Title The buying perception of book blurbs: a linguistic study and survey amongst sci-fi/fantasy readers from all over the world /
Translation of Title Knygų anotacijos įtaka pirkėjui: lingvistinis tyrimas ir mokslinės bei maginės fantastikos skaitytojų apklausa visame pasaulyje.
Authors Diederik, Emma Eline
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Pages 84
Keywords [eng] blurbs, thesis, buying perception, book, digital blurbs, linguistic, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Science Fiction, survey, international, Facebook groups, book selling, customer experience, likert scale
Abstract [eng] This master thesis The Buying Perception of Book Blurbs by Emma Diederik, aims to investigate how readers make their choice about the books they buy online. The goal of this research is to analyse the different and already existing categories of blurbs to see what their effect is on the consumer’s perception to purchase. To ensure this research will fulfil its goal, the objectives of this thesis are the following: - To identify categories that have impact on the buying perception of the target audience, - To identify textual elements in blurbs in order to estimate the different types of existing blurbs, - To identify and analyse elements of content of the blurb that could lead to increase (potential) customer buying perception, - To compare behaviour of the target audience through the online ranking of blurbs. To test the effectiveness of the blurb categories on the target audiences, an online survey was distributed to multiple Facebook groups dedicated to the Sci-Fi / Fantasy genre. The survey was divided into two separate parts. The first of which would ask ‘misleading’ questions to establish insight into what participants felt like was the function and effectiveness of a blurb in general. The second part used a five-point Likert scale in which the participants had to rate individual blurbs based on how they felt about the effectiveness of that particular blurb. The blurbs used in this research were gathered and categorized based on a review of existing linguistic literature, after which random sampling was used to choose which blurbs would be in the survey. As a summary for the results, three quarter of respondents say that blurbs help them deciding to buy a book, which means that blurbs are an effective marketing tool. When looking at the results of the second part of the research we see that the category ‘curiosity arouser’ has lots of positive votes. However, this is also the only category that creates a more positive than negative feeling for respondents. With a total of 639 votes going to the negative feelings and only 202 votes going towards a positive feeling when reading the blurbs, participants are mostly feeling negatively towards the blurbs used in the survey. With blurbs from the category ‘curiosity arouser’ and ‘complementing the book’ appearing most though digital promotion, but category ‘complementing the book’ evoking a neutral feeling with the participants we can state that this category is not as effective with the target audience as expected. However, the blurbs from category ‘curiosity arouser’ do spark a more positive feeling in the participants. Unfortunately, the category ‘curiosity arouser’ does spark more negative feelings compared to positive feelings. So, in conclusion, there is not a clear relationship defined between frequency of category appearance in digital promotion of best-selling books and effectiveness according to the target audiences.
Dissertation Institution Vilniaus universitetas.
Type Master thesis
Language English
Publication date 2021