How Does an Online Retail Catalogue Work?

An online retail catalog is used by merchants to introduce or promote his business and product to customers. This is usually a list of merchant's product and often includes short description and picture of the product. Online retail catalogues are usually in magazine or book style. Also, these are usually mailed to customers and sometimes posted online or posted on the merchant's website to have a wider dissemination. Catalogue marketing is relatively expensive compared to postcards, fliers and other types of direct mail advertisements.

The large size of a printed catalogue requires the marketer to use a lot of paper to produce the catalogue. Sometimes, customers want to avoid much paper consumption that's why, they don't like to receive mail catalogues; they prefer surfing the net and looking online retail catalogues on every website. A marketer can print the catalogue on recycled paper to reduce the amount of resources catalogue creation consumes or use biodegradable ink to make the catalogue easier to recycle.

With this also, catalogues can fill up customer's mailbox. This happen every time several merchants send their catalogues on the same day. However, there is a do not call list that prevents marketers from making phone calls to potential customers, but there is no comparable list for catalogue mailers. A customer can send a request to the merchant especially when the customer does not want to receive mails from a certain merchant anymore.

Sending mail catalogues is also a very expensive thing to do. Merchants spend a lot of money with these catalogues so they usually send catalogues once or twice a year. Customers will sometimes have outdated information about the product. This happens usually when the company changes its product or does necessary changes on their product the time you received the catalog. When a company has a short term sale, it can send out a smaller mailing, such as a flier.

Market segmentation reduces the expense of catalogue production. A department store can send out one catalogue that lists men's clothing and another repco catalog for women's clothing. A large retailer may separate the styles of the product. For example, a retailer can distribute one catalogue for home appliances and one catalogue for clothing. Targeted catalogues typically use broad classifications because production costs would be too high to make a custom catalogue for an individual.

To have a systematized sending of catalogues, the merchant can list the customers who are always purchasing the product so that when the time of catalogue distribution comes, they know who to prioritize in giving catalogues. Sometimes, customers are the one who are requesting the catalogue. And this is how an online retail catalogue works.