Nook Vs Kindle

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.

Barnes & Noble was successful on releasing the NOOK tablets, which responsible for major contribution to the company’s digital book sales. These tablets helped to eliminate the physical copy of book to the customers. This

1. This strategy can provide customer with more choices and attract new customers to Amazon’s online retailing, through which Amazon’s customer base is spreading. Amazon originally only sold books, but now it also sells Kindle, MP3 and so on.

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.

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.

Proprietary e-Reader NOOK and NOOK tablet have decent 15% market share among all tablets and e-Readers (Greenfield********)

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.

The Kindle Fire can be bought with either 8 GB or 16 GB of storage whereas the Nook can only be bought with 8 GB. When looking at both devices with 8 GB of storage, the Kindle Fire costs 139 dollars and the Nook costs 199 dollars and 99 cents. The screens on both devices have 216 pixels per inch, a good quality for such a small devices. When using the devices for general purposes the Kindle Fire can last up to 8 hours and the Nook can last up to 10 hours. General purposes would include reading books, surfing the web or playing a few games. Just like the Nook, the Kindle Fire comes with built in dual speakers but it also includes Dolby Digital Plus, an advanced surround sound system. A front and rear-facing camera is built into both devices. Camera lenses can be purchased online that can enhance the quality of these cameras and allow for zooming. Books, newspapers, movies, TV shows, and apps can be found on both devices. On top of that content the Kindle Fire also includes magazines and the Nook includes catalogs and Google Play. Both the Nook and Kindle Fire support Microsoft Office Suit, a commonly used program. The Kindle Fire contains no extra features but many hidden features, such as hidden games, can be looked up on the Internet. The Nook contains a GPS along with services provided by Barnes

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.

Which in a way makes this location a leveler in our modern society. With a decent chair, plug, and a strong Wi-Fi signal this can make any bookstore able to survive in our technology focused society and there are many former “Third Places” that have failed due to not being able to accommodate this. Barnes & Noble still has its troubles though, for not only with competition like Amazon and Wal-Mart, but the ever “growing competition on the basis of price and technology upgrades in the books industry” ("Barnes & Noble, Inc. SWOT Analysis", 8) continue to cause hindrance for the company. Despite this the company has been making the necessary changes to keep the store afloat in our ever evolving society. For, “In 2009, Barnes & Noble launched one of the world's largest eBookstores and digital newsstands” ("Barnes & Noble, Inc. SWOT Analysis", 4). Which successfully helped save Barnes & Noble unlike its predecessor,

.Amazon’s huge success has not gone without notice by the public or media attention, and has certainly not been missed by the CEO Jeff Bezos. At the BuisinesssInsider event in New York earlier this month he was quoted saying “The book industry is in better shape than it ever has been and it’s due to [ebooks],” (Roberts). This outlook is understandable when you are one of the main beneficiaries of the profits. He is obviously not referring to the bookstores or the libraries of the country. The CEO is now the thirteenth wealthiest men in in America. Bezos firmly believes that thirty dollars is too much to pay for an eBook he believes that the lower the price is set the more readers will buy the book, leading to a bigger profit for everyone involved. This outlook has not been shared by others in the writing and publishing community, this business model may work for some authors and dramatically injure the profits of others. There are now rumors that Amazon wishes to become a publisher of print books as well, however, this brings people to wonder why one of the major forerunners in the electronic book industry would want to digress to print. This strange strategy may be due to the fact that they have realized that print books are not going anywhere, there will always be readers who prefer the print version of a book and they are looking to pick up the slack of eBooks not catering to those buyers.

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

as their own branded websites and to fulfill orders through them. Amazon introduced the Kindle

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