Quote:
Originally Posted by SensualPoet
It's also worth underlining how much the 2011 absence of Amazon in the "touch reader" space allowed other players an opportunity build their businesses (Nook Touch, Kobo Touch and, sadly, missed opportunity for the then over-priced Sony PRS series). At least, until November ...
The moment Amazon rounded out their line-up with a Kindle Touch -- B&N felt the impact directly. The Kindle with Special Offers pricing probably did the most damage. Kindle was relentless with very simple mass advertising: the Kindle is wonderful and its $79. The moment someone wonders into Best Buy looking for a Nook and it's drastically more than $79 -- never mind it is more capable -- the sales conversation gets muddied, diverted or lost altogether.
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I'm always amazed at what great marketing can do for a company. Amazon is touting $79 for Kindle, $99 for Kindle Touch (both with special offers) and $199 for Kindle Fire (8GB).
The Nook Simple Touch sells for $99 now (without ads, but does anyone care?) and the Tablet sells for $249 (16GB).
Am I the only one that sees this as being exactly the SAME pricing for their products? If I wanted an 8GB tablet, I'lll pay $199 for the Fire and if I need 16GB, I'll pay $50 more for the Tablet.
But all I read about is how the Kindle is now $79 (no touch) vs $99 for the Nook and how $199 is $50 less than $249 even though B&N gives us 8GB more internal storage PLUS and expansion slot.
Maybe B&N just needs to join the marketing game and offer some bare bones, stripped down products to compete for the mind-share of bloggers/analysts/reporters. I don't like it as a consumer, but from what I constantly read online and in the papers, it sure seems like the rest of us only focus on the lowest price offering a company has.