Business | The shopping channel

Amazon has Hollywood’s worst shows but its best business model

It aims to make video pay by applying the techniques of e-commerce

Three people on a sofa watching TV. A James Bond-type character on the screen holds a gun in one hand and a kettle with a price tag in the other.
Image: Vincent Kilbride

As bullets fly around a high-speed train carrying a former Miss World and a gang of spies through the Italian Alps, shopping is surely the last thing on viewers’ minds. Yet should they press pause, they will see an option to buy items from the show: the heroine’s gold necklace, her red dress, or the teetering stilettos in which she is improbably running rings around the villains. Only her exploding perfume is not yet for sale.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The shopping channel”

From the September 2nd 2023 edition

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