Case Recap
Barnes & Noble, Inc, a New York Stock Exchange (BKS), and an owner of Dalton Bookstores mainly in shopping malls, opened the first store in New York in 1917. Since then Barnes and Noble has 798 stores in operation and planned to open 35 to 40 in 2008. The book industry, similar to other sectors, have been revolutionized by the technology in particular the Internet.
The Internet brought other side-effects that the book industry was not immune to, such as e-reader, audiobooks, and the piracy of books, movies, etc., with loss of up to $600 million a year. According to Book Industry Study Group (BISG), people spend more time using media but spend less time reading books, leading to decline of books, magazines, and newspaper.
Technology is just one side of the problems, as the most recent competitor the online giant Amazon.com has dominated the book industry. Not to mention other
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With all changes in technology and the way people interact, Barnes and Noble needs to change and adapt accordingly. Recent changes, in particular in technology, may require companies such as Barnes and Noble to change their target, and perhaps realign their positioning. Barnes and Nobel future marketing strategy may look very shortsighted after how technology grew so rapidly just within a few past years or so.
Barnes and Noble must be competitive in the market and perhaps, with a long history, be a market leader. But how?
Amazon may offer more books and at lower price, but the locality of Barnes and Noble and wide spread stores have great advantages over Amazon. Such advantage over Amazon needs to be strategically expanded to provide services that Amazon does not offer, at least not yet. Using local stores, same day delivery of all in-stock books can probably be one of the advantages that Barnes and Noble can offer to compete with its