Industry Description
Book retailing is an industry where companies sell books and other reading media, including, audio books, e-books and e-readers. Some bookstores sell other products including DVDs, stationery and gifts. Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWCS) world network reports sales of sixty billion globally, including e-books (Hoovers Inc, 2016). Most Book retailers operate from storefronts, although some bookstores also operate online. Barnes & Noble US, Fnac France, Page One China, Thalia Germany, and WH Smith UK are prominent companies in this industry. (Hoovers Inc, 2016). According to Yee, (n.d.). Dymocks is the largest bookstore chain in Australia; others include Collins Booksellers, Books and Gifts and department stores such as
…show more content…
Over the five year period until 2015-6, there was an annual decline in revenue of 10.6% (ibisworld, 2016). Numerous challenges have beset the industry, such as, lower book prices, strong competition from online retailers and a change in popularity from printed books to e-books (ibisworld, 2016). Other issues that have a significant effect on bookstores are parallel import restrictions (IBISWorld, 2016), and online retailers being advantaged by low freight charges and often no requirement to pay (GST) Goods and Services Tax (ABC, 2016).
Encouraging Signs
However, there are encouraging signs according to Williams, (2015) who points to the icon of bookstores Dymocks, which claims to have had its best ever sales year. Sydney book retailer Jon Page noted an upward surge in sales in the final quarter leading up to Christmas, a period that accounts for around 70% of annual sales (Han, 2015). According to the Nielsen book scan data, there were 55.4 million in sales of printed books in Australia last year, a 2.2% increase over the previous year, the first sales increase since 2009. (Han, 2015).
Some of the downturns in printed book sales may be as a result of economic conditions which have affected all retailers. According to Page, (n.d.) the global financial crisis has dramatically changed retailing regardless of your product (Han, 2015).The chief executive of the Australian Booksellers Association, Joel Becker commented, the
While we are in demand of textbooks for our courses, the closest option for us with the greatest supply just so happens to be the bookstore
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.
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).
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.
If traditional book sales continue to fall at their present rate of 34% annually we will be out of the traditional books selling in three years. The CD sales are declining at a similar rate.
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
The book market is in fact growing with the exception of weak fortnights in both March and April, sales figures for the overall book market have shown sustained growth in 2005. ...
Better World Books (BWB) was founded in 2002 as a B corporation, meaning it targets successful performance in three fundamental areas: financial, social, and environmental endeavors. BWB has grown successfully since its creation as a small, socially motivated firm to one of the larger, more successful corporations of its kind. Despite the impressive and inspiring performance and growth through creative expansions, BWB acknowledges the changing conditions of the used book marketplace and is pleased to outline a brief review of current strategy and recommendations for supporting operations moving forward.
According to Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group, the sales of e-books were skyrocketed from US$ 869 million in 2010 to more than double in 2011 to bring in some US$2.07 billion for the US publishing industry. Another report from the CNN website, it showed that e-book sales have a 202% of increment from 2010 to 2011.
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.
The industry I have chosen for my paper is the Specialty retail industry or the clothing industry which has the SIC code of 5651. This industry consists of companies that are primarily in the business of clothing and accessories for men, women and children. These companies include unisex clothing stores and jeans stores for all ages instead of stores aimed at a particular age group or sex.
Retail is when business sells products and provide service to the customer to make a profit. An example of a retail business is TESCO. There are many different types of retail sectors in UK which have different organisation and structures. In order for business to operate they will need to find the appropriate location, products they will sell to customer in order to gain profit for the business.
Inditex ensures that its fashion is fast through its supply chain efforts. They have created new methods to enable store managers to order and display merchandise faster and added cargo routes for shipping goods. The company ships clothing straight from the factory to stores and makes two-thirds of its goods in Spain and nearby countries, compared to most competitors who manufacture most of their clothing in Asia. Inditex has their sales managers monitoring computers, which are reporting sales at every store around the world. When a garment does well or fails, they are able to quickly tell designers if they need to come up with new ideas. They also have generated
The seller of digital textbooks will also be saving money over producing hard copies. 32% of the cost allocated to paper, printing and editorial can be completely eliminated along with 22.4% of costs related to bookstore operations and personnel. Bookstores as we know them could become obsolete or transformed into stores that sell tablets, e-readers and software packages on campus. Publishers or sellers will now be able to tap into a more global market with electronic textbooks as the information can be translated into many languages quickly.