chapter 15 Retailing

where to buy Kindle?
1. online at amazon.com
2. at any best buy
3. some Target store and target.com
4. some airport gadget vending machines

chapter 7 business marketing

business marketing is the marketing of good and services to not only individual but also businesses, for the purposes  of making a different product with it other then personal consumption.
amazon Kindle buys most of its parts, therefore it is a participant in business marketing  .like i posed before in the riposted extra page：

• The electrophoretic display is made in Taiwan because the expertise developed from producting flat-panel LCDs migrated to Asia with semiconductor manufacturing.
• The highly polished injection-molded case is made in China because the U.S. supplier base eroded as the manufacture of toys, consumer electronics and computers migrated to China.
• The wireless card is made in South Korea because that country became a center for making mobile phone components and handsets.
• The controller board is made in China because U.S. companies long ago transferred manufacture of printed circuit boards to Asia.
• The Lithium polymer battery is made in China because battery development and manufacturing migrated to China along with the development and manufacture of consumer electronics and notebook computers.

chapter 8 segmenting and targeting markets

when Amazon Kindle first came out in 2007, it seemed to be targeted to early adopters---- people who like new gadgets, yet later on, from reviews and Amazon.com discussion boards, the company found that regular people, not gadget guys, are buying the Kindle in droves.  this maybe part of the 'Oprah effect'.
i just found out that back in 2008, Oprah did an episode on Kindle with CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos. please see video at (http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Take-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon-Kindle-Class). data shows that women handle 75% of family finances and make or influence 80% of consumer purchases(MKTG chapter 8 4262-86) . through the Oprah show, Kindle got the quick exposure it needed towards female audience, and became a trend among house-wife and female professionals.
 how Oprah.com demographic fit in to Kindle Target Market

US Demographics 

Updated Nov 18, 2011 • Next: Nov 30, 2011 by 9AM PST

		INDEX
30%	Male
70%	Female
13%	Under 18
36%	18-34
30%	35-49
21%	50+
77%	Cauc.
11%	Afr. Am.
4%	Asian
7%	Hisp.
1%	Other
		Internet Average

		INDEX
60%	No Kids
40%	Has Kids
19%	$0-30k
28%	$30-60k
28%	$60-100k
26%	$100k+
35%	No College
48%	College
17%	Grad. Sch.
		Internet Average

Kindle
42%        Male
55.9%     Female
2.3%       17 or younger
22%        18-34
38.4%     35-54
37.3%     55+
because the price of a Kindle has drop dramatically since 2008.  this demographic(Apr.2011) is going to change.
Amazon.com has never officially disclose this demographics of Kindle user. the data above was collected by individual researcher via online survey.(see the survey result page)

chapter 11 developing and managing product

developing a new product in an existing product line not only help a company attract new customers from the target market to buy, it also pushes existing customers to renew/update/upgrade the product they already have.
Amazon Kindle has recently developed a new product line----- the kindle Fire, and improved its existing Kindle e-reader. all of those development were done right before the Holiday season. on top of this, Amazon Kindle also lower the price of kindle.
clearly, Amazon Kindle recognized the competitive advantage of an I pad (its color display). a need for an improvement is therefore unavoidable. ruling out the possibility of  using colored e-ink technology which still need to be further perfected. Kindle used the same type of display as an Ipad. the biggest different from a Fire and an Ipad is that the Kindle Fire runs on android platform (as used in smart phones).  the biggest selling point for the Fire will be Amazon's very own web browser, the Amazon Silk.


personally, i think Kindle Fire still need a lot of work, it commercialized too quickly. i sure acknowledge that holiday season is the golden time to push a new product. but with only the older android platform, it may mislead buyer to think that the Fire isn't "smart" enough. this will eventually cause depreciation of the product and douse the desire of many potential buyer.
its like putting a picture of the Eiffel tower in front of the Eiffel and letting people choose... the answer is obvious...