MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - A blast from the past: Why B&N was supposed to kill Amazon

pwalker8 · 08-31-2018, 07:15 AM

On the flip side, if one were to look at it from the stand point of what went wrong rather than simply as an opportunity to engage in the usual internet sport of mocking those outside your tribe, it's makes an interesting case study.

Everything said in the quote above is actually true, especially looking at the positions of the two companies in 1997. When the last Harry Potter book came out in 2007, B&N was still going strong and absolutely packed for the Harry Potter event. B&N could have had a strong online presence, but they made some bad choices.

B&N never really embraced the idea that a strong online presence could expand their audience, rather than be simply a marketing tool to direct customers to one of their B&M stores. At the time, when you were looking for a specific title and couldn't find it in the store, you went to the customer service booth, where someone looked the book up on the computer and if it was available, special ordered it. The book was then delivered to the store and you got a phone call saying the book was in.

They could have made all that part of the website. Ideally, you could look up a book and see if your local B&N had it in stock, allowing you to reserve a copy (something I would do by phone at times), or alternatively simply order on line and ship it to your home. But they decided not to. I suspect they saw the website as purely a marketing device to drive business to the B&M stores.

I didn't buy my first item from Amazon until 2001. I used it to buy some game boys as Christmas presents. I didn't buy my first book from Amazon until November 2002, when I started buying specific hard to find specialty books. All the way to 2011, my usage for Amazon was electronic gifts, obscure books and obscure DVD's, slowly ramping up from 5 items in 2001 to 43 items in 2011 (excluding ebooks). If at any point during that time period, B&N had made it possible for me to order those obscure books or DVD's online and had them delivered to my home, I would have used them.

When ebooks went mainstream in 2006 (Sony) and 2007(Amazon), B&N was two years late with the nook in 2009. Even then, if they had used the previous decade to develop a robust internet store front, they would have been a much stronger competitor with Amazon.

So the issue isn't that the idea that B&N had the advantage in 1997 and could have developed a strong internet presence is laugh worthy, the issue is that B&N for various reasons, didn't have the vision to develop their internet presence properly. Once again, I suspect they never really wrapped their head around the idea that their internet presence if used properly could have expanded their customer base to people outside range of their B&M stores rather than simply a marketing tool to drive traffic to their B&M stores.

08-31-2018, 07:15 AM	#5
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	On the flip side, if one were to look at it from the stand point of what went wrong rather than simply as an opportunity to engage in the usual internet sport of mocking those outside your tribe, it's makes an interesting case study. Everything said in the quote above is actually true, especially looking at the positions of the two companies in 1997. When the last Harry Potter book came out in 2007, B&N was still going strong and absolutely packed for the Harry Potter event. B&N could have had a strong online presence, but they made some bad choices. B&N never really embraced the idea that a strong online presence could expand their audience, rather than be simply a marketing tool to direct customers to one of their B&M stores. At the time, when you were looking for a specific title and couldn't find it in the store, you went to the customer service booth, where someone looked the book up on the computer and if it was available, special ordered it. The book was then delivered to the store and you got a phone call saying the book was in. They could have made all that part of the website. Ideally, you could look up a book and see if your local B&N had it in stock, allowing you to reserve a copy (something I would do by phone at times), or alternatively simply order on line and ship it to your home. But they decided not to. I suspect they saw the website as purely a marketing device to drive business to the B&M stores. I didn't buy my first item from Amazon until 2001. I used it to buy some game boys as Christmas presents. I didn't buy my first book from Amazon until November 2002, when I started buying specific hard to find specialty books. All the way to 2011, my usage for Amazon was electronic gifts, obscure books and obscure DVD's, slowly ramping up from 5 items in 2001 to 43 items in 2011 (excluding ebooks). If at any point during that time period, B&N had made it possible for me to order those obscure books or DVD's online and had them delivered to my home, I would have used them. When ebooks went mainstream in 2006 (Sony) and 2007(Amazon), B&N was two years late with the nook in 2009. Even then, if they had used the previous decade to develop a robust internet store front, they would have been a much stronger competitor with Amazon. So the issue isn't that the idea that B&N had the advantage in 1997 and could have developed a strong internet presence is laugh worthy, the issue is that B&N for various reasons, didn't have the vision to develop their internet presence properly. Once again, I suspect they never really wrapped their head around the idea that their internet presence if used properly could have expanded their customer base to people outside range of their B&M stores rather than simply a marketing tool to drive traffic to their B&M stores.