Today's Reader Essay

Submitted By keepmovin68
Words: 1849
Pages: 8
Open Document
Principles of Marketing: Final Exam

Your University

BSA310

Principles of Marketing: Final Exam
Question #1: The concentration of my marketing plan is focused on the declining sales for the company, Barnes & Noble (B&N). Barnes & Noble is in the process of renegotiating our leases and assets in attempts to cut costs. Our sales are declining and we are faced with stiff competition from Amazon, Wal-Mart, Costco, and other discount retailers. According to MSN Money, Barnes & Noble has experienced declining sales, with only 7% increases over the last three years, as compared to Amazon’s 32% (Brush, 2012). Amazon’s increased sales are driven by the introduction of the Kindle Fire and their larger inventory of digital books. The difference in price between Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle Fire are significant, with Kindle Fire being considerably cheaper for a comparable product. Until recently, Amazon was ahead of Barnes & Noble, in offering digital downloads of movies and music. However, announced as New! on our Barnes & Noble website, we have now partnered with Netflix and Marvel to offer streaming movies and comic books. This will increase our connection to the younger generation. While our products are desired and used by all varieties and ages on the spectrum, my suggestion would be to target the college student and younger genres. When we begin to segment the public, we must begin with Generation Y. Their buying power and sheer numbers can not be ignored. They are a tech-savvy group raised on phones, computers, and hand held devices. With their numbers comparing to the Baby Boom generation, they saturate the buying market. In looking to the future, two other generations that should not be overlooked are Generation Z and AO (Always-On-The-Go). These two generations exhibit the need for instant gratification and access at their fingertips. Barnes & Noble will need to step up our digital world and online offerings to meet the demands of these groups of individuals. There are several ways we can meet the demands of the target segments mentioned above. The first being the ability to offer music downloads through our website and via The Nook and phone app. Currently, we do offer music and DVD’s for sale, but the option to purchase a single track or song digitally is not available. With today’s youth downloading more music than ever, this option would meet that demand. This would also increase the purchase of B&N’s gift card sales, which could ultimately compete with those sales of the iTunes card. Another option would be to offer the ability to share any of your downloads between devices. If you download a song on your iPad, your Nook, or your phone, let’s make it easy to share it between all of them. We need to focus on customer service and convenience. This would encourage customer loyalty. We should open up our eReader format to allow other devices to view books from our digital library. Right now, our digital books are in a format that is strictly proprietary and can only be viewed using The Nook or a free downloadable app. The current format we offer is Epub, which is not readably viewable by all operating systems. We need to refocus on selling the book and not limiting its viewing ability. If we began to offer our books in .pdf format, any user with any operating system would be able to purchase a book from us. We may not be able to fully compete with the iPad reader or the Kindle Fire, but we can still have people buy our books. Lastly, we should address the possibility of offering price matching, in order to rebuild our loyal customer base and let them know we are serious about keeping their business. If a customer can show us where they can purchase a book cheaper than we are selling it, within reason, we will match that price. It would encourage an increase in book sales and would reduce the amount of overhead costs on
Show More

Related Documents: Today's Reader Essay

Reflection Of Fahrenheit 451

The book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a book most readers would find difficult to read or understand. The language might seem hard to some readers and other readers might not figure out the setting of the book until they are halfway through it. Nonetheless, not being able to understand a book is frustrating. Luckily, in today’s society, a reader is able to research the background of the book to help him or her understand it better. Although the book Fahrenheit 451 is difficult to understand…

Words 688 - Pages 3

The Ghost Map

illness, Johnson illustrates the events of the devastating week with enticing detail. The novel culminates in a final chapter discussing urban development and modern day challenges that today’s generation may face. The novel gives the 1854 crisis relevance in regard to twenty first century issues and gives the reader a greater perspective on the ways the mind can work to solve biological mysteries and bring about creative thought. The novel is written as a nonfiction, third person narrative. The…

Words 749 - Pages 3

Essay on Effects of Violent Video Games

article he gives factual evidence and quotes from scholarly sources such as doctors and researchers in the fields of behavior and psychology. The author gives ample explanation on evidence used from his sources to give the optimal understanding to the reader of the results and/or findings given by the sources. The article connects to the modern age of gamers with examples from big name video…

Words 1417 - Pages 6

Dwelling in Possibilities Analysis Essay

his students, and young people in general, use today’s technology to be “everywhere at once” (watching a movie, instant messaging, talking on the phone, and glancing at a textbook) and are therefore, “not anywhere in particular” (Edmundson…

Words 1206 - Pages 5

Dont Care Essay

society’s idea of the “model champion” endures transformations. For example, Aristotle’s opinions seem obsolete and tiresome by today’s standards. Repeated concepts and plots bore audiences and cause them to lose interest. However, one thing remains constant; everybody loves a great hero. In the ever­changing realm of entertainment, the criteria for this hero evolves to suit the wants of the people. Today’s population possesses a fairly simple­minded taste when it comes to entertainment. They easily fall victim…

Words 664 - Pages 3

Critque Paper

Orenstien tells the reader how reality television shows, like “The Bachelor” and “Joe Millionaire”, are all drafted the way they are to make it look like real love and a fairy tale, but they have nothing to do with love now: Money is the real reason to wed. Orenstien tells throughout her article, about how love is not a factor in marriage and why this ‘fairytale’ is an idea in today’s society. In Catherine Orenstein’s “Fairy Tales and a Dose of Reality”, Orenstien tells the reader about how the fairy…

Words 775 - Pages 4

Essay on Problems In Parenting

music and the social implications it has on the American society. In the essay, “Eminem Is Right” (Blair reader, pp 223-229), author Mary Eberstadt explores why today’s music, violent and disgusting, resonates with so many American children today. In the beginning of her essay, Eberstadt explores the question as to “why such violent music relates to so many children today?” The music of today’s generation has to deal with broken homes with broken families and sexual/emotional abuse. From the many…

Words 963 - Pages 4

Rhetorical Analysis Of The American Dream By Brandon King

Persuading readers is often accomplished in academic writing by using rhetorical devices. In this essay, I plan to analyze “The American Dream: Dead, Alive or on Hold?” by Brandon King published in They Say I Say in the year ___. The audience being addressed in this writing are students of english that want to learn about the differing opinions on the American Dream. He intended to draw the readers in by including many individuals attitudes towards the topic. He chose many strategies to persuade…

Words 655 - Pages 3

Fahrenheit 451 Compared To Today

exist when the book was published. Some of the things that Bradbury wrote about back in 1953 are becoming more apparent in today’s society. Fahrenheit 451 has a powerful message for readers today because of the similar technology, and the way that their society shows affections or love. But some of the technology that is explained in the book may not be so similar to today's technology. Several pieces of technology explained in Fahrenheit 451 are very similar…

Words 725 - Pages 3

Dana Gioia's Money

Explication of Dana Gioia's "Money" Money. There is no doubt it makes the world go around, especially in today's fast-paced economy. In the poem "Money," Dana Gioia does an excellent job of expressing how all-consuming money and it's perks can be. For some, money completely consumes his or hers life and becomes more of an obsession or a toxic poison than anything. It seems as if Gioia is trying to let readers see the negative side of money. He does this by using personification, imagery, and metaphors. Personification…

Words 815 - Pages 4