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.
Barnes & Noble dates back to 1873 when Charles Barnes went into the used-book business in Wheaton, Illinois. By the turn of the century, he was operating a thriving bookselling operation in Chicago. His son William took over as president in 1902. William sold his share in the firm in 1917, to C. W. Follett, who later built Follett Corp, and moved to New York City, where he bought an interest in established textbook wholesalers Noble & Noble. The company was soon renamed Barnes & Noble. It first sold mainly to colleges and libraries, providing textbooks and opening a large Fifth Avenue shop. Over the next three decades, Barnes & Noble became one of the leading booksellers in the New York region.
Freshman Leonard Riggio, who worked at a New York University bookstore to help pay for night school. He studied engineering but got the itch for bookselling. In 1965, at age 24, he borrowed $5,000 and opened Student Book Exchange NYC, a college bookstore. Beginning in the late 1960s, he expanded by buying other college bookstores.
In 1971 Riggio paid $1.2 million for the Barnes & Noble store on Fifth Avenue. He soon expanded the store, and in 1974 he began offering jaw-dropping, competitor-maddening discounts of up to 40% for best-sellers. Acquiring Marboro Books five years later, the company entered the mail-order and publishing business.
By 1986 Barnes & Noble had grown to about 180 outlets, which included 142 college bookstores. Along with Dutch retailer Vendex, that year it bought Dayton Hudson's B. Dalton mall bookstore chain, forming BDB Holding Corp. In 1989 the company acquired the Scribner's Bookstores trade name and the Bookstop and Bookstar su...
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... the company, including all of the voting power of Barnes & Noble College Bookstores, a private textbook seller.
The company is spinning off its GameStop subsidiary. In early October GameStop purchased some six million shares back from Barnes & Noble. On November 2 Barnes & Noble distributed the remaining shares it had in GameStop in a dividend to its shareholders.
Business Wire, November 3, 2004 Wednesday, 1:30 PM GMT, 748 words, Barnes & Noble to Open New Store at 30500 State Highway 181, Spanish Fort, Alabama; New Bookstore Debuts on No Copyright 2004 Business Wire, Inc.
Business Wire
November 3, 2004 Wednesday 1:30 PM GMTDISTRIBUTION: Business Editors; Community Editors LENGTH: 748 words HEADLINE: Barnes & Noble to Open New Store at 30500 State Highway 181, Spanish Fort, Alabama; New Bookstore Debuts on November 17 DATELINE: NEW YORK Nov. 3, 2004 BODY:vember 17 , NEW YORK Nov. 3, 2004
2. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
September 9, 2004 Thursday
Late Edition – Final SECTION: Section E; Column 1; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 931 words HEADLINE: Huge Book Retailer Expands Its Publishing Role BYLINE: By EDWARD WYATT
King, Peter. A Textbook Case of Renting Books. The Wall Street Journal. April 23, 2009.
When founder and CEO Jeff Bezos studied retailing opportunities on the Internet, he decided on books because there was a broad field of book publishers but too many titles to be carried by a single store. Everyone reads books but has different preferences about what s/he wants to read. Although Jeff Bezos had no previous experience in the book trade, he saw a business opportunity in selling books solely on the Web. He started the company out of his garage in a Seattle suburb, wrapping orders and then delivering them to the post office in the family car. The characteristics of the books retailing industry make it amenable to electronic commerce: a great variety of products and consumer tastes, and tastes which hanker after a lot of information about the products. Moreover, there is room for bringing down margins, i.e. offering customers deep discounts.
Is Amazon a bubble waiting to burst? The following discussions in this research paper will explore several key issues from its birth to its debatable future. Amazon is not a stranger to arguments revolving around questions of its longevity and success. When the systemic bubble of 1999 arrived Amazon’s corporate goal was to get big, to do it fast, and to establish a hold of new markets before any other competitor. During this time frame Amazon began branching out and selling anything and everything. With the burst of the internet bubble in 2000 and 2001, Amazon changed its goal from growth to aggressively making profits in all areas of their business. In 2001, Amazon’s founder and CEO stated in a Wall Street Journal article “We’ll ferociously manage the products we carry so that we sell only products that are profitable. The thirty-pound box of nails isn’t long for our world” (Elmer-DeWitt, 2001).
