Autocross Blogs - Song Liang

The pendants clearance answer is that you tell a story- a story about the viewer, and the product's place in her life. That's how my mother knew she wanted color-coded storage containers, and thousands of other viewers knew they wanted perfume they couldn't smell.

Ten hours later, we stood a few feet from a buxom host as she gushed over the virtues of some nice-looking silver earrings. Her task was especially challenging, since she was selling alone. QVC hosts usually work in a team, with either earrings clearance a product spokesperson or another host. That fosters what one spokesperson I talked to called the "over the backyard fence" feeling of QVC broadcasts. The model is less a sales pitch than a coffee klatch where friends trade tips on hot new products. "They tell you over and over," the spokesperson said, "you're having a conversation with the host."

So, apparently, are many of the viewers-at least in their heads. As one young woman said about her grandmother, whom she was accompanying on the tour, "She talks about them like they're her friends." Her grandmother also buys half a dozen items a week. QVC is expert at creating what consumer psychologists call "parasocial relationships"- bonds that tickle our subconscious in many of the ways that real friendships do. And as anyone who has ever been to a Pampered Chef home selling event can testify, when a friend is pushing the goods, it's very hard not to buy something.

Projecting that sort of intimacy when you're alone on a set isn't easy. As if we weren't watching, the host checked her camera angles, and ran her fingers over the earrings while chatting gaily to the open space. "It's almost like they're coins you've been collecting for years, and you had them made into jewelry." tiffany jewelry She beamed at the camera. "There's a very Aztec feel."