The Canadian Book Consumer and Awareness
Over the next two years BookCanada will be undertaking a comprehensive ongoing survey on the behaviour of Canadian book buyers. How do they purchase? What do they purchase? How do they find the books they purchase? Are their reading/purchasing habits shifting from print to digital?
We will be releasing our first report later this year so stay tuned, but in the meantime here are some tidbits on awareness from our March 2012 survey. We asked each book buyer (1050 of them) how they became aware of the books they purchased (2950 of them). These books were obtained in many formats (i.e., print and digital) and purchased from a multitude of retailers (i.e., online, e-retailers, brick-and-mortar).
How do book buyers in Canada become aware of the books that they buy?
- In-store displays (17%)
- Recommendations from friends (12%)
- Read an excerpt or teaser (9%)
- Bestseller lists (7%)
- ‘Professional’ reviews (7%)
Authors, libraries and schools are also very important in creating awareness.
Putting all the different responses together we can also determine which media channels are creating the awareness that leads to a purchase:
- Online (32%)
- Print (23%)
- In-store (21%)
- TV (4%)
- Radio (1%)
