National Bookstore: a Profile of Its Marketing Mix

Barnes and Noble is dedicated to providing "the best specialty retail business in America. " B&N certainly delivers on its promise, offering over 1 million book titles on demand with unmatched customer service. The B&N dedication to providing superb service with an unmatched number of options serves as an example for industry competitors on how to operate successfully with the customer in mind. Let's examine the specifics of the Barnes and Noble mission statement.

Through the product range offered and the middle-range price level, WHSmith targets a wide demographic in terms of age, income level and family life cycle. Geographically, the store location catchment is relatively wide due to their prominent locations. Demographically, family gate-keepers and browsing husbands are targeted as they buy children’s books. Women, especially of middle-age, hold the buyer power in the adult book category, as the majority are of income group A or B and they buy for themselves and for others. Women are also the group who buy the most stationery (including mothers purchasing school supplies for their children) as well as students and economic groups A and B. Again women form the customer base for gift wrap and cards, along with the time-poor employed. This analysis of WHSmith’s customer profile in these categories should allow the marketing team to tailor their strategies to

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.

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.

When I walked into Barnes & Noble, it gave me a home-like environment. Their shelves hold 20 to 200 thousand titles of books. Groups of couches and chairs are placed throughout the store to sit in while reading books and magazines. I feel like they wanted to give the store a home feeling as if you were just sitting in your own home reading a book. I know when I started to walk around the store it made me feel like I was at home. As I started to look around at books, I noticed a couch. I went and sat down for a bit, overviewing the book. Another feature I noticed about the store was people on their Nook. They have Wi-Fi to browse the internet for books to add to their Nook.

However, Amazon.com made this chain or supply useless. At amazon.com, unlike traditional bookstores, there are no bookshelves to browse. All contact with the costomer is either through its web site or by email. At the firm’s web site, customers can search for a specific book, topic and etc. Customers can browse, fill up a virtual shopping basket, and then complete the sale by

The company I have chosen to investigate for this assignment is Barnes & Noble, Inc. Originally founded in Illinois, USA, in 1873, this business has risen to become a Fortune 500 company. This bookstore chain boasts over 600 physical locations (cite source) in the United States, as well as a strong online presence. The success of its stores, and of its subsequent web and mobile applications, is proof of its dedication to offering a wide range of quality products and providing an excellent customer experience at all times.

The Nook E-Reader by Barnes and Noble is a 12.1 ounce portable e-reader with a 6 inch ink screen 3G wireless connection with the ability to hold over 1,500 books on its memory card. The nook’s features also include computerized versions of popular games and allow the user to download magazines and newspapers to the device (Bubar). This device satisfies the esteem needs of achievement and status since owning a piece of new technology delivers the message of a higher status symbol to a person’s peer group (Chapman). Being able to afford an E-Reader satisfies a want for convenience and is not necessary need.

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,

Any risk assessment of an organization begins with its current posture. From research, Barnes & Noble have five primary business operations; Retail stores, Internet, Publishing, eBooks, and College Bookstores. There are 777 retail locations around the United States with it largest bookstore on the internet. They also publish and have a large eBook storage especially with the purchase of Sparknotes and Sterling Publishers. The eBooks are available for different devices like iphone, blackberry, and their own famous Nook. They also directly operate 600 college bookstores. (5 Primary Business Operations, n.d.).

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

This is when business like John Lewis gives customer option to buy item from their physical store and

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

As IKEA stores are located away from the urban areas, many customers may only patronize the stores during weekends. Hence, the store may be relatively quiet during the weekdays and highly packed with shoppers over the weekends. In the case of IKEA, although it adopts the self-service concept in their stores, it actually still maintains a high level of contact with their customers. To ease and facilitate consumer’s shopping, IKEA provides catalogues, measuring tapes, shopping list and pencils. In addition, IKEA stores are designed to have a ‘family shopping experience’ with customer services and facilities such as a restaurant, day care facilities and a Swedish shop. Parents can leave their kids in a supervised play area, or keep their children with them in pushchairs provided (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). The key point about IKEA is that it is different to the rest of its industry. In typical furniture stores similar products are grouped together and the final delivery of products to customers may take several weeks.