Spatial diffusion of teleshopping. Empirical Studies in the Netherlands

Résumé En

Teleshopping is not the most popular electronic service to be provided. Previous experience with mailordering could be facilitate the introduction of teleshopping, although the demographic and socio-economic profile of teleshoppers deviate from the mean average mailordering consumer in sofar that they are younger and have a higher income level. Empirical evidence show that people facing time and/or mobility constraints are most likely to become daily consumer goods teleshoppers. Apart from the expected double wage earners with tight time schedules, also elderly detached people are engaged into teleshopping, the latter for reasons of lack of mobility opportunities. For regional planning teleshopping could provide peripheral rural areas with department store goods, "public-access" systems being more adequate than "home-access" systems asking for videotex experiments that will not have a required threshold. This will depend also on the strategy used to introduce videotexsystems under suboptimal free market conditions. A nationwide introduction of a minitel (top-down approach) could outweight this disadvantage, regional videotexsystems will not be successful unless a national network is provided by combining all regional efforts (a bottom-up approach).