Traditional Performance Assessment

According to the Sheth-Newman-Gross model of consumer behavior (1991), there are five components of consumer values that drive choice and are of significant strategic value: functional, emotional, social, epistemic, and conditional.

I. The functional value of a book refers to the book's information media capabilities.

The more readable and preservable the book is, the higher it's functional value is.

Readability of a book depends on print and paper quality: the pages' background should contrast the text and the printed text and pictures are to be sharp. In poor quality print the paper is gray and transparent showing through text from the back of the page and the text and pictures are blurry, causing tension to the eyes, when read.

Preservability of a book depends from the time and frequency of using the book: as the book grows older, the easier it gets to accidentally tear a page and the more dirt and stains the book gathers if often used, making rereading the text more difficult.

II. The emotional value of a book is the value that is created through associating the book with special feelings and memories. The higher is the book's capability to arouse feelings and affective reactions in the reader, the higher the emotional value of the book is.

III. The social value of a book is the perceived association of a book with a certain social group or groups. Books generate social value when they are associated with positive or negative stereotypes of demographic (age, sex, religion), socioeconomic (income, occupation), cultural/ethnic (race, lifestyle), or political, ideological segments of society.

When the information about books one reads and have read is available for others to see, allowing to associate the reader with a certain social group, the book could be said to generate social value. This happens when, for instance, a reader puts a list of his favorite authors and titles on his web profile of a social network or even just by reading a book in a place where others can identify the title or genre of the book, or also the mere fact of a book being read.

This also works the other way around, when not the associated social community is aware of the reader, but the reader is aware of that community. In this case the reader relating himself to this community via reading generates the social value of the book.

IV. The epistemic value of a book is it's ability to arouse curiosity, create novelty or satisfy an aspiration for knowledge. A book generates epistemic value when is is capable to supply something new or different from what is already known.

Novels when reread usually do not provide as much epistemic value as the first time when they were read, since its end and plot turns are known in advance.

V. The conditional value of a book is the value that is determined by the conditions of the specific situation, in which the reader makes a buying choice.

A book generates conditional value when there are urgent matters, that accentuate the functional or social value of that book.

For example a book from an obligatory class reading list could posses a huge conditional value for a student during the exams session, while have possessed none a few years earlier.

Figure 3.1 The five values influencing book consumer choice (adopted from Sheth, Newman and Gross 1991)

In a book, dedicated to the peculiarities of the digital book Stork (2000) notices that the sets of advances in technology are not yet mature and some of the advantages brought their own inherent problems: resistance to change, font issues, lack of a standard format, digital rights management, reproduction of graphics and reader hardware.

Table 3.1 The disadvantages of digital books (adopted from Stork 2000) Challenge/

Definition Resistance to

change

Change reluctance in core habits: readers can see and feel paper based books, digital books have no physical representation

Font issues

Fonts on a computer screen at sizes equal to those used in printed materials are not as easy on the eyes. Allowing text to be

reformatted to fit the physical dimensions of the digital book reader may lead to a loss of a part of the message of the book

Lack of a

standard format No agreement on how to put the words on a page.

Digital rights management

When copying is as easy as duplicating a file, piracy becomes a major problem. Documents encrypted to be read on one device can not be copied to another device

Reproduction of graphics

Full color graphics, complex tables, and figures are not easily reproducible on small screens

Reader hardware High price of readers and the variety of incompatible hardware, software, and formats

In a report by O’Hara (O’Hara and Sellen 1997) dedicated to the comparison of reading paper and on-line documents the authors conduct a laboratory study in order to give an understanding of why economists at the IMF always mark up and review their colleagues’ documents on paper and choose to read important documents from paper rather than computer screens.

The research pointed out the following observations (O’Hara and Sellen 1997):

I. It was found that the ability to annotate while reading was important in enforcing an understanding of the source document, and helped in planning for writing.

Table 3.2 Study observations on reading behavior I (adopted from O'Hara and Sellen 1997) I. Annotating

behavior Reading on Paper Reading from a Screen Integration of

annotating with reading

Smoothly integrated Cumbersome and detracted

Source editing, or note-taking is done after reading with little reference back to

the source document

II. It was found that movement through documents was important for information organization, for reference, and for checking understanding.

Table 3.3 Study observations on reading behavior II (adopted from O'Hara and Sellen 1997) II. Navigation

behavior Reading on Paper Reading from a Screen Integration of activities because it is: one-handed, not

always accompanied by immediate

Fails to make use of explicit cues such as page length to assess document

length

The inability to see a complete page undermines the use of this feature on-line, but it appears pictures were used

as anchor points

III. Laying out pages in space was found important for gaining an overall sense of the structure of a document, for referring to other documents, and for integrating reading with writing.

Table 3.4 Study observations on reading behavior III (adopted from O'Hara and Sellen 1997) III. Spatial

layout Reading on Paper Reading from a Screen

Integration of annotating with reading

Laying out paper in space allowed the visualization of a great deal of information, and provided a holding

space for quick reference to other documents

The restrictions on field of view for on-line documents led either to

lost resolution through shrinking the documents, or the usage of

overlapping windows

Forcing to plan in advance how to position and size the windows in anticipation of future requirements accept input at a time, subjects in the on-line condition experienced difficulties integrating reading and

writing

Concluding, the aspects that a consumer traditionally values in books were defined and arranged according to Sheth-Newman-Gross’s classification (1991). Secondary data collected from researches on reading behavior and digital book traits illustrates, that digital books clearly loose in terms of traditional performance to paper books:

- Switching to digital books requires changing core habits, since they have no physical representation;

- The lack of a standard format and the digital text being reflowable lead to the loss of the massage put in the page design and text positioning of the book;

- Digital books offer small flexibility and control over spatial layout;

- Full color graphics, complex tables and figures are not easily reproducible on small screens;

‐ Annotation in digital books seizes to be an integral part of reading;

‐ Slow book navigation techniques require additional efforts form the user;

‐ Digital books require expensive hardware, which is not always compatible with every digital book format.