With the advances in technologies there has been many bookstore close because we are able to download books and read them in our hand held devices. It is sad to see so many businesses close due to the advances in technologies. What I do like about being able to download books is that we no longer have to find somewhere to store the books because we can save them in our devices. Since we are also able to view movies on our electronic
Treanor, T. (2010). Amazon: Love them? hate them? let's follow the money. Publishing Research Quarterly, 26(2), 119-128. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12109-010-9162-7
Saunders. R (2001) Amazon.com way – Secrets of the world’s most astonishing web business, Capstone
There are many things that B&N and its book publishers can do to stimulate more business. The best strategy in my opinion would be to make more deals with large companies like Apple and Samsung. These companies are at the height of every competitive market in electronics, from cell-phones to televisions, and hold some of the most loyal customers in the market (Surowiecki, 2013). If B&N wants the Nook to stay in the competition, they have to market their product to be appealing in today’s society. To do this they have to factor in competitive prices, capabilities, and other features that can compete with top sellers. Joining up with larger companies will not only increase exposure, but also put B&N and book publishers on the same platforms as their competitors.
In addition, Amazon has also given the customer the opportunity to sell goods. The customers have a huge amount of power when researching and choosing products of the thousands of products at the tips of their fingers. Amazon has just about every department of a store you can imagine, from gardening and lawn accessories, to kitchen machinery, to shoes, and to the strongest departments in my opinion, which is the reading and electronics. The book was the very first product and vision behind Amazon as Bezos “narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising [products to be sold via Internet]: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books…”: then deciding to create the worldwide selection and platform to sell literature in print. Little did Bezos realize at the time, that his print literature idea would develop into the foundation of the electronic department. This transformed into varying products and services to be offered to the consumers: from actual devices to purchase, to the Amazon exclusive “Kindle” E-reader and accessories, developing growth into the “Kindle Fire” TV, and the exclusive purchase of “Audible”, which is now an Amazon company audio book
Amazon also started to expand the categories of products they sold. Their initial business plan took into account that there would be no profit for five years, selling books at wholesale value from Ingram Content Group, known before as Ingram Book. After surviving the dot.com bubble burst, Amazon grew and turned a profit of five million dollars in 2001. Around this time there was a change in the strategy; Amazon began to spread across the world, building subsidiaries and formed various alliances with companies such as Toys R Us, Borders and Target. However, these alliances only lasted until 2006 for Toys R Us, 2008 for Borders, and 2011 for
Eule, A. (2013). It’s time for Amazon to open its black box. Barron’s, 93(42), 37.
Jeff Bezos started with an idea to sell books on-line by being able to hold more books than any other brick-and-mortar store. The first mover advantage that Amazon gained has not let up since. Amazon has created customer loyalty through the use of 360 degree customer profiles and product recommendation system. Furthermore, Amazon has allowed access to big data for a monthly fee and created a web store for businesses saving on huge investments in development for a commission on sales. Big data is constantly evolving and Amazon is ahead of the curve with the application and analytics of big
Amazon is a growing and trending brand, giving consumers the unique shopping experience they have always wanted. The company that was started by 1999 man of the year, Jeff Bezos, has taken 44 percent market share in online sales and purchases. (http://bloomreach.com/2015/10/survey-amazon-is-burying-the-competiton-in-search/) That makes consumers more inclined to search for products through Amazon, before the well-known search engine powerhouse, Google. The Seattle, Washington based company was started in 1995. During the well-anticipated start-up, the company’s focus was on book sales online. Over time, Amazon has set many trends in Consumer Behavior, expanding products across every product pool imaginable. "Amazon.com puts the customer
With technology progressing from drones fulfilling shipments to electronic books becoming cheaper, major companies such as Apple and Amazon have had a big impact on not only the tech industry but the publishing industry as well. Companies are outputting resources like IBook’s and the Kindle bookstore to take full advantage of the transition to digital publishing. As a result of this we have greener, more budget friendly books, and outdated traditional copies of text. With the introduction to these resources it is making the lives of students and the mass market more convenient. Students are now able to purchase books on one device that won’t weigh their bags down on a daily basis. Companies have created bookstores that can be accessed from devices that we use every day, resulting in paperless copies of books that are substantially cheaper than the traditional hard copy. E-books are replacing physical books and textbooks rapidly, and as a result they are becoming more widely and readily available for students.
is a global company that offers internet retail shopping services. Amazon was an online book retailer established 21 years ago during the 1994s, and has grown exponentially in sales and size as the years have gone by. Jeffrey P. Bezos started it in July 1994 and has led to its success. It was possible because of the strategies Amazon used. Emerging of online banking on the internet gave rise to the idea of online shopping. To become a competitive firm strong strategies are to be made. Amazon positions itself as a low-cost retailer and offers a wide range of products and services via online which is unique in the internet retail business. Amazon competes healthily and preserves its competitive advantages as it constantly upgrades itself in the dynamic market. It also shows that Amazon can continue to grow and achieve it mission and vision of being "earth's most customer centric
The company started as an online book seller, which then rapidly expanded into music and movies, and finally into electronics and households.