Teleservices in the US: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Shopping from home appears an intuitively more attractive proposition in the North American environment than perhaps anywhere else in the world. This article reviews the rather mixed experience of operators in the US in practice and considers in particular the prospects for growth of some of the more advanced interactive schemes. At the end of 1988 J.C. Penney's “Telaction” service and the IBM/Sears Roebuck “Prodigy Interactive Personal Service” were operating. The failure of the J.C. Penney service in April 1989 has had an unsettling effect on operators, advertisers and suppliers alike. The implications of this failure for teleservice prospects in the US in the years ahead are considered.