The Impact of a Mechanism Where a Stacked Book Provides Memories of Its Purchase on Buyer’s Interest

Abstract

The focus of this paper is addressing the problem associated with “Tsundoku”, a condition where a book is left unread (hereinafter referred to as “stacked book”). We investigate an approach to rekindle interest in and enhance a motivation to read stacked books, which are feelings that wane after purchase. In this study, we verify the hypothesis that “Presenting memories of when a stacked book was purchased by itself enhances the buyer's interest in it and motivation to read it”. We developed an augmented reality (AR)-based experimental system to display messages from a book in the form of speech balloon text on a smartphone screen. In the experiment, we compared the effects of presenting three types of information from a stacked book: a book’s title, third-party opinions such as product reviews, and memories of when the book was purchased. The experimental results show that presenting memories from books has no significant effect on reading motivation or interest when compared to providing third-party opinions. However, it was demonstrated that the information presentation method, in which an anthropomorphic book discusses its past purchase memories, is effective in increasing buyer’s interest and motivation to read the book.