Page 61 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014to circumstances and devise a new way of getting their books to readers. This new product made them realise that there was a different way of distributing them by taking advantage of a wider commercial network. It is quite probable that this was one of the first evolutionary processes an industry had to embark upon in order to survive.The threats facing all the actors who intervene in the generation and distribution of cultural content mean that the future will consist of integrating their initiatives within the digital ecosystem we live in. To the processes we can already see occurring, the success of which nobody doubts, must be added a new layer to addthe Internet is bound to have it, and it will hardly even take a couple of days to arrive.The ROPO effect is happening in the retail sector, that is to say Research Online, Purchase Offline, but the other way round. People prefer to look in shops, touch things, leaf trough them, look at them and end up buying them on the Internet, taking advantage of all the convenience of having things delivered in almost 24 hours. In the first pages of the book Crossumer. Claves para entender al consumidor de nueva generación, Víctor Gil and Felipe Romero provide a detailed analysis of this new purchasing habit.It is certainly the case that this phenomenon is occurring in all fields such as fashion, electronics, travel and so forth because consumers still want to know, touch, smell what it is that they are buying.This effect is also generating a very unfavourable situation for bookshops because they have to assume a whole series of costs for shop rental, employees’ wages and so on just to stay open as a showcase for their products, but without putting any money in the till. The customer then goes home and makes the purchase from there.Putting price policy and customer experience to one side, what is needed is the definition of a model that integrates the new digital consumer with experiences in a physical point of sale—the bookshop—that connects the purchasing process with new reading habits. It is sufficient to say, for example, that only 36.6% of bookshops have their own Web site, so there is still a long way to go.Some studies recommend measures such as giving customers a digital copy of the book for free or at a symbolic price when they buy the paper version. Others propose recovering bookshops’ role as meeting places, places for debate and the exchange of ideas, giving importance once again to the idea of the face to face meeting, the warm glow of conversation and the chat over a coffee.Another recommendation is to convert thethe value demanded by the present‐day consumer, the same consumer that moves in an entirely online environment.Models are needed that in‐ tegrate the digital consumer with experiences in a physical place and which turn the digital into a consequence of the physicalAccording to Antonio Mías, an expert in the cultural industries, bookshops start off from a very disadvantageous position for two main reasons, overproduction of titles and the shortening of the life cycle of the products. Personally, I would venture to say furthermore that in many cases their sales conform to the Pareto principle (80/20) in which 80% of their sales can be accounted to 20% of the titles which, in the vast majority of cases, are of bestsellers. They could be regarded as seasonal sales associated with particular dates such as Christmas time and the occasions for launching bestsellers.Frequent readers are becoming more divorced from bookshops. They are no longer the place to spend hours leafing through books searching for something new or a rarity. There is no longer time for customers to chat with booksellers and listen to the recommendations they make in the knowledge that the customer will leave the shop with a couple of books tucked under their arm. People hardly even order any books from bookshops. Any bookshop onAC/E WHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 5: CULTURAL SECTOR MARKETING AND CONSUMPTION THROUGH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGYCURRENT PAGE...61