Quote:
Originally Posted by Barcey
Not really. They have a long history of how many books were distributed at various suggested list prices and how many were returned but I don't believe they have good data on:
1) What price they actually sold at
2) How many times somebody looked for a book then decided not to buy it
3) How many times a user picked up a book to read the description or sample and then didn't buy it
4) How many times somebody put it in their shopping cart and then didn't buy it
5) What book they bought instead, what author and what price
6) What percentage bought used
7) How all the above changed when the price changed
Amazon has a vastly better view of things.
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I'm pretty sure that Amazon doesn't have that information either. At least not 2, 3,5,6 or 7. You also have a lot of inference there. For example, price rarely comes into play when I chose to buy a book. So trying to mine my browsing habits for price data will give you a lot of bogus information. I might have clicked on a book, looked at it and decided I didn't want it for all sorts of different reasons, or I might have clicked on the book by mistake when my cat bumped my arm or I might have misremembered the title of the book that I was looking for. You can't know just by mining the server logs.
True market research involves a lot of talking to the end customers to understand what they like and don't like and what is important to them. Publishers do a lot more market research than you think. They do research into things like book covers, book titles and price points.