Its now February and still we find Asda are continuing to turn up the discount screw on books.
This weekend we visited their store in Bristol and found many shelves filled with the £1 'b format' offers we previously covered, but now also some special £3 large format offers and one rack of £8 hardbacks. Has anybody done the maths on just how many ‘offers’ Asda has today on books and just how many units this adds up to?
The interesting question someone should be asking is, who is merchandising and supplying this depth and range of offer across the Asda estate and whether it is just a seasonal offer, or part of a more permanent one?
Today the UK press is covering Asda’s ereader offer, which is a bit strange given they don’t have an ebook offer – yet. The reader however will turn heads not because of its quality, but due to its price ticket of just £52.
The View Quest Colour eBook Reader or Mediabox 5" Media Tablet with eBook, Music and Video playback is described as,
the perfect travel companion. You can play music and videos with its built in speakers and a 5" widescreen, read eBooks in portrait or landscape mode, store and view photos and images and also has a built in voice recorder. The tablet is backlit for night time reading, and has a power saving mode to reduce eye strain and improve battery life.
We found many available from all sorts of sites but could not get one for less than £99. They claim it is fully compatible with Adobe ACS4 DRM, so on the face of it and despite its screen, its cheap.
So the question is where ASDA is going on books and the strategy of the other UK supermarkets, on what is becoming a high profile market opportunity?
3 comments:
Another question for you? If Asda's strategy is a success will Wal-Mart, who own Asda, adopt it in the USA. Given their size, they could very quickly become a major player in books/ebooks.
Matthew
WalMart and Asda are in many ways joined at the hip.
Walmart is the biggest retialer of physical music today and why on digital music, books, games, film etc
They have the reach, marketing clout and infrastructure to be whatever they want
In store offer is important but increasingly they can also offer virtual sales, streaming etc
On one hand you have Amazon growing to be a supermarket and on the other the supermarkets looking at non food opportunities. These guys know how to cream the top sellers and how to price and market them all they need to do is make the consumer connection.
The only negative in Asda is their Demographic profile (not heavy book buyers) but the likes of Tesco shifted their in the past
Walmart, America's biggest retailer, is to sell Verizon flavor iPhone 4s in 600 US stores from tomorrow.
The company is trailing one price for public consumption - $199 for the 16GB model. It already stocks AT&T iPhones, so there should be plenty of accessories to play with.
Verizon's iPhone Day kicks off on Thursday, February 10, when the cellco retails the first Apple phones that work on the company's CDMA network.
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