Barnes and Noble Business Assessment

Barnes and impressive Book vendors MGT 499 Barnes and imposing was acquired by Leonard Riggio in 1974 after they had f every last(predicate)en into decline. He started his c areer selling maintains early in his college career when he founded the Student Book Exchange or SBX. at a time purchasing the rights to the name he quickly began transformations on the once heavyweight retailer, making it into his dream, the worlds largest book store. In addition to each(prenominal) the Barnes and direfuls around today, Mr. Riggio as well as owns an operates over 600 college campus bookstalls, like the iodin at Wright State University, which is whither over 4 million students and 250,000 faculty members buy their books.Internal Environment Barnes and imposing has some(prenominal) strong suits which are quickly fading in the ever changing book grocery store. When individuals hypothesize of a bookstore these days, typically two come to mind low, Barnes and distinguished and their now dead competitor Borders. They had and still con nerver the great strength of partnering with College Campuss to operate their bookstores which allows them to connect with the consumers who typically spend the roughly on books (textbooks). With this being said, we in addition need to point out Barnes and dreadfuls weaknesses.This can be summed up by saying that their lack of initiation failed to keep up with consumer trends and the changing market. Barnes and appalling is now trying to postulate in the technology market by the creation and selling of their Nook, which is fundamentally an IPad where you can download and read books electronically. Barnes and Nobles occurrent leadership team consist of Leonard Riggio- Founder and Chairman William Lynch CEO Michael P. Huseby tribal chief Financial Officer Chris Trola Chief Information Officer Mary Ellen Keating- precedential VP of Corporate Communication and Public Affairs combative ConsequencesPerformance ImplicationsV aluableRate Non SubstitutableCostly to Imitate Sustainable C. A. AARNoYesNoYes Temporary C. A. Avg AARYesYesYes/NoYes Competitive ParityAvg ReturnYesYesYes/NoNo Competitive DisadvantageBelow Avg ReturnNoNoYes/NoNo Mergers and Acquisitions Barnes and Noble has had several mergers and acquisitions, merely only a some are extremely important when we look at the financial electric shock and operations impact they had on the keep participation. In 1987, it purchased B. Dalton Bookseller from Dayton Hudson.This acquisition of 797 retail bookstores make it Barnes and Nobles largest acquisition and opened consumers eyes across the nation to the thusly warrant largest bookseller in the United States. An otherwisewise major iodine that hit intelligence service headlines was in 1999 when Barnes and Noble acquired Babbages Ect. , which is now known as GameStop. Barnes and Noble had control of GameStop until 2004 when the game store bought back 6 million shares from the bookstore to g ain its independence. The next and most important acquisition occurred in walk of 2009 when Barnes and Noble acquired a company called fictionwise which is now known as eBook marketplace.This was the first step they made into the digital world of books with their Nook. This was by far their most important acquisition because it was an attempt to meet the demands of the ever changing market by inserting themselves into the digital book market place. The External Environment When talk about the external environment in terms of Barnes and Noble, the company has many strengths and weaknesses. Starting with the demographics, Barnes and Noble attracts a wide range of consumers, from students to elderly for both educational purposes or pleasureal purposes.The wide range of demographics is because most consumers either puddle to read for school or like to read for recreation or entertainment. Today, the retail stores draw mainly an older audience eon the stores on college campuses at tract mainly just college students. The economics of Barnes and Noble go hand and hand with the sales of the company. Not to long ago in that respect was a rumor that Barnes and Noble was vent to be bought out by a company named Liberty which causes the stock to spike 30% in one day. It soon there after returned to its $14 dollar range, which was a 16% decrease from previous years caused by the company announcing a . 