How Effective Are Environmental Taxes in the Petroleum Industry

Computers

Books in Brick and Mortar to Brick and Click

Barnes & Noble

One of the most striking additions to the World Wide Web has been that of Barnes and Noble. This is a traditional brick and mortar bookstore that has become a brick and click in recent years. Given the behemoth reputation, if the somewhat shaky financial success of its most prominent Internet rival Amazon.com, entering the World Wide Web's virtual market-space might not have originally seemed like the best move for Barnes and Noble. Before, cornering the chain store market on cafe-style bookstores, where one could have a leisurely respite to browse, sip, and perhaps purchase a tome or two, seemed to be the Barnes and Noble bookstore's best aim as a corporate entity. However, integrating the Internet into its overall marketing strategy has required not so much a change in overall company philosophy towards and within its brick and mortar components, but integrating web technology with a slightly different image and user philosophy.

Firstly, unlike the brick and mortar version of Barnes and Noble, the Barnes and Noble website does not encourage the customer to browse and take his or her time to select purchases in a leisurely fashion. The website does not even offer a comparative 'look inside the book' option like Barnes and Noble's most prominent Internet rival, Amazon.com. Rather, the site encourages quick purchases, proclaiming, amongst its many slogans and ever-changing daily offerings, that it offers 25% savings for today's hottest music. The overall emphasis and image of the website is thus more on impulse buys than reflective, comparative shopping.

The shopping at the Barnes and Noble's website is thus less of an 'experience' not only in comparison to Barnes and Noble's brick and mortar components, but even to Amazon.com, where users can access other customer's reviews and even learn more about such customer's interests and other favorite books as part of their book selling, internet shopping experience. Barnes and Noble's website offers speed and ease and fluency of use, rather than difficult to download book pages samples for browsing.

Barnes and Nobles image upon the web also manifests a less intellectual strategy than its real-life components, in terms of the books that receive prominence in its display. The DVDs of the popular NBC series "Friends," as well as a recent golf book form the top of the site's suggested options. The site's most prominently listed additional feature is its fast delivery service, stressing the quickness one can buy, not only for one's self, but the easy nature of purchasing gifts for last-minute and harried Internet shoppers. The traditional store does not emphasize, in contrast, the fast service of shopping in the brick and mortar component, but rather the bookstore's knowledgeable staffs that may suggest the suitability of its options for consumers of many different interests, or whom are searching for gifts for friends and relatives.

The efficacy of this Internet strategy upon the bookseller's part, however, is debatable. When compared to other Internet book sites, it is difficult to say what Barnes and Nobles offers in addition to Amazon.com. For instance, the website does not offer comparative amenities such as interviews with authors, prominently advertised links to discount used versions of older books (although with some surfing, these links are accessible via the site). Even the so-called B&N University, that offers students access to discounted textbooks, has many other web parallels.

The amenities unique to the website it does offer, such as the ability to use one's discount card from the brick and mortar store, or to open one online, are not substantially different than might be proffered at a regular company store. Thus, the company strategy overall, in having a website seems less to be a leader in the book-selling market on the Internet than a defensive strategy so it does not lose customers to its competitors, specifically its online competitors such as Amazon.com. Barnes and Noble seems to assume that it has a built-in market in its brick and mortar stores, given its dominance of the bookselling chain marketplace, yet hopes to catch any book buying individuals who might fall through the cracks, because they do most of their shopping online.