Retail Book Business: A Report on Industry Value Chain Analysis

This report provides an analysis of the industry value chain for the retail book business, with a specific focus on Amazon's value chain. It examines the core activities involved, including publishing, digitizing, promoting, online placement, electronic distribution, and placement on book devices. The report highlights how the e-book concept has transformed the traditional publishing supply chain, saving time, effort, and cost. It concludes that while the retail value chain has revolutionized the book business, it also faces challenges such as cyber threats and piracy. Desklib provides students access to a wide range of solved assignments and study resources.

Running Note: INDUSTRY VALUE CHAIN FOR RETAIL BOOK BUSINESS
Industry value chain for retail book business
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2INDUSTRY VALUE CHAIN FOR RETAIL BOOK BUSINESS
RETAIL VALUE CHAIN IN BUSINESS
Value chain in marketing is a set of operational activities performed by a firm in order to provide
the finished product to the market.
CASE OF AMAZON
A retail book business giant like Amazon has a very well-defined system of value chain. The
main activities associated in retail book business include author, printing, publishing,
distribution, and retailing (Amazon.com, 2019). Amazon being an online e-commerce business
chain has a modified supply value chain and its core activities include publishing, digitizing,
promoting, online placement, electronic distribution and placement on book device. Each activity
is briefly described in the next segment.
Publishing- the e-book concept has transformed the publishing supply web where the ink-paper
concept has been substituted by virtual electronic reader Ayers and Odegaard (2017). The
authors contact or are contacted through various sources and submit their manuscript to the
publishing unit of Amazon. Selected books are then instantly published saving time as well as
money.
Digitizing-the published books are then digitized that is, are placed on online platforms so that
they are ready for promotional activities.
Promoting- the books are then promoted using unique selling propositions. E-docs are the main
USP of Amazon. Pop-ups and other advertisements on the home page of the website help in
promoting the new book.
Online placement- the books are then ready for online placement that is are available on the
company websites where customers could easily access them and buy them both in hard copies
and soft copies.
Electronic distribution- the book is then ready for distribution and customers can buy them
through online mode. The distribution partners are provided with the end products (final copies
of the books) and could easily ship the products to the customers.
Placement on book device- e-books are availed through online payment beforehand and through
online subscription. Only Amazon members could avail such benefits. They could log in and
could easily access the books whenever they wish.
CONCLUSION
To sum up it could be said that retail value chain has revolutionized the traditional method of
lengthy and tiring supply chain process of book business. It saves time, effort and cost on one
hand but is subject to cyber threats and piracy on the other.

3INDUSTRY VALUE CHAIN FOR RETAIL BOOK BUSINESS
REFERENCES
Amazon.com. 2019. Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books,
DVDs & more. [online] Available at: http://www.amazon.com/ [Accessed 16 Jan. 2019].
Ayers, J.B. and Odegaard, M.A., 2017. Retail supply chain management. CRC Press.