QVC's Manual for Survival in the Amazon Era

Yesterday,I remarked in passing that what Amazon.com has done to QVC Inc. was a fascinating topic for a separate post. Well, at least a few of you seem to be fascinated, so here goes.

About 10 years ago, when I got interested in QVC, it frequently had the best prices around for appliances and electronics (two categories that are easy to comparison-shop). QVC had massive scale compared with other retailers; it could move tens of thousands of units of a product over the course of a day. That kept average costs low, which meant that its prices were very competitive, even if you accounted for shipping. I kept track of its "Today's Special Value," or TSV, which is what QVC called its loss leaders, and occasionally I bought something that was dramatically cheaper than where I could find it elsewhere. For example, I got KitchenAid's top hand mixer with extra accessories for $10 to $20 less than I could find it anywhere else.