The UK currently leads Europe in the uptake of digital television, with a penetration of 35% at the beginning of this year, according to a new report on the platform from GartnerG2.
Digital TV penetration in the UK rose from 27% last year to 35% and is forecast by Gartner to reach 40% by the end of 2002. In France, Sweden and Spain, the penetration is currently more than 12%.
However, GartnerG2 claims that despite opportunities for retailers, sales are not taking off. “The root cause is that many consumers either don’t realise they have interactive TV or know how to use it,” says the report.
Half of British adults and 75% of French adults do not realise that their interactive TV subscription allows them to buy products via their television sets, the survey found. Of those UK consumers who knew they had interactive TV services, 35% have not used them, saying that they are not interested in the services offered; more than 40% said they have not got around to figuring out how to use the system.
Davnet Cassidy, an analyst for GartnerG2, says: “The reason for the lack of success with television-based commerce (t-commerce) is that retailers have not linked their interactive TV presence to TV programming. They need to realise that consumers will not use the TV like they use the internet, to purposefully seek out products for sale. Retailers urgently need to move away from the ‘build it and they will come’ attitude and work hard to focus on a clearly defined sales proposition for a defined target audience.”
Gartner recommends that retailers use interactive TV to reach consumers that the traditional PC internet cannot reach. Half of interactive TV users do not use PC-based web access and are typically less educated, blue collar workers on average incomes, when compared to the PC user group.
