Thailand ebooks Market Research Study and White Paper. Determining Thai readership motivations and habits in order to determine market viability of a dedicated e-reader - ThailandeBooks.net

1. Presented by:
Patrick Fyock - Ron Lee
Bicky Prajapati - Natalie Soper
Thai readership:
Motivations and habits
Determining marketability of a dedicated e-reader

2. Overview
● Background
○ Habits & Motivations
○ Marketability
○ History in US Market
● Objectives
● Methodology
● Analysis of Research
● Recommendations
● Limitations
● Ideas for future research

3. Background Overview
Purpose of Study:
● Learning Thai reading habits and motivations
● Determining marketability of an e-reader
● Researching the history of e-reading

4. Background
Studying reading habits in Thailand
Surveyed 89 Thai Nationals
● How often they read
○ Everyday, A few times a week, Almost never
● Why they read
○ Education, Professional, Enjoyment
● Where they read
○ Home, Work, School, Other
● How they read
○ Book, Website, E-Book, Magazine

5. Benefits of e-books / Platform
(Ramifications of wide spread adoption)
In order to properly analyze habits, we must
start with a premise: The Benefits
● Cost
(Perhaps the single biggest benefit of e-readers / e-books is there is no paper.
Digital products have extremely lost costs which are nearly non-existent)
● Enhanced Accessibility
(Increased sharing of knowledge and ease of sharing ideas worldwide)

6. Benefits of e-books / Platform
(Ramifications of wide spread adoption)
● Friction Free Economy / More Efficient
Model
(Removing barriers to entry through self publishing models, which is typically the
case with companies that launch e-readers, typically has the effect of directing a
higher percentage of the actual sales proceeds from the sale of the product to the
author themselves. This is a good thing)
● Overall Potential Long Term Effects:
People, Economy, & Environment.
A. Increased Competition in Pricing. B. L More Efficiency in Economy. C. Lower
Environmental Impact. D. Potential to Decrease Costs of Education

7. Status of Market - History of ebooks
Worldwide - Highlights
● 1971- Michael S. Hart launches Project Gutenberg and starts off by making a
digital copy of the Declaration of Independence
● 1985 - Commercially eBook Launch. (14 full years later) Voyager Co. The
Voyager Co. (first referred to as 'Expanded ebooks' which were intended as add-
on digital goods to movie sales.
● 1995 - Amazon.com launches. Over next 10 years, major publishers like Harper
Collins would enter market and new leading ebook sites like BookBin.com
would launch. During that same time Amazon was focusing on it's Global
launches which to date have expanded into Asia only with respect to Japan.
Amazon has yet to enter China or any other S.E. Asia market; including Thailand.
This means the ebook reader from Amazon, the Kindle has no commercial use,
yet. (Note: Downloading of ebooks is also restricted as of 3/13)

8. Status of Market - Thailand Specific
● In Thailand 1.5 million+ people regularly using electronic books through
Ookbee. (Ookbee is Digital publication platform that has over 85 percent of
the market share for e-books in Thailand)
● Low desktop internet penetration in Thailand suggests wider adoption of
ebook platform for readership. But is this really the case? (Something we
hope to learn)
● Initial download data of the application, at least suggests; Thai's are excited
about reading digital pre-packaged goods, besides those on web sites.
Thailand Specific

9. What we did - Methodology
● Method: We used quantitative research methods
● Sample selection: We chose a random sample that was aimed to be in
general representative in age distribution of the Thai adult population
● Data collection: Primary Data collection of questionnaires using
random sampling done via SurveyMonkey.com
● Questionnaire: Questions were carefully written to investigate the
current reading habits, usage and attitudes towards e-readers, motivations to
read, and intention to read more electronically or buy an e-book.

10. What we did - Analysis
● Data analysis: We ran frequencies and cleaned the data then looked at
the mean scores of all scale questions to understand the big picture.
● One-Way ANOVA with all scale questions for each grouping variable to
find differences of means scores between groups.
● Factor Analysis to clean up the constructs.
● Cronbach’s alpha & Compound Variables - Used the results
from factor analysis to create compound variables and run Cronbach’s alpha
on the compound variables.
● Multiple Regression to find the existence and strength of the
relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variables.

11. Frequencies

12. Readership Method Preference

13. Mean Score Analysis

14. Mean Scores for Method Preferences

17. ANOVA

20. Factor Analysis
● Constructs: Motivations for reading
● 8 constructs 7 constructs
○ Reading for Recognition
● 52 items 23 items

21. Compound Variables
Cronbach's Alpha
Score: above .6

22. Multiple Regression Model DV 1
Statistical Significance: =.001
Adjusted R Squared =.137

23. Multiple Regressions Model DV 2
Statistical Significance: =.002
Adjusted R Squared =.095

24. Ideas for Future research - Patrick
Create a new survey
● Add Thai Language
● Rework questions
Create larger random sample
● Survey people randomly
● Survey more people

25. Ideas for future research - Patrick
● Add Thai language to the survey
○ Problem: Current survey has only English
available. Many Thai people do not
understand English enough to be able to
completely understand all questions and
answer correctly.
○ Solution: New survey should have Thai
& English available so that participants
may answer to the best of their ability.

26. Ideas for future research - Patrick
● Reworking survey questions
○ Problem: Some questions did not provide
meaningful analysis. The direction of all
questions should lead to answers that provide
details to one area of research.
○ Solution: Remove questions that have not
provided any meaningful analysis. Research
new questions that may provide a better
analysis of e-reading possibilities in Thailand.