Large Retailers Lead in Digital Printing

By Greg Scoblete On Aug 4 2003 - 6:00am

When it comes to producing prints from their digital cameras at retail locations, consumers overwhelmingly seek out large retail locations over drug stores and photo specialty locations, according to a recent survey from the NPD Group.

Among those large retailers attracting the digital photographer, the leader by a large margin is Wal-Mart, followed by Costco, Sams Club, Target, Kmart and Best Buy.

The prominence of discounters in the top slots led NPD to conclude that price sensitivity is strong among consumers looking to print at retail.

Despite a high desire to create physical prints of their digital images, consumers prefer to do it at home with 90.3 percent of respondents (multiple responses allowed) indicating a preference for home printing and 17.6 percent indicating they printed at retail.

Women are driving retail printing, the report noted, with men more willing to create digital photo albums on the computer than seek out tangible prints. Satisfaction is high among those who made prints at retail and high quality is the "greatest motivator to get people to print at retail," the study declared.

Concern about the longevity of an image is also inspiring consumers to print at retail, NPD stated.

NPD also noted that the higher resolution the camera, the more likely the incidents of printing online or at retail.

In the home printing sphere, cost and time, long regarded as turnoffs to the average consumer, have not been "real inhibitors," NPD noted. Indeed, consumers "enjoy the satisfaction they receive from making their own prints," NPD said.

Among other revelations gleaned from the digital camera owners surveyed was that 85 percent e-mail their images and 71 percent of female users print their photos.

Consumers overwhelmingly prefer to store images on their computer hard-drives (77.9 percent), then on CDs (50.1) or flash memory cards (23.6 percent). Online storage, Zip disks and DVDs trailed behind, ranking 7.3, 6.5 and 3.6 percent, respectively.