Barnes & Noble (B&N) is a publicly traded Fortune 500 company which is the largest retail bookseller in the United States and a leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products in the country. As of August 1, 2015, the company operates 647 retail stores all across the country. They stock over 1 million titles for immediate delivery and they claim to have more titles than any other bookstore.
The birth of the Internet shook the retail book market causing a series of mergers and bankruptcies in the American bookstore industry since the 1990s. Barnes & Noble stands as America's last remaining national bookstore chain, although it had progressively closed many of its retail stores to reduce overhead and increase profitability. …show more content…
B&N lunged many times to catch up with Amazon, however, its attempts were far behind the technology curve most of the time. For instance, when B&N launched its online music store in 1999, Amazon had already pioneered the concept a year earlier. Moreover, B&N acquired Fictionwise, one of the biggest electronic book proprietors in North America, and two months later launched e-bookstore and Nook e-reader in October 2009, but it was still two years behind Amazon. Although B&N spent hundreds of millions of dollars to compete with Amazon and Apple in the market for tablets and e-readers, B&N continued to lose money on the Nook, as well as on the e-book market share. According to an article in CNN Money (September 10, 2015) titled, ‘Can Barnes & Noble Survive’ indicates that, “Microsoft once had high hopes for the Nook. It invested in the business in 2012, but sold its stake back to Barnes & Noble last December.” In addition to that, according to research that analysts conducted, while B&N controlled almost 27% of the U.S. digital book market, Amazon led with 60%. (Wikipedia, 2015)
New technologies always create new substitutes and in the case of Amazon it clearly exemplifies the customer behavior on price wars; if prices become too high, customers would look for a substitute. For instance, after B&N dropped the price of the Nook from $259 to $199 and released …show more content…
(Wikipedia, 2015) So Barnes & Noble Education Inc. is now a separate independent public company. They carry a large variety of textbooks, medical and legal books and medical supplies in addition to the various trade titles carried at the company's main stores. B&N College supports the social and academic aspirations of students, faculty, alumni, and administrators and their mission statement illustrates that their aim is; “to create campus stores that are focal points for college life and learning, enhancing the educational mission of the school, enlivening campus culture and delivering a strong and consistent revenue stream to our partner schools.” (bncollege.com, 2015) Based on this mission statement, it is obvious that they try to differentiate themselves from the competitors, since they focus on the specific actions that create the most customer
The birth of the Internet shook the retail book market causing a series of mergers and bankruptcies in the American bookstore industry since the 1990s. Barnes & Noble stands as America's last remaining national bookstore chain, although it had progressively closed many of its retail stores to reduce overhead and increase profitability. …show more content…
B&N lunged many times to catch up with Amazon, however, its attempts were far behind the technology curve most of the time. For instance, when B&N launched its online music store in 1999, Amazon had already pioneered the concept a year earlier. Moreover, B&N acquired Fictionwise, one of the biggest electronic book proprietors in North America, and two months later launched e-bookstore and Nook e-reader in October 2009, but it was still two years behind Amazon. Although B&N spent hundreds of millions of dollars to compete with Amazon and Apple in the market for tablets and e-readers, B&N continued to lose money on the Nook, as well as on the e-book market share. According to an article in CNN Money (September 10, 2015) titled, ‘Can Barnes & Noble Survive’ indicates that, “Microsoft once had high hopes for the Nook. It invested in the business in 2012, but sold its stake back to Barnes & Noble last December.” In addition to that, according to research that analysts conducted, while B&N controlled almost 27% of the U.S. digital book market, Amazon led with 60%. (Wikipedia, 2015)
New technologies always create new substitutes and in the case of Amazon it clearly exemplifies the customer behavior on price wars; if prices become too high, customers would look for a substitute. For instance, after B&N dropped the price of the Nook from $259 to $199 and released …show more content…
(Wikipedia, 2015) So Barnes & Noble Education Inc. is now a separate independent public company. They carry a large variety of textbooks, medical and legal books and medical supplies in addition to the various trade titles carried at the company's main stores. B&N College supports the social and academic aspirations of students, faculty, alumni, and administrators and their mission statement illustrates that their aim is; “to create campus stores that are focal points for college life and learning, enhancing the educational mission of the school, enlivening campus culture and delivering a strong and consistent revenue stream to our partner schools.” (bncollege.com, 2015) Based on this mission statement, it is obvious that they try to differentiate themselves from the competitors, since they focus on the specific actions that create the most customer