Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Ebook Buyers Are Loyal to Specific Retailers, Especially Kindle, iBooks and ... - Digital Book World

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The walls are indeed high and hard to climb for living in the walled gardens of retail ebook Kindle, Nook and iBooks, According to new data from the Codex Group, a New York-based industry research firm book readers.

According to a November survey of 2,042 buyers ebook, 86% buy ebooks from only one retailer, Most Likely Kindle, Nook and iBooks, Codex Group president Peter Hildick-Smith told me.

What this Implies date que point is the vast Majority of ebook retail activity in the U.S. is happening in so-called “walled gardens” – digital content ecosystems run by companies like Amazon and Apple que consumers keep searching, discovering, buying and consuming all or most of Their ebooks, songs and movies in one place. If the reader has an Amazon account and has bought Kindle ebooks, They are very Likely to continue doing just that.

For the big retailers with Significant market share in the U.S., this is good news: Their current customers are mostly loyal

.

The news is not so good for the smaller ebook retail operations run by Sony, Google, Kobo, Samsung and others. The Majority of these retailers’ sales happened Within the 14% of ebook buyers who bought from more than one retailer – and, even worse news for que group, 32% of unit sales among que group were Kindle ebooks

.

Translation: Customers of Those smaller retailers were much more Likely to go elsewhere to buy more ebooks and the Most Likely place for Them to go was Amazon

.

The implications of this data are fairly clear:

1. The big que ebook retailers have created fairly seamless reading, buying and storing experiences have loyal customers who will proceed to buy ebooks from Them. So, these retailers probably do not have to do all that much to keep these customers save is to continue to do what they’ve been doing.

2. The smaller ebook retailers have an uphill battle to fight When It Comes To not only attracting new readers but keeping old ones. And Their biggest foe in fight que is Amazon, Which is the most successful ebook retailer When It Comes To luring rivals’ customers -. Likely through price promotions, exclusive content and ubiquity

For the big retailers, I think the recommendation is very clear – and perhaps counter to trends we’ve recently Witnessed: It pays to offer price promotions in efforts to select Attract new customers but perhaps not to cater to old ones; que the price wars we’ve Witnessed in the ebook world Likely have not done very much for the retailers engaging in Them Them aside from help lose a lot of money. Due to high customer loyalty, returning the reader is very Likely to buy an ebook Offered by Kindle, say, in almost matter the price – so why sell below cost to Them

?

The trick for these retailers over the next year or two will be to balance income-generating sales to loyal customers and money-losing efforts to Attract new customers.

For the small retailers, the picture is fairly bleak. It’s clear, though, that They need to think of ways to keep Their small customer base more loyal, perhaps through better marketing and sales of dedicated e-reading devices que promotions or reward loyalty.

Related: Peter Hildick-Smith of the Codex Group presented cutting edge consumer data at Digital Book World 2014. Make sure to be there next year When more of the latest data and insights are presented at DBW 2015. Register now for the lowest possible prices!

Jeremy Greenfield

Jeremy Greenfield is the editorial director of Digital Book World. Opinions presented here are his own. Read more of his work here.


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