The Case Study of “Bookoff, Amazon Japan, and the Japanese Retail Bookselling Industry”

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.

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.

As demand for technology increases, many companies have begun to transfer every day items and tasks to an electronic version of the same program. A specific type of product that has been altered to be more compatible with growing technological demand is books. Before technology was popular, books were available as paperback and hardback copies only. However, as consumer demand for technology increases, tablets are becoming an asset to a person’s work materials. To accommodate for this shift in consumer wants, eBooks are created; these make up for the technological improvement and produce a cheaper alternative to actual books. The possibility of an eBook monopoly is steadily increasing and is already high

The first challenge is the concentration in retail market, where the English-Canadian market only has one national bookstore chain, which is Chapters/Indigo. This was not an issue in the past, where in comparison to 1985, there were three national bookstore chains. The concentration in retail markets provides lower prices for consumers, but for competition it implies that there are less traditional bookstores available. One benefit of having a concentration in retail market would be the expression of chain and non-traditional sectors are more of an opportunity for publishers, seeing that retails have expanded the national retail space for books and thus having attracted new customers for books.

All companies need to be competitive in order to survive. Not only do they have to come up with a competitive plan that will attract new customers but also to keep current customers. Just like the movie You’ve Got Mail with Tom Hanks (Joe Fox) and Meg Ryan as Kathleen Kelly. They each have their own bookstore located near each other in New York.

There is strong rivalry in each of the SBUs, there are many big brands including supermarkets and specialists as well as independent retailers and online retailers. There have been in the recent year's considerable price wars on books in an attempt to maintain market share in an increasingly cramped market.

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.

There are various competitors in the online shopping retail business. Anyone cannot enter in the industry. The threat of new entry into the retail business is low. Again the recession has made several restrictions for the competitors to enter in this business.

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 objective of this case study is to outline and provide a brief overview of Amazon.com’s (Amazon) mission, strategic direction, core competencies, relied technologies and their future impact of new technologies, and how management and use of consumer data will impact future business.

The threat of substitutes for Amazon is high. With the exception of its patented technology, there are quite a lot of alternatives to Amazon’s products and services. In addition to physical presence, most companies have an online store as well. Amazon’s products can be purchased all over the internet and they are just spread out among different web sites. The companies operate in brick-and-click mode providing the similar product categories and competitive prices have become the biggest threat for Amazon. However it is extremely difficult for Amazon to establish physical stores or launch price

Companies in the retail industry operate in a high price elasticity environment as there is not much product differentiation to leverage. Buyers face almost no switching cost if they chose a substitute offering better value. On the contrary, large and diverse population making small purchases works in favor of the industry. No one individual or a small group has the power to significantly impact the industry, but overall buyers enjoy have a high bargaining power in the industry.

The retail industry is highly competitive, with few barriers to entry. Each Company competes with many other local, regional and national retailers for customers, associates, locations, merchandise, services and other important aspects of the Company’s business. Those competitors include other department stores, discounters, home furnishing stores, specialty retailers, wholesale clubs, direct-to-consumer businesses and other forms of retail commerce. Some competitors are larger than JCPenney, have greater financial resources available to them, and, as a result, may be able to devote greater resources to sourcing, promoting and selling their products.” There are many factors that characterize competition, including advertising, service,

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

Harry Potter books sold out immediately on multiple discount offers from different bookshop. There was lot of book shops which were selling the book on cheaper and discounted prices. They went on with this offer since a lot of people were coming to buy that book and they will sell it on margin prices, the prices were competitive and the number of copies sold in millions. On the launch of this book the book sellers gave out 40 percent discount, since the author was known and had a lot of fan following. Even the independent book sellers were selling this book with additional services. They didn’t drop down the price for the book but instead gave a few added services to their customers. Books stores usually know the best sellers and they are well familiar with the fan following of the different authors. They devise out a strategy which covers all their expenses and sell the book on a price where they still get away making profit.