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By Paul Biba

images.jpgEconsultancy has an analysis of a new survey of 476 publishing industry professional and 1,800 consumers conducted by the Harrison Group. You can find the press release for the report, with a lot of detail, here.

Econsultancy says:

… publishers are simply blind to what consumers really want.

According to the survey, 74% of publishing industry professionals think that a standard subscription model is just dandy, while 87% of consumers prefer other models, including unlimited access at one price, one-off purchases and micropayments.

It’s not surprising that payment models are a contentious issue, but they alone don’t reflect the full extent of the rift between publishers and consumer.

Harrison Group found that “consumers insist on the freedom to share content with friends, family and colleagues, and they expect that digital publications can be shared among smart phones, tablets and e-readers,” which puts consumer expectations in direct conflict with the world view of many publishers, particularly newspapers and magazines.

The Harrison Group’s Vice Chairman, Dr. Jim Taylor, put it simply: “Consumers expect to pay only once for the publications they buy and have it available on any device they choose to read it on.”

Yet as we’re seeing, many publishers are treating new devices, such as tablet devices like the iPad, as silos. Want access to the iPad version of a particular newspaper, for instance? With some, you’ll have to shell out for it even if you already subscribe to the newspaper’s website, and it might even cost you more than the print version.

That, not surprisingly, highlights another rift: consumers understand that digital publishing will reduce publisher costs, but according to the Harrison Group, “only 5% of the savings [publishers] will reap from digital production will be passed onto consumers.”

via @jafurtado

 
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