Shopping With Friends: Audience Perspectives on Television Shopping

Abstract

Despite both the economic success and shear spectacle of television shopping, very little research has looked at what keeps millions of viewers tuned in to what could be considered nothing more than networks devoted to a constant stream of advertisements. Building on the theoretical framework of parasocial interactions, this article devises a typology of television shopping viewers based on in-depth interviews conducted with audience members that range from heavy to light in terms of their viewing patterns. Audience members fall into 3 different categories of viewer-shoppers: skeptical-ironic, practical-hesitant, and expert-compulsive. Each of these categories of viewer-shoppers negotiated different meanings of television shopping programming that challenge ideas about isolated individuals who turn to television shopping networks primarily for companionship.