Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon

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.

As of January 2010, Amazon.com has three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples. By offering a large amount of varied categories through its website and other international ones (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.fr, and so on), it has managed to grow to a customer based company with over 30 million people. In addition, the online retail format enables the company to reduce costs of managing inventory (Amazon.com; online bookstore, 2008).

Strategic planning is a critical element of an organization’s annual business plan. A strategic plan consists of a number of components. In addition to analyzing a company’s strengths and weaknesses, a strategic plan also includes implementation and control techniques. While this may seem easy enough, implementing a strategic plan into an organization can be challenging. Barnes and Noble, like a number of corporations are seeking ways to improve productivity and profitability. This essay will identify business alternatives for the bookseller which will enable them to diversify their product offerings.

Inventory is the biggest investment of the business and the performance of the inventory can determine whether the store succeeds or fails. We have chosen a different supply strategy as a method to save on cost. This method will require our publishers to ship books directly to the store which will save on our shipping expenses.

Amazon.com is a customer centric company. They put more effort in improving their system to make the experience of customer more comfortable so that he keeps on returning to the website. Jeffery Bezos who is the founder of the Amazon.com started this company after seeing the use of internet increasing rapidly.

Amazon.com and Overstock.com are the two companies that will be researched in detail. Their financials will be comb through and synopsis of their financial status will be developed. These two companies are within the same industry of selling discounted products online. This is a tough industry to do well in and competition is tough. The e-commerce marketplace is intensely and savagely competitive. Their financials tell the story and show how lean and mean these companies must run. This paper is going to touch on briefly on each company, what they do, where they are financially, ratios between the two and their industry, and look at their cashflow.

The basic Amazon sales channel is the web store front- end which serves as their core business. Customers go to the Amazon.com website, browse products, and place orders. Amazon is responsible for all front-end customer relationships and back-end logistics in this model. Once an order is placed, Amazon decides which internal distribution center or drop shipper should be responsible for shipping the order to the customers. After that, Amazon will responsible for coordinating the fulfillment of the order. When products are sourced from its internal distribution centers, then Amazon start to picks, packs, and ships the order. When products are sourced from a drop shipper, such like a book distributor, the distributor packages the products by using the Amazon box delivers it to the customer (Maltz et al., 2004). This model requires Amazon to maintain or purchase inventory for immediate selling. In this model, Amazon owns the customer relationship, provides the technology, owns or purchases the inventory, and executes the logistics as well.

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

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.

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

Amazon is a company that sells many open product categories online by allowing customers to take the time to search and shop through the product offerings. Many product categories that are offered on Amazon may include device accessories, kindle devices, beauty, books, electronics, health & personal care, etc. The foremost product category that can offer the greatest advantage compared with a retail store chain is most definitely the books category. Reason to this is that the company has expanded the customer’s online shopping experience by offering such a wide range of physical and electronic books, depending on the preference of the customers. They are able to search for the top-rated selling

With the proliferation of communication and information technology, particularly the Internet, most business organizations have been at the forefront to join the e-commerce platform. Amazon is considered as one of the existing and largest e-business platform in the world. This report outlines Amazon’s strategic intent and key resources and capabilities. In addition, the report will also include an analysis of the company 's assets and capabilities that have provided it a sustainable competitive edge as well as, the recommended future strategy of the giant online organization. Amazon defines its line of business operations based on product and service sales, fulfillment, digital content subscriptions, publishing, and co-branded cards. The company 's line of business is defined as an online store, Internet service provision, and the Kindle ecosystem. This project will explore the truth that has made the online company to be considered as the top online retailer, which mainly focuses on strategy. This report also outlines how inventories play a fundamental role in the organization 's business or corporate strategy. The other issues covered in the report include the approach used by the online company deal with the supply chain and the reason behind fast shipping fast. The paper will outline the finance statute of the company and whether the finance effect will bar the organization from developing in future. In order to achieve the answer to the questions