Is "fancy marketing" the antidote to boosting the book market?

【Cultural Commentary】

Author: WU Yun (Director of the Department of Journalism and Communication, Zhejiang University, Deputy Director of the Research Center for Media and Cultural Industries, Zhejiang University)

The e-commerce platform has taken advantage of the boom of the tide to play the market and launched a "book blind box"; publishing institutions have either personally gone down, or with the help of Internet celebrities and big V, to carry out live streaming with goods, and some of the "fancy marketing" that have recently appeared in the publishing industry have attracted attention. In this regard, some people praise the industry breakthrough innovation, and some people criticize it as drinking and quenching thirst.

In fact, the "fancy marketing" of books has long been practiced in the history of Chinese and foreign publishing, and the influence of some of these practices has even continued to this day. For example, the "one-fold eight-buckle" book that appeared in the Shanghai publishing industry before (the actual price of the book is discounted according to the pricing and then discounted eight times), Penguin Publishing Company prints a paperback book that is easy to carry in small folio to attract purchases, and so on. However, the current endless "fancy marketing" of books is more of a reflection of the structural pain points of China's publishing industry, and also reflects the changes in the overall development environment of the publishing industry.

Since the reform and opening up, China's publishing industry has developed rapidly. Since the end of the 20th century, especially after the popularization of the Internet and mobile reading, the publishing industry has experienced slower growth, rising product prices, rising inventory and return rates, declining profits, and repeated crises in the industry's credit system.

From the perspective of the general environment facing the publishing industry, on the one hand, the attention of the public is being competed for by various online audio-visual content products, the consumption preferences of mass content are changing, and the development of the publishing industry is also showing a certain audiovisual trend; on the other hand, the reading environment is changing, the way, channel and platform of public reading are becoming more and more diversified, and even the concept of "reading" itself is reconstructed. With the renewal and iteration of media forms, reading extends from printed media such as books and newspapers to various electronic screens, and the reading objects also expand from printed text to multimedia information. Publishers must not only confront competition within the industry, but also deal with challenges from cultural consumption alternatives in other industries.

It is in this context that the "fancy marketing" model was introduced into the publishing industry. Compared with the passive transformation, the author prefers to understand it as an active exploration of the publishing industry to deal with the renewal of the consumer environment. In terms of its positive impact, the "fancy marketing" of books has injected new elements into the consumer's book purchase experience, narrowed the distance between books and the public, and has certain practical significance for the publishing industry to get rid of difficulties in market distribution and achieve high-quality development.

However, cultural products such as books have the characteristics of separation of purchase and reading, and the shopping experience is not equal to the reading experience. If consumers participate in the purchase of "book blind boxes", they only buy without reading or find that they do not need to buy, it will affect their brand recognition of publishing institutions and sales entities to a certain extent. This inducing sales model may have a certain effect in a short period of time, but its long-term negative impact cannot be ignored.

Taking e-commerce live book sales as an example, the characteristics of live e-commerce such as strong interactivity, extensive platform, and small time and space restrictions help alleviate the problem of information asymmetry between the supply and demand sides of books. If the publishing institution has a clear theme plan, with the help of live marketing series of theme books, or the use of theme books for knowledge live broadcast, it is not impossible. If the live broadcast breaks through the industry price bottom line to sell books at low prices, it will constitute a vicious competition in essence and will disrupt the normal publishing market order.

From this point of view, if the "fancy marketing" of books cannot respond to the real needs of consumers, the actual effect and value of this market model such as blind boxes and live broadcasts will have to be questioned. More critically, at present, people's psychological price of books is not high, and those "fancy marketing" that deviate from the core reading function of books will inevitably detract from or even dissolve the image of books as cultural products in the minds of consumers, which is not conducive to the high-quality development of the publishing industry in the long run. How can the publishing industry do a good job in product development promotion and market model innovation? The following points are worth emphasizing.

First, maintain the publishing value chain by consolidating and reshaping the scarcity of publishing products. Some of the current practical dilemmas encountered by the publishing industry do not only stem from the problems of product sales methods and market prices, but also from how to consolidate and reconstruct the scarcity of products. In terms of the three major sectors of the publishing industry, a considerable part of the mass publications that simply meet the needs of entertainment are difficult to compete with various new media entertainment products in terms of content and use experience; while the demand price elasticity of educational publications and professional publications is relatively weak, and there are more rigid demands for products in these two sectors. Therefore, the author believes that the publishing industry should not highlight the entertainment tendency too much in the transformation and development, but should carefully build the product core, that is, adhere to the "content is king" and pay full attention to the user's content consumption preferences.

Second, in social marketing and public communication, choose multiple ways and platforms to rationally carry out market model innovation. The publishing industry should be both proactive and rational about market model innovation. In general, it is not appropriate to simply apply the "blind box economy" or live broadcast mode, but should be specifically analyzed for the specific situation of different types of books.

Third, continue to respond to user needs and build reader trust. Products and marketing methods that are not recognized by users will eventually be eliminated by the market. For products such as books that are separated from purchase and use, the publishing industry must pay attention to the value-added services and interactive experiences that are tracked in the process of use, so as to truly approach the hearts of readers and maintain the image of book products from the user's psychological cognition.

Guangming Daily ( 2022-01-19 02 edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily