Now looking at consumer experiences in-store, data from the surveys shows us that
spending time, and browsing with no real purpose in mind are important parts of the
bookshop experience for many consumers. The results from the in-store face-to-face
surveys found that the majority of bookshop visitors (67 per cent) spent around
half-an-hour in the bookshop with 20 per cent spending around ten minutes and 11 per
cent spending an hour or more in store. The gender split was 61 per cent female, 39 per
cent male, consistent with the usual gender ratio in bookshops (Mintel, 2005). It should
be borne in mind that respondents were selected by the researcher and therefore are
subject to selection bias, although every effort was made to select from a range of ages
and across gender, subject to the availability of people within the bookshops.
Demographic data was collected from respondents (Figure 2) and the majority of
bookshop visitors are aged between 20 and 40 years of age, but encompass a broad age
range.