Technology enhancements have impacted our lives in many ways. One part of our lives that has largely gone untouched by technology up to now is the experience of reading a book. The sensations associated with physically handling a book, the smell of the pages, and the touch of turning pages are difficult to replicate with e-books. E-book hardware has been introduced with little success, but retailing giant Amazon aims to change that trend.
Amazon has introduced an e-book reader called Kindle. It retails for $399 at Amazon.com and is supported with more than 90,000 available titles . Positioning for Kindle is the convenience of having so many books at your disposal. It is a wise positioning strategy because positioning Kindle as somehow being on par with the experience of reading a paper book would be futile and not very credible.
Early feedback on Kindle has been positive considering Amazon is currently out of stock. Only time will tell if Kindle catches on or becomes another unsuccessful e-book format. But, even if it fails, interest shown by consumers in e-books will likely advance development of the format so that we get closer to the point where a product does achieve widespread adoption by consumers. Who knows, Kindle may be the product that is at that point now.