a better understanding of the survey's result, we included images to show specific phenomena along with our findings. The main differences between catalogues and web shops could be summarized as follows: Web shops provides immediate information about stock status and campaign prices, this cannot be done in the catalogue. The catalogues on their hand provides the customer with a lot of ideas on how to wear, and how to combine the different garments. This could easily be achieved in the web shop too, and we find it a bit surprising that it is not.