Barnes and Noble Case Study

There are many stakeholders involved in Macmillan and BT. A stakeholder is someone who effected directly or indirectly as a result of the activity of the business. These stakeholders can be internal or external. An internal stakeholder are people who are within the business such as the owners or managers. External stakeholders are people who are outside of the business such as suppliers or the community. Either way, they all have a relation to the business which will effect them.

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.

A stakeholder is a person or a group of individual who are interested in the success of a business in delivering successful results and maintaining the activity of the businesses products and services. There are internal and external stakeholders in every company. An internal stakeholder is someone who is internally connected to the business that have personal interests which they may follow. An external stakeholder can be a person or a group of people such as investors, customers, suppliers, people who are predisposed by the business but are not fully in the business.

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.

Wallin & Nordstrom was founded in 1901 by John W. Nordstrom and Carl Wallin as a shoe store in downtown Seattle. John retired in 1928 and Carl a year later, both sold their shares to John’s sons.

The company was founded by Richard Block and David Quayle in March 1969 and the first store was opened in Southampton Hampshire. The store was originally called Block and Quayle but was then shorted to B&Q. The owners wanted to offer their customers better value, longer opening hours and better product range.

2-B&N and the book publishers are changing their business models to deal with the Internet and e-book technology by B&N developing its own e-readable devised called Nook. In order to meet demand and supply, they started to be actively in control of its supply chain by developing,

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

Amazon is an incredible company that has shaken the world, starting out being the largest book store they have become the largest everything store. They started in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, he was also the founder of aerospace company Blue Origin. Jeff took advantage of the Internet’s enormous opportunities it presented, since then Amazon has risen to a $292.6 billion-dollar company and employs 230,800 people. (forbs.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

On July 16, 1995, Amazon.com went live to the world and Jeff told the testers to spread the word that it was open. Within 30 days, the company had sold books to all fifty states and forty-five foreign counties. By September, the site had sales of $20,000 a week.

Amazon started with Jeff Bezos’ idea on creating a company based around selling on the internet (Int. Directory). In the 1994, Jeff left the Wall Street firm D.E. Shaw, moved to Seattle. There, he created a business plan, from which Amazon was born. Jeff projected a 2,300% of annual web growth over time from selling on the internet. He took the five most profitable products and put them on his stock. At the time, books were a strong suit for Amazon, and where most of their profit came from (Int. Directory). Their competition was Barnes and Noble, who were large retail booksellers dominating the market. By 1995,