These days books are expensive and they consume a lot of space in your library as well. Hence, many prefer to opt for eBooks to actual books. Earlier visiting the local library was a common practice followed by a large number of people but nowadays many prefer to plunk themselves their computers and catch up on some e-Books instead.

A recently conducted survey on the eReader market reveals that eReaders find the eBooks expensive, reports Forrester. The online survey was conducted on 4,706 US consumers in order to find out what value they place on eReader devices. The Surveyors used a Van Westerndorp Price Sensitivity Meter methodology to ask consumers the following four open-ended questions:
1. At what price would you consider an electronic book device/eBook reader a bargain?
2. At what price would you consider an electronic book device/eBook reader expensive but still purchase it?
3. What price would be so inexpensive that you would question the quality of an electronic book device/eBook reader?
4. What price would be so expensive that you would not consider buying an electronic book device/eBook reader?
Much to the surprise of the surveyors, the consumers rated eBooks to be anywhere between $50 and $99. This is way too less as compared to the current eReaders in the US, of which the Sony Pocket Reader is priced at $199 and the Kindle DX at $489.

Around 25 million consumers (approximately 14%) of the total 181 million US consumers believed that the current eReaders priced at $199 were expensive. However, they were still ready to purchase the eBooks at that price. I wonder if this means bring down the importance of eBooks.

Via: Forrester