SAN FRANCISCO — Catalogers are equipped to excel in e-commerce because they are experts in building consumer trust, H. Robert Wientzen, president/CEO of the Direct Marketing Association, told catalogers yesterday in his opening remarks here at the 17th Annual Catalog Conference & Exhibition.
“Trust is something you don’t get with a click of a mouse,” he said.
Building trust has three components, Wientzen said. First, catalogers need to offer good merchandise at a good value. Second, they need to have excellent logistics and customer service. Third, they must become experts in customer relationship management — the key to customer loyalty, he said.
In a recent DMA survey of 142 catalog members, 76 percent of consumer catalogers reported that they have e-commerce components to their businesses. Seventy-three percent of those catalogers are making a profit from their e-commerce component, according to the research findings. While only 43 percent of business-to-business catalogers surveyed were e-commerce enabled, 80 percent of those catalogers reported that they have earned a profit on the Web.
