Homeshopping in the US

2020 IMPACT

US homeshopping sales increase in 2020 as COVID-19 keeps consumers at home

As the COVID-19 pandemic raged across the nation in 2020, many US consumers actively sought to avoid shopping in brick-and-mortar stores as much as possible in order to minimise the risk of infecting themselves and others with the coronavirus. As a result, US e-commerce sales posted historic gains over the course of the year, as consumers turned to home delivery for a greatly expanded share of their retail needs.

Mail-order pharmacies continue to dominate the US homeshopping channel

In 2020, the commanding heights of homeshopping in the US continued to be controlled by mail-order pharmacies, with the three largest players in the channel all explicitly positioned as being retailers of this type - something that has been the case in every year since at least 2017. Indeed, the two largest retailers by sales in the homeshopping channel - CVS Health Corp, which is also a leading player in the US drugstores channel, and Express Scripts Holding Co, a subsidiary of US health insurance giant CIGNA Corp - together accounted for well over half of total US homeshopping sales in 2020 all by themselves.

Qurate Retail adjusts its product mix to adapt to life during the pandemic

Although mail-order pharmacies dominate the US homeshopping space, the retailer that is most strongly associated with homeshopping in the minds of consumers across the nation is Qurate Retail Inc. Qurate Retail owns both QVC and HSN (previously Home Shopping Network), which are the two homeshopping TV networks in the greatest number of households in the US - making Qurate by far the most important player in TV shopping in the country.

RECOVERY AND OPPORTUNITIES

Despite projected growth, homeshopping faces mounting pressure from e-commerce

The release of multiple coronavirus vaccines at the tail end of 2020 holds out the hope that the US may return to something approaching normality again by late 2021. With the COVID-19 pandemic in the rear-view mirror, consumers are bound to return to store-based retailing again in droves - and likely with added gusto, given the old saying about absence making the heart grow fonder.

The launch of Amazon Pharmacy poses a major threat to US mail-order pharmacies

Because of the outsized importance of mail-order pharmacy retailers in the US homeshopping space, any potential challenge to these entities’ sales must be viewed as a peril to the performance of the channel as a whole. As such, e-commerce giant Amazon.

As IKEA discontinues its catalogue, the future of mail-order shopping looks bleak

Inter Ikea Systems BV - better known simply as IKEA - is the largest homewares and home furnishings stores operator in the world in terms of retail sales. For decades, one of the principal ways in which it kept consumers appraised of new product offerings and other changes to its merchandise assortment was through its printed catalogue, of which it typically printed and distributed millions of copies on an annual basis, up until very recently.