Challenges and Strategic Decisions at Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble faces significant challenges from Amazon's aggressive pricing, e-commerce dominance, and digital offerings. As consumer preferences shift towards online shopping and digital formats like eBooks and audiobooks, Barnes & Noble must adapt its business model to stay competitive. This requires strategic decisions focused on enhancing digital capabilities, diversifying product offerings, and optimizing physical store operations. Additionally, the company must manage risks associated with technological changes and market trends. The analysis will explore potential strategies for innovation, partnerships, and customer engagement that could help Barnes & Noble navigate these challenges effectively.

Running Head: BARNES AND NOBLE COMPANY 1
Barnes and Noble Company
Name:
Institution Affiliation:

BARNES AND NOBLE COMPANY 2
Abstract
The ideas within this research paper give a clear description of B&N Company within the
global business markets. The paper focuses on the description of the company, its mission vision,
and describing its culture of operations. Besides, the article focuses on detailed business
operations of B&N Company. The four different quadrants of operation of the company such as
financial, strategic, operational, and hazard are all presentable in a detailed manner. In
conclusion, the ideas presented focuses on the risk issues that tend to influence the profitability
of operations of the B&N Company in the competitive marketplace. All these ideas presented in
this paper aim at showing how B&N Company have the exclusive brand as well as position in
the global markets.
Introduction
Description of the company
Barnes and Noble Company is a major American organization that deals with selling of
books. It remains as the content as well as commerce organizations that provide the right of entry
to trade books along with some subject matter across its policy that forms a multi-channel
distribution. The company bases its operations support in two segments. These segments
comprise of retails of Barnes and Noble (R&N Vend) along with NOOK (Ferguson, 2014).
Besides, B&N Company participates in the retailing of large volumes of books. Some books that
the company deals with are hardcover together with paperback consumer titles. The company
also engages in the massive marketing of paperbacks that include the romance, mystery, novel of
science, along with other fictions. Other engagements of the company include services of

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retailing to eBooks, kid’s books, and other textbooks for subjects. Others include materials
relating to courses taught in learning institutions, NOOK along with associated bargain books,
accessories, magazines, gifts, products of café along with activities, toys for education, and
music, games, and films straight to clients throughout its stores book (Kingl, 2013). The
company also offers its esteemed and targeted customers a suite of textbook options, used, new,
rental, and digital. B&N Company target clients broadly that encompasses of all Americans by
narrowing down to women with kids and non-technology savvy shoppers for the NOOK.
Mission
The primary task of the B&N Company is to control the best area business in American
society despite the product it deals with the market (Barnes & Noble, Inc, 2016). The mission
focuses on the operation of the company largely because the products it deals with are the sell of
books. The mission makes the aspiration of its operations to be reliable with the measure and the
principles of the sizes that line its shelves. The mission of the company exists independent of its
product that it sells in demeaning the importance and the distinction of being sellers of the books.
The primary task of the Barnes and Noble Company describes its current business practices
together with its purpose. It aids in depicting what the company focuses on achieving and why it
is operating. Therefore, a well-established mission statement of the B&N Company has been
essential in establishing the memorable identity about its operations to its customers.
Vision
The company believes the development in its sales will continue to rise over the coming
years. The sales are developing at the flat rate and achieving thrust daily. The company has a

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vision that makes it sure that in the coming days, its market divide will grow across every
segment of the corporation as its investments in the future payoff. The vision of the Barnes and
Noble Company tend to give its clients the view of organizations plan of its business operations.
The vision of this company focuses on the acceleration of the digital and online sales (Haimes,
2017). Barnes and Noble Company continue to be well positionable in the market to achieve the
significant share of the thrilling advanced marketplace.
Culture of B&N Company
The company has the culture of operating mainly through bookseller chain of bookstores.
The culture of the company offers the insight into its current vision and branding. The top
corporation, the domain of retailers of the company, culture of B&N Company specializes in the
distributing and retailing of paperbacks. Besides, the slogan of the company is the brief,
tremendous catch slogan, tagline, or motor applicable to recognize its products or particular
country Ads. The Ads slogan linked with operations of the culture of B&N Company is “The
Booksellers.” Therefore, the culture of Culture of Barnes and noble Company is to control the
idea channel of vend business within the United States (Barnes & Noble, Inc, 2016). The stores
of the company are open daily, and customers have the opportunities to purchase its well-
applauded NOOK tools along with the range of assortment of games, paperbacks, newsstand
titles, toys, together with music.
Business operations of Barnes and Noble Company
Business operations of Barnes and Noble Company comprise of the selling of books
globally. It remains to be the largest bookseller in the global markets as well as the leading

