The traditional writing industry has lost ground to e-readers, tablets and other mobile devices, and Amazon is sitting fairly with its Kindle platform. Once the $114 Kindle with Special Offers ships May 3, Amazon should improve its 60 percent share in the e-reader market. Yet there’s a catch – those Special Offers are advertisements, a move that has many worried about the shape of the reading experience to come.
Putting ads on a kindle; pay less
The price of the Amazon Kindle has fallen a few times since the first generation was introduced at $399 in 2007. In order to try and compete with the iPad in the e-reader market, the ads were put on it this time in the price deduction. The Kindle with Special Offers is slated to ship May 3. Target and Best Buy will sell the ad-supported version of the Kindle 3 in stores at that time.
Founder and CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos state it is a “chicken in every pot” move. Every person will want the Special Offers $114 kindle:
“We’re working hard to make sure that anyone who wants a Kindle can afford one,” he said via a statement.
Reader response to a Christian Science Monitor article about the price cut seems to echo the fears most customers have about an advertisement-based Kindle. With 99 cent books, one reader would be okay as long as the ad based e-kindle was free. The price of books becomes a different issue then. Another reader concurs that a $25 discount isn’t enough to make up for the presence of ads, however one thing experts believe Amazon has done right is to isolate the ads to the Kindle’s screensaver and the bottom of the home screen.
“It’s very important that we didn’t interfere with the reading experience,” Kindle director Jay Marine told the Associated Press.
Price matters
Getting to the $99 Kindle for Christmas 2011 is very important, TechCrunch believes. That is what the $114 Amazon Kindle is leading up to with its Special Features. 99 is a magical number. Most marketing would suggest this.
This is not real anymore though according to research done at the New York Columbia Business School. The Columbia study showed that the “dollar-minus” approach bringing it down to 99 cents was not nearly as effective as bring it up a penny for a “dollar-plus” approach. There was a 3 percent increase in sales of dollar plus method products. This is because they did not seem as manipulative to customers.
Citations
Christian Science Monitor
csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0413/Will-readers-accept-ads-in-exchange-for-a-cheaper-Kindle
Columbia Business School
gsb.columbia.edu/ideasatwork/researchbriefs/7314376?&top.region=main
Knowing and Making
knowingandmaking.com/2011/04/new-research-99-no-longer-optimal-for.html
TechCrunch
techcrunch.com/2011/04/11/amazon-kindle-99/
Kindle sales tripled after last price drop
youtu.be/PaAFm_fZQ2A
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