Harris Poll on E-reader's habits

Here’s yet another survey suggesting e-readers are here to stay and growing.  Here are some of the highlights of the poll:

• One in six Americans (15%) uses an e-Reader device up from less than one in ten (8%) a year ago.
• Those who do not have an e-Reader, one in six (15%) say they are likely to get an e-Reader device in the next six months.
• Overall, 16% of Americans read between 11 and 20 books a year with one in five reading 21 or more books in a year (20%).  Those who have an e-Reader, one-third read 11-20 books a year (32%) and over one-quarter read 21 or more books in an average year (27%).
• One-third of Americans (32%) say they have not purchased any books in the past year compared to only 6% of e-Reader users who say the same.
• One in ten Americans purchased between 11 and 20 books (10%) or 21 or more books (9%) in the past year.   Those who use e-readers, 17% purchased between 11 and 20 and 17% purchased 21 or more books in the past year.
• Half of both e-Reader users (50% and non-users (51%) say they read the same amount as they did six months ago.
• 24%  of non e-Reader users say they are reading less than they did before (compared to just 8% of e-Reader users), over one-third of e-Reader users (36%) say they are reading more compared to just 16% of non-users.

Google Wallet's impact on retail

Mobile Commerce Daily reports that it does not believe Google Wallet app will have much impact on short term retail sales but there are long-term benefits such as loyalty conversion rates and increased qualified sales. 

“The enrollment rate for loyalty programs could reach up to 70 percent thanks to NFC-enabled mobile wallets such as Google Wallet.  If you are paying with your phone, you already have the phone out so the barrier to converting someone is radically lower.” per Matt Wise, CEO of ePrize. 

“We see the launch of Google Wallet as a significant step forward in the hugely expanding North American and global mcommerce marketplace,” says Gary Schwartz, MEF North America chair and CEO of Impact Mobile, Toronto, Canada. “Google’s product brings awareness to the viability of mobile payments across a wide audience of consumers and merchants.”

Mobile commerce is expected to grow significantly in North America this year, having lagged behind many other countries.  Students are often early adopters of new technologies, so stores should expect that shopping-saavy students will soon be looking at more mobile payments.

Amazon Tablet Announced

In the most recent iteration of the device wars, today Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced the release of Amazon Kindle Fire.  The Android-based tablet weighs 14.6 ounces and features a 7-inch screen and will retail for $199.  The new Kindle Fire will be ready to ship on November 15.

Kindle Fire uses Amazon’s proprietary cloud-based and syncing technologies that would allow all content to be backed up on Amazon’s cloud storage.  Additionally, Kindle Fire uses Whipersync technology that allows for automatic, wireless syncing that does not require any plug-ins to computers.  Mobile browsing is capable using Amazon’s own Silk browser that will allow for faster page loading and supports Adobe® Flash® Player.  Perhaps the only surprise is that Amazon moved off at least one proprietary element by using the Android operating system.

In at least some of the early press, the Amazon Tablet was viewed as "No iPad Killer."  Instead some industry analysts believe it is going to be a “poor” technology and will only be a "stopgap" in order to get a tablet out the door for the 2011 holiday season.  The opinion is attributed to the fact that the tablet uses a slower processor and using a failed Playbook hardware platform.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see what features Amazon builds into the tablet, particularly given the comnpany's conitinuing interest in the digital textbook market. 

Must Read for Marketing on Facebook

A recent white paper by BulbStorm discusses 10 myths and misconceptions about marketing on Facebook.   Matt Simpson, developer of Facebook apps suggests asking the following questions before launching your Facebook marketing campaign. 

• Am I seeking virality? If the premise of your promotion is to go viral, it’s a huge red flag. That’s not to say that a creative concept and well-built technology won’t drive organic growth. But don’t expect to spam the news feed and get away with it.
• Am I using Facebook functionality? Be careful here! Do not ask fans to post, like or comment on content on your wall or photo albums. Do not use “like” buttons as a voting mechanism. You must run your promotion through a third-party application.
• Am I collecting contact information? At the end of your campaign, you’ll have to contact your winners to distribute prizes. Remember to collect their contact info in your promotion app, because you cannot contact them through Facebook.

Lowes Employees Armed and Ready for Tech Savvy Do-It-Yourselfers

Retail Systems Research has another interesting piece of news this week.  Lowes is arming their employees with 42,000 I-phones in order to engage better with the highly knowledgeable weekend warriors-men and women. This is after Home Depot announced its 10,000 Motorola initiative for their employees. The big box chains obviously are getting that "an uninformed, uneducated employee on the selling floor was more damaging than having no employees on the selling floor at all." The i-Phone will feature several functions - inventory checking, showing how-to videos and use lowes.com in store aisles.
The lesson in this article is an age old lesson in retail- engage with your customers and offer the buying experience that they expect.

Cengage and Verba Join to Offer Students More Pricing Options

Cengage Learning, and Verba announced they are working together to offer college students a variety of online pricing and format options for textbooks.

CengageBrain.com is Cengage's online course materials site where students have the choice to rent or purchase from the company's learning products. From the site, students can rent textbooks or purchase print textbooks, eTextbooks, individual eChapters and audio books. Verba's web comparison tool (Compare) is integrated into the college store website so that students do not need to navigate through multiple sites to see a wide range of pricing and format options.

"Students want options. Providing access to CengageBrain.com pricing within Verba's online comparison shopping tools will help students be aware of more format and price options," said Stephen Hochheiser, Vice President, College Store & Public Affairs for Cengage Learning.   The article goes on to note that by enabling the CengageBrain links, college store customers will benefit from existing affiliate programs and stores can also increase market share by satisfying more of their students through the stores' websites.

Money for New TextBook Authors

While we have not reported on the open source movement much lately, developments continue.  Recently, the Saylor Foundation, a non-profit organization, announced that it would pay new textbook authors up to $20,000 to put their textbooks under a Creative Commons license allowing free use to anyone while keeping copyright protection for the author. Of course, books submitted must meet the Foundation’s set criteria. The foundation currently has more than 200 college textbooks in the collection free to anyone in the globe as part of the Foundation’s mission to drive down cost of education to zero.