Category: Tablet Commerce

Publishers, marketplaces, app developers, and marketers, alike are still trying to master digital publications.

Despite the fact that the ebook is nothing new, it is continuing to generate tremendous shakeups within the ereader and tablet commerce industries, as industry giants in the selling and publishing worlds battle it out for the best selling advantage, and while tiny indie players dig their own niches to attempt to achieve their own successes.

Recently, Rakuten purchased the massive ebook firm, OverDrive, for a hefty $410 million investment into e-publications.

The Japanese retailer has now bought the massive American ebook company as a part of growing push that Rakuten is making into the “sharing economy” within the American mobile and tablet commerce market. OverDrive is a company and app that offers ebook rental services to schools and libraries in the United States and Canada. This is not the first step that Rakuten has taken into the North American ebook market. The head of the company’s global ebook business, Takahito Aiki pointed out that Canadian ebook giant, Kobo Inc. Was purchased in 2011 for $315 million”. That was a part of its “phase 1”, whereas the OverDrive purchase is said to be a part of its “phase 2”.

Not all tablet commerce deals in ebooks have been as peaceful, as Amazon and Penguin Random House are apparently disputing.

Even more recently, Penguin Random House and Amazon were said to be in dispute in their negotiations, once more. This is not a rare circumstance for Amazon when it comes to the issue of ebook pricing of titles of ebooks. Hundreds of bestselling authors that have accused Amazon of hurting writers and misleading customers. Moreover, a six month battle occurred between Amazon and the publishing company called Hachette, last year, as that brand saw a massive drop in its own ebook sales. While that specific battle ended last November, it’s clear that Amazon is facing a similar problem, yet again, only with a new publishing giant..

One group that appears to be performing quite strongly when it comes to the ebook market in sales over tablet and mobile commerce is among indie publishers. The Perspective book series, for example, has done exceptionally well for itself in offering its readers both ebooks and print copies. Indie publishers have greater freedom with ebook sales in terms of where they would like to sell and what price tag they would like to add. This can sometimes give them a pricing advantage over even large publishing companies, in a way that was not possible in the print market.

More research indicates that mobile shoppers do their research on smartphones and tablets, but buy elsewhere.

According to the results of a survey that was conducted by TimeTrade, a consumer experience specialist, m-commerce is alive and well, but consumers are not necessarily using it for making purchases as much as they are investigating the products, services, companies, and brands, that interest them.

After they have informed themselves over mobile commerce channels, shoppers will make purchases elsewhere.

The information that consumers are obtaining over m-commerce is usually found over digital and social channels of different forms. The research looked into the buying habits of shoppers, with the intention of discovering some insight that would allow retailers to be able to enhance and polish the experience that they provide to their customers. What the research results have shown was that retailers are discovering that the more personalized the in-store experience can be, the better and more lasting the impression and brand loyalty they crate among shoppers.

This m-commerce trend has caused retailers that had previously been online-only to open up brick and mortar shops.

Equally, consumers have also stated that when it comes to their own shopping habits, they would still rather go to a physical store so that they will be able to check out the actual product and make their final purchasing decisions. They do enjoy the opportunity to obtain more information about an item that they are considering, by using their smartphones or tablets, but after they have informed themselves, they will often move on to the brick and mortar shop to complete the transaction.

Among the respondents to this mobile commerce survey, 65 percent said that if an item that they want to buy is available at a store that is located nearby, they would prefer to make the trip to that location in order to shop, instead of placing an order over a smartphone or tablet. The primary reason that was given for that preference was that they wanted to be able to “touch and feel” the product before buying.

The respondents also said that when they are seeking to make a purchase, only 13 percent would actually buy over m-commerce, while 42 percent of them had never actually bought anything over a mobile device.