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retailer of content, educational products, and digital media. The company operates its business
activities in six hundred and thirty-two Barnes and Noble bookstores in fifty different states. The
company continues as one of the premier e-commercial sites on the internet like the NB.com.
Moreover, NOOK Digital production of the business provides the schedule of trendy NOOK
devices along with online contents together with the expensive compilation of digital
interpretation content throughout the NOOK stores (Mission Nation Publishing Company, 2016).
Besides, business operations of the Barnes and Noble Company involve carrying and selling of
traditionally paperbacks and hardcover books. It also sells the digital books, the NOOK digital
book tool, along with the book-publishing branch. In order to complement the sale of these
products in the marketplace, the company also deals with the sales of different products such as
toys, magazines, games, music, educational materials, gifts, and accessories.
Barnes and Noble Company have the exclusive brand as well as position in the global
markets. The company places its business operations as the retail store as opposed to original
books. For the company to stay and benefit in the competitive marketplace with its business
operations like Amazon, it focuses on increasing its foot traffic and driving sales. According to
Peou (2014), business services for the Barnes and Noble Company are more than just bookstores.
It expands its operations by offering different products to its targeted customers such as gadgets,
toys, games, and other gifts. All these extra products provided by the renowned bookseller help it
in redesigning the nation’s major chain of the bookstore into the routine product (van Bekkum &
Smit, 2012). For the brands and image of the company, it does not have a particular sign or
symbol other than their tradition label of Barnes and Noble that continues to be distinctive with
green together with gold color. During business operations by the company, the in-store

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activities along with different programs aid in the creation of great experience style of branding
and are the present focus and priority of operations. From the time that the Barnes and noble
Company entered into the digital books marketplace in 2009, it has noticed its s processes of
business move progressively online. Consequently, B&N Company had increasingly turned to
clome most of its retail stores to aid in the reduction of overhead and increase its revenues
(Oosthuizen et al., 2016). Besides, the business operations of the company have led to the
development of the global character for superiority by helping several loyal clients with its
complete range of general books of trade, textbooks, academic labels, along with health books.
Financial
The financial plan of B&N Company focuses on the cost of the plan of operations,
success, and achieving the set objectives. Barnes and Noble Company had signed a business
credit agreement with Banks of American leaders back in the days of 2009. The agreement
between the two parties offered the organization with pledges some as elevated as the more
currencies. By getting secure credit agreement, the company signed a 4-year contract that will be
rewardable for prospect operations (The Teardown: Barnes & Noble Nook HD+ Tablet, 2013).
The deal received a backing by the corporation’s assets as accounts receivable along with
inventory. The principal purpose of the collected money was to aid the company to have a
working capital.
The company has been able to operate by getting additional capital through acquisitions.
Some of the purchase that the operations of the company aim to profit from is the B&N College,
Fictionwise, along with Tikatok both in 2009. Throughout the gaining of B&N College by the

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organization after the agreement of stock purchase with the seller of the corporation, enable it to
improve its production. Besides, Tikatok remains to be another website podium that made it
likely for kids as well as their relatives to have the privilege to inscribe, show, and print
paperbacks. The attainment of Tikatok contacted people ready to benefit from the project relating
to the goods that the organization sells (Mission Nation Publishing Company, 2016). Besides, the
company operates a policy agreed upon by its board of directors of acquiring dividends by
paying at the yearly rate of zero point six US dollars for each share of supply of corporation. The
share is always payable in four different installments of zero point one-five US dollars for every
share of shared stock of the organization. Therefore, there is a need to keep the stores of Barnes
and Noble Company in position to impel to come along with digital trades and flows of money.
Strategic
The primary strategy the company focuses on the techniques of attracting competitor’s
customers. The company aims at attracting the customers from the enterprise like Amazon who
is its chief competitor. The primary initiative for the success of the Barnes and Noble Company
mainly focus on the making the sales of its books to grow much above its major competitors
such as Amazon. In order to carry out the strategy of attracting competitors, the company uses
two tactics that include incentives with messages (E‐business optionsm, 2013). On the approach
of using initiative, Barnes and Noble Company always tend to offer purchased discounts to every
customer based on likely obtained data. The company focuses on the collection of primary data
on the pattern of purchase by customers to aid it in leveraging their membership capacities.
Additionally, the operations of the company involve the use of price matching technique for its
clients for same books that it offers and checking on the website of its competitors (The

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Teardown: Barnes & Noble Nook HD+ Tablet, 2013). The idea helps the company in ensuring
that multi-brand customers can purchase from the company because they can be able to attain the
same price in-store that they can attain on websites of other competitors. The use of messaging in
attracting the customers by the company revolves around the dynamic benefit of having real
stores.
The company focuses on the strategies that can defend its operations against the
competitive product. Even though the competitors of Barnes and Noble Company like Amazon
has been able to manage to place their services as the e-reading leaders, Barnes and Noble
Company has the prospect to overtake such competitors. The company focuses on the strategies
that do not only aim at increasing its sales but also subscription of its members with products of
NOOK. Besides, the company concentrates on the ideas that aim at raising the awareness of the
targeted and loyal customers of the benefits of the NOOK over other competitors in the
marketplace with the Ads campaigns. The advertisements always emphasize on the compelling
advantages of the experience together with atmosphere offered by the Barnes and Noble
Company (E‐business options, 2013). The other strategy by the company focuses on the strength
of its brands by forming strong loyalty of multi-brand customers in the global markets. The
building of brand loyalty among customers has enabled Barnes and Noble Company to base its
emphasis on dynamic benefits while ensuring that the clients prefer their brand to other
businesses like Amazon.
Operational

