Discuss the Importance of Changes in the External Environment to an Organization Like Walmart

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.

Considering with the economic downturn, Barnes & Noble has found the way to offer price discount to all its customers specially price seekers. Since Barnes & Noble was a leading bookstore, it attracted many suppliers and publishers. Barnes & Noble was taking advantage of the situation where it had the ability to access a large customer base to arrange a better price deal from publishers and suppliers. Since it had a power of negotiate the price, it would add more value and strength to its business. The company was able to offer up to 30% off on the actual price from the publishers for hardcover bestsellers and 20% for all children books. In addition, Barnes & Noble offered discount program to its members. All members can receive extra 10% additional on top of 30% to hardcover bestsellers only if they agree to pay a $25 membership fee per year.

Amazon.com was founded in 1994, it started by selling books online. As it grew, the company started offering various products and services. Some goods include: DVDs, videos, electronics, camera and photography, clothing apparels, shoes, and so forth. Other retailers have merged with Amazon.com to offer diverse quality of items based on different degrees of usage, such as new, refurbished, and used items. The company 's headquarter is in Seattle, Washington. It has six global websites that serves customers that are based in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, and Japan. Their website features: e-mail order verification, customer review on products, and one-click shopping.

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.

Jeff Bezos, founder, chief executive officer, president, and board chairman of the mega Internet store Amazon.com is considered one of the most innovative entrepreneurs of the e-commerce industry. At the age of 31, with just a computer science degree, little funding from his family, and a challenging idea, Bezos set out to pursuit his entrepreneurial vision of a internet bookstore which had turn into the biggest online retailer of our times (Jeff Bezos, 2007).

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 focuses on global reach, putting customer first,, and extensive selection of products through its vision which is “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online” (Gregory 2016).

1-In order for Barnes and Nobles to use the Value Chain and Competitive Force Models they needed to be ingenious with their tactics. First, publishers are on B&N side and they are doing everything to make sure that B&N stay at float because they are basically their “bread and butter”. So B&N is securing supplier intimacy with the publishing companies which will lead to strengthening its loyalty relationship with its customer in the store and digitally. Second they are securing their niche in the market, they are doing this by having the stores advertise and communicate to their customer that a there is a specific book that “is a big deal” and B&N is offering an extensive inventory of physical books and it enhance its core competency. Microsoft announced in 2012 that they would be investing $300 million in B&N Nook tablet, e-reader business and its college division. This will enable them to included Windows 8 operating system in Nooks application; this is a space where it will have a product differentiate.

The headquarters are located in Seattle, and since 1998, Amazon.com has opened other sub websites especially for some countries such as the United Kingdom (amazon.co.uk) or France (amazon.fr). This development has resulted in the opening of new development centers, customer services

Headquartered in Settle, Washington DC, Amazon.com is a cloud computing electronic and commerce company (Amazon, 2016). The company is one of the largest internet based retailers both in the US and globally based on total sales and market capitalization. The company does a majority of its business through online retail websites throughout the United States and with more that ten countries throughout World. In 2015, Amazon overtook Wal-Mart to become the most valuable retailer by market capitalization.

Jeffrey Bezos, formerly a senior vice president for D. E. Shaw & Company, founded Amazon.com in 1994. D. E. Shaw is a Wall Street-based investment bank, and Mr. Bezos was assigned to find good Internet companies in which to invest. During the summer of 1994, he stumbled across a

Amazon is an American commerce company based in Seattle, Washington, USA. The company used to be only a bookstore, but now it diversified into difference type of products. The goal of Amazon is to provide one stop shop experience where the customer can find everything on Amazon as earth’s biggest selection (Warman 2012). Amazon operates as a pure internet retailers that does not have retail store at all while the delivery will be done through Amazon’s networks of distribution centres. This operation makes the company is able to provide wider range of goods and lower cost of products with high quality. Moreover, it is also increase customer satisfaction as it supports customer convenience.

Amazon’s core competencies are in its ability to effectively use and develop technology to drive site traffic and enhance the customer experience. Their distinctive use of website real estate coupled with their ability to leverage their brand and effectively use that leverage to deliver low prices and high quality products, makes them a leader in online retailing. Their partner brands and their ability to adapt and recognize deficiencies enable them to effectively cut out the middle man, or at the very least, partner with them.

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