6 million dollar loss.. There are also other factors at work in the market that are affecting Barnes and Noble negatively. One of the biggest players that impact B and N is Amazon, and their online, digital marketplace of books where the consumer and equalise prices and find the cheapest option. Barnes and Noble has struggled to compete and overcome this obstacle since a absolute majority of their previous consumers are now looking in their stores then going to the internet and Amazon to find cheaper prices. When it comes to bargaining power, Barnes and Noble is am id a rock and a hard place.They would love to compete with the low prices their competitors offer, unless cannot drop below certain prices because they must have some anatomy of profit margin on the sale of their books after the authors take their cuts. aspiration Barnes and Noble has millions of competitors because anyone with a computer can put a book on the internet to sell these days. However, this being said, there are a few formal competitors out there that greatly impact Barnes and Noble and their bottom-line. The biggest competitor is by far Amazon.Amazon is an online giant that sellers and buyers can place all of their new and used books on the market at their own square up prices. This allows a consumer to shop for the cheapest price for the quality of book they desire to purchase. This was one of the major reasons a previous competitor in the industry, Borders, closed its doors not to long ago. Barnes and Noble has identified that they are in a changing market and tha t they need to adapt to the changes being made around them. This was the destruction of the launch of the Nook in 2010.The Nook is a digital launchpad that operates on Android software that gives access to the eBook Marketplace. This allows consumers to purchase books at cheaper prices and have them downloaded directly to their tablet for easy reading. Launching the Nook took Barnes and Noble into a different field which they had not previously experienced with other competitors. immediately in addition to competing with retail bookstores, Barnes and Noble is also competing with Apples IPad, Amazons Kindle, RIMs BlackBerry Tablet, and all other technology companies who are launching their tablet style computers onto the market.So now Barnes and Noble is competing with Apple, Amazon, RIM, EBAY and thousand of other smaller retailers. That is not a group I would like to be competing against. Barnes and Nobles Struggles On October 29 of 2011, Barnes and Noble announced it 6. 6 milli on dollar loss or 17 cents per share to the public. This was just months after their biggest competitor in the retail side of the business closed. Some would think the closing of Borders would allow Barnes and Noble to grow, save the decline across the table shows that bookstores are a dying industry, and one that a smart investor would most likely not invest in.Fastforward a year to 2012. Barnes and Noble announced that it was projecting a loss of between $1. 10 and $1. 40 per share. As of late Barnes and Noble has been pumping money into the phylogeny and marketing of its Nook, the electronic book of the future. The question that needs to be asked here though is can the Nook really support an entire company with it having to compete against the IPad and the Kindle? Although the Nook has created the greatest revenue for the company, it is really all it has going for it.Liberty Technology offered to buy Barnes and Noble for a whopping 1. 03 billion dollars, this just to acquire t he rights to the Nook which Barnes and Noble promptly turned down. however although the company is making money selling this tablet, the gap between the go of IPad users and Kindle users compared to Nook users is growing wider every day. Corporate Level dodging Barnes and Nobles strategy is extremely easy, offer customers cheesy books. This is the terms leadership and a specialization strategy that we learned in class.Barnes and Noble found a hole in the retail bookstore industry, which think on bigger named, and newer types of books and well known authors that topped the best sellers list, that the bookstores then sold at a extremely high costs. The best seller books were not sources for great gain for Barnes and Noble though. Barnes and Noble found, that the customers wanted inexpensive books, regardless of author of rank on the best selling list. By publishing books internally through their company they were able to increase their profits.Differentiation was also prevalent in the cost leadership strategy because of the companies intense sharpen on the outside of the top seller list which only accounted for 3% of the companies Today however, although the retail side of the industries corporate level strategy body the same, the insertion of the Nook has caused the company to take is cost leadership and differentiation strategy and focus it toward the online eBooks marketplace, selling those cheap books through a digital market. International strategyBarnes and Noble has 691 stores covering all 50 states and 641 stores on college campuses, but has no stores in other countries. At this time is has no function of spreading globally and says that it meets the demand of the international markets by its website. Recommendation locomote Forward At this point in time I turn over the best strategy for Barnes and Noble would be to sell off the company to a company like Liberty to maximize profit for the stockholders. Although their current business strategy with the Nook is succeeding, that piece of technology does not have the capability to support an entire company by itself.