E-books or Paperback?

            My research suggested that the younger that the consumer was, the more likely they were to make their purchases online. Those who did a lot of their shopping online said that it saved them time and gas money that they would have used sitting it traffic and shopping, had they physically gone to the store. Those online shoppers also boasted that they could find better deals online and very rarely had to pay fees on shipping. Another interesting twist was people who bought books that they read on a device that they already owned, which completely eliminated the need for any shipping at all. The young group mostly looked for deals on textbooks that they could only find online. The people in the middle age group purchased mostly books, more specifically, reference or leisure. This probably has to do with the fact that most of them have completed their degrees. The few people who did purchase books online from the older group were the more tech savvy of their generation. This group made the fewest online sales from those who I questioned on the topic.

The people who bought books that they read on their devices seldom noted a reason to ever enter a brick and mortar establishment. The books summary and description are available on the site that they purchase it from. Most have 20-30 pages as a preview to the reader before they commit to the purchase. This is very similar to thumbing through the pages of a book that you would pick up in a brick and mortar establishment. These online store have libraries that you can browse through if you don’t know what you want as well as convenient searches that lead the reader to almost anything they could ever dream of reading. It some situations, it was ever noted that actually having to go to find a book in a store would take more time and effort than the online store.

            The younger 50% of the demographic that I spoke to don’t buy paper copies of books at all. They take up space and in some instances, cost notably more than the electronic version. The older people got, the more attached they seemed to the sentimental idea of their books. They wanted to be able to dog ear the pages and keep their copy to read again in the future with their already extensive collection of books that they had acquired over their lifetime. Amazon, who is one of the largest sellers of the e books, says that they outsell the printed version two to one (Association of American Publishers, 2011).

References

Association of American Publishers. (2011, April 15). Engadget. Retrieved from E-book sales triple year-over-year, paper books decline in every category: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/15/e-book-sales-triple-year-over-year-paper-books-decline-in-every/