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The company has over one thousand two hundred college as well as retail bookstores
across fifty states. The development of many stores by the Barnes and Noble Company has made
it be the number one brick and mortar book retailer in the United States. Besides, employment of
over thirty-five thousand employees to govern the stores globally has enabled it to meet every
need of their customer. Given the state of the business operations of the company and practices
of competing in the market, the company has been able to reduce the prices of their products
leading to huge returns in the operations. Moreover, business operations include different
business structures, like the discount model. It uses two retail firms that include online along
with brick and mortar retail stores in selling its products (Haimes, 2017). Although these
business operations by the company engage margins received from selling of books, the
marketplace of the e-book has resulted in solid gain since its start leading to declination on the
production and sales of printed books. The company has also been able to shed some retail stores
with the focus of maintaining the profitability of the stores that remain in the global market.
The company focuses on being the best in their operations despite its size, history, or
likings of its rivals. The mission allows the company to continue with activities that aim at
bringing its tones of approach to promoting the book that remains consistent with its growth
objectives (Goolsbee & Chevalier, 2012). Therefore, the primary mission of the Barnes and
Noble Company is to remain as the acclaim to societies that it serves, the precious resource to its
clients, and regions where its devoted booksellers can prosper. Therefore, the vision of the
Barnes and Noble Company is evident at positioning where corporation focuses on reaching in
the coming days, and it remains optimism to progress along with progress into the digital
marketplace.

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Hazard
The danger that arises in the operations of the Barnes and Noble Company stems from
the methods used in deriving the strategies of the company. The risk of counting bulk purchases
by the enterprise makes the company get into the war of prices with its competitors in the
market. Such wars always cause the company loses its money and clients potentially. The other
hazard is that once the customer's start using the set discounts on various products of the
company, they only continue to purchase goods in bulk at below price from B&N (Ashley et al.,
2011). Another hazard arises in the case of offering Nook version of the book free of charge
when the targeted client buys the paper making the publisher get upset that they are unable to get
profits from sales of eBooks. The idea of offering free books always makes publishers stop
distributing eBooks to Barnes and Noble Company (Wade, 2015). The idea of giving free books
has made the company incur huge operational costs in hiring the new advertising organizations
to handle the challenges that result in their campaign teams and then create the new one that can
attract a huge number of clients.
The company faces danger in the process of adjusting its branding and related advertising
models. The idea of redesigning website by the company in some cases fails to be appealing to
their targeted customers. There are always rising cases with the issue involving the overall
design or maybe the inventory may have incorrect list. The problem of piracy of books also
affects the operations of Barnes and Noble Company (Barnes & Noble, Inc, 2016). The invention
of digital tools that enable an individual to download reading material instead of having to
purchase it from bookstores has led to fresh critical entrants to the marketplace. Besides, the
invention of the Kindle and iPad has gained these two devices to obtain popularity that the use of

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NOOK (Heitger & Heitger, 2015). Therefore, the hazards in the operations of Barnes and Noble
Company arises from the threat of new entrants, customer bargaining strengths, threats of
substitution, rivalry with the company, and suppliers bargaining powers.
Risk issues affecting profitability
The competition imposed by other companies that deals with the distribution and sales of
books such as Amazon, affects profit earn by the Barnes and Noble Company. The competition
imposed to operations of the Barnes and Noble Company makes it use the huge sum of money
on looking for the ideal approaches to improving its services. Presence of competitors in the
market makes the company lose their loyal customers to other stores that might have best
services in the sales of books (Roson, 2015). The loss in some buyers leads to the negative effect
on the amount of profit earned by the company. The competitors can make the company lose its
revenue because of the price variations in products, and many customers will opt to buy products
from the stores that offer products of lower costs. The need of the company to compete with
these businesses in reducing their prices make the company to make fewer profits as they aim at
maintaining their loyal customers (Barnes et al., 2013). The pressure imposed by competitors
like Amazon make the Barnes and Noble Company invest the huge amount in improving their
services and employing more workers to be able to offer the ideal environment that most
customers will need. The process of using a many labor force make the company use the huge
amount of money that they earn during their operations to pay workers hence making the
company remain with little profits. Therefore, the company must form ideal ways to deal with
competition in the market.

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operations. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 14(6), 659-675.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1478336032000053816
E‐business options. (2013). Strategic Direction, 19(2), 31-33.
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