Barnes And Nobles External Environment

In contrast to Borders Group, Barnes & Noble which is a leading bookstore in the US recorded an 11% increase in their share value in the past year with the introduction of their e-book reader “Nook”. It is clear that Barnes & Noble were not “Myopic” in their approach and were able to retain and even grow their customers as well as profits by embracing a new product.

The bookstore chain has been decreasing in profit in the US over the past 20 years. Most of the books retailers are shutting down their operations and only a few are still operating in the country. Barnes and Noble has become the largest bookseller in the book retailers industry. The firm has integrated its business philosophy into web presence though eBook marketplace. This business strategy assisted the firm to be able to reach a large scale customers and remain as a strongest competitor in the book retailing market.

Barnes & Noble does business -- big business -- by the book. As the #1 bookseller in the US, it operates about 650 superstores throughout 49 states and the District of Columbia under the banners Barnes & Noble, Bookstop, and Bookstar, as well as about 200 mall stores using the names B. Dalton, Doubleday, and Scribner's. The company's GameStop subsidiary is the #1 US video game retailer with about 1,500 stores under the names Babbage's Etc., GameStop, and FuncoLand. Barnes & Noble owned about 75% of online book seller barnesandnoble.com after purchasing Bertelsmann's interest in 2003; Barnes & Noble then purchased all remaining shares and took the company private in May 2004.

While value is a competitive advantage for Barnes and Noble’s retention of market share, their prices are not low enough to impose a low cost strategy.

Simple is good, but not necessarily better. Another downfall of a smaller company like Barnes and Noble as opposed to Amazon is the higher prices at Barnes and Noble. The Nook is significantly more expensive than the Kindle. Although Barnes and Noble does try and lure the customer in with sales and bargain prices, the Nook is still ridiculously

Barnes & Noble was created by Charles Barnes and opened the first store in 1917 in New York City. Barnes & Noble is the largest retail bookseller and a leading retailer of digital media and educational products. The company operates 640 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble’s mission statement is to “operate the best omni-channel specialty retail business in America, helping both our customers and booksellers reach their aspirations, while being a credit to the communities we serve (Booksellers, 2012).

We chose go to Barnes and Nobles, because we are fascinated by their ability as a company to target multiple age groups and sustain being successful. Their target market are people that love to learn and enjoy reading. They appeal to all age groups not just one market segment and are able to do so as a result of their variety of different sections. They stack the shelves, as you can see in the pictures below, abundantly full with their products, however when shopping we noticed they are almost too cluttered with too many things on them to make a choice simple.

Barnes and Nobles is one of the biggest bookstores that has a brick-and-mortal store concept. In the past they were know as a “big bully” that drove small book stores to close down because of their aggressive tactics to have competetetive advantage over them. Nonetheless, with the evolving circle of technology they have had a hard time in keeping up with the E-book era. In 2014 E-books increased its reader subscription by 28% compared to 23% in 2013. This number will continue increasing because 50% off American’s have access to devices that are either an e-reader or a tablet. B&N changed its business model to adjust to this new setting before it suffered a

I think that Barnes and Nobles executive should have everyone in their company create a personal SWOT matrix as Barnes and Noble . By making all associates do this from the top executives all the way to the book stockers in retail stores, the executives can get an idea of what their employees are thinking. I think the benefit of a SWOT matrix in general is fix any problem from the inside out. This can be a task that is given at a store meeting or at a team building event. “The purpose of the personal SWOT analysis is to identify actions you can take to best meet the requirements of the job or promotion you are seeking. Comparing your strengths and weaknesses to the job requirements will identify gaps and help you prepare to be the best candidate

In the 2015 annual report, the company stated their multiple distribution centers “enable it to maximize available discounts and enhance its ability to create marketing programs with many of its vendors” (“Barnes & Noble Inc.”, 2015, p.12). That is crucial as Barnes & Noble has around 600 publishers. The company also has extensive marketing capabilities to connect with their customers. They created partnerships with Samsung, the producer of the NOOK, to increase marketing funds and be able to customize emails to consumers (“Barnes & Noble Inc.”, 2015, p.16). Therefore, they are capable of reaching a large audience of book readers and enticing them to purchase more items.

Barnes & Noble's new strategic approach should be successful due to its early entry into the e-book market. Their strategy is unique in the fact that compared to competitors they have proven themselves by current success in this market, but are now feeling the effects of price inflation. By assessing Barnes & Noble's disposition from a contentious model, one can obviously see that no pressure would arise from the traditional competitors. However, it does not ensure the future of their book

Barnes & Noble are taking different tacks with regard to agreements with authors agents, and publishers. Amazon is pulling content off the market and padlocking it to their Kindle. In response, Barnes & Noble is refusing to stock Amazon published titles in its brick-and-mortar stores. Barnes & Nobles' investment in the well-received, well-reviewed Nook appears to have been a solid business decision, the ripples of which will continue to be felt for some time. In fact, the Nook is the proverbial finger in the dike as the waters of Amazon continue to threaten the very infrastructure of the publishing business by eroding the relationship between publishers and bricks-and-mortar stores.

Barnes and Noble is a company that targets certain channels at different demographic divisions of the market or at different socio-economic sets of consumers. Multichannel marketing allows Barnes and Noble to reach its prospective or current customer in a channel of their liking. The current management activities of Barnes and Noble have a matrix structure.

However, Amazon compete with them very well. Also, due to wide variety of products, their competitors ranges from retailers, merchandise retailers, online internet retailers,etc. In the late 1990's it provide competition to the bookselling industry and forced Barnes & Noble to launch their online website. Barnes and Noble offers books, DVDs, and CDs, which directly competes with Amazon.com's media segment. Amazon.com competes against all competitors on selection, convenience, and customer experience as well as price. Barnes & Noble had not been successful in online business and they decided to partner with Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble, Inc. operates as a content, commerce, and technology company in the United States. It provides access to books, magazines, newspapers, and other content through its multi-channel distribution platform. The company sells its products directly to customers through its bookstores and on barnesandnoble.com. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com, one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, which also features more than 3 million titles in its eBookstore.  Through Barnes & Noble’s NOOK eReading product offering, customers can buy and read eBooks on the widest range of platforms, including NOOK eBook