The Value Chain And Competitive Forces Model

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.

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.

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.

Steve Denning (2011), states that customer delight is the firm’s new bottom line and delighting the customer from outsets to outcomes. By focusing on delighting the customer the firm makes a lot more money than they would if they set out to make money. Delighting the customers make a lot of money. Customer delight = providing a continuous stream of additional value to customers and delivering it sooner. It is measurable and means a different way of running the company.

In this case, the traditional bookseller’s niche is overlapped the Big box retailers’. Because of the limited resources: only certain amount of people demand for popular books, they have to compete for the market of popular books. However, scale difference generates selection pressures. Obviously traditional booksellers have smaller scale and less purchasing power to compete with “Big box” retailers. When the electronic books came out, traditional booksellers struggle more. Although all booksellers were affected, “Big box”

Barnes and Noble Incorporated is currently the largest book and media-content retailer in the United States. Founded in 1873 in Wheaton, Illinois by Charles Montgomery Barnes, who had started it as a family business, it has since evolved into the biggest book marketplace of our time. Although Barnes and Noble has had a long-run of success, it is currently near the edge of bankruptcy. It’s lack of sales and the shift of interest in reading physical books has forced most book retailers to “close-up shop”, with Barnes and Noble being next on the list. Therefore, Barnes and Noble is not worth investing in, because of its loss

Brenner states in his article, “No Borders”, how “bookstores are victims of changing times, technologies, and economics.” In the literary, economic world, there had been two national bookstores that competed in the nation, Borders and Barnes & Noble. Sadly Borders, Barnes & Noble’s largest competitor, went bankrupt and was forced to close, due to the national recession being at its highest in 2010. Since then it has become more and more difficult for bookstores to even make it since for, “You can surf the web for a book on Amazon and probably get a better deal” (Brenner, 81). Despite this, Barnes & Noble has successfully survived in the dying literature market and has become, “One of the largest booksellers in the US” ("Barnes & Noble, Inc. SWOT Analysis", 3). Booksellers around the world are becoming rarer in our technological advance society, as these shops seem to die out

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.

After visiting the websites of Amazon and Barnes and Noble, it is clear that both companies have done an exceptional job at designing sites that effectively communicate their brand along with specific products they want to sell. Amazon achieves 29 billion in revenue per year generating a profit of 1 billion and producing a whopping ROE of 24%. In contrast to this, Barnes and Noble achieves 6 billion in revenue per year generating a loss of 40 million (last year’s results) and produces an ROE of -4.5%. It is important to note that Amazon sells exclusively from a web-based environment, while Barnes and Noble

Barnes & Noble was the only retailer able to provide a wide selection of books. With the opening of the e-commerce, and the start-up of Amazon.com in 1994-95, Amazon’s revenue and net income from has seen a continuous increase, whereas Barnes & Noble’s revenue and net income over the past 10 years has steadily decreased. The success of Amazon.com and deterioration of Barnes & Noble came from Amazon’s

While the e-Books industry posed a serious threat to the retail books industry, Barnes and Noble jumped into a new market too soon and unprepared. In order to prove itself equal, Barnes and Noble has sacrificed its biggest advantage – physical bookstores which catered to book lovers’ impulsive need of selecting books from the shelves. The company launched its own dedicated e-reader device – Nook to get itself into the e-books game which cost them a heavy R&D investment especially when their core business has always been low tech. While the features offered in Nook are almost similar to Amazon’s kindle, it is still far behind the Kindle’s 60% market share.

When Leonard Riggio opened Barnes & Nobles he wanted it to be more of a social gathering verses just a bookstore. It was a BIG HIT, one of a kind. 1995 Amazon.com emerged. In 1997 Mr. Riggio launched the barnesandnoble.com in order to keep up with the customers wants. This is a continual battle Barnes & Nobles is fighting, constantly changing their company to fit the world around it.

Some of the unique aspects of Barnes & Noble’s situation are that the bookseller was once the top competitor bookstore, pushing other small bookstores out of the market. It is currently the only bookstore chain in the nation. Recently with the development of e-readers and e-books Barnes & Noble has struggled to stay afloat. Typically companies can see improvement in business as technology advances but, Barnes & Noble has experienced the opposite effect. The bookstore kept up with the e-book demand and invested in an e-reader, the “Nook”. However because of this exact investment needed to promote the product Barnes & Nobles has incurred losses in 2011. According to the text there is still more profit in printed books that in e-books. “Customers

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.

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