Caso Amazon
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Publicado: 28 de noviembre de 2012
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9-798-063
R E V: M A R C H 16, 2004
P A N K AJ GH E M AWAT
Leadership Online (A): Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon.com
The Next Big Thing: A Bookstore? Amazon.com is leading a wave of digital shops to invade established industries. They need no bricks and mortar, and they speak directly to their customers—these upstarts have a shot.
Headline fromFortune,
December 9, 1996
Why Barnes & Noble may Crush Amazon
The Amazon model is beguilingly attractive…All one needs, it would seem,
is a Website to present the face that greets customers and takes their
orders…Maybe low barriers to entry are a mixed blessing, however.
Headline and text from
Fortune magazine
September 29, 1997
Bymid-1997, the competitive battle in electronic book retailing, between Amazon.com and Barnes
& Noble, was on in earnest in cyberspace. Amazon had played a remarkable role in driving and
dominating online retailing in its targeted category, books. But during the first half of 1997, Barnes &
Noble, the leading traditional book retailer, committed to use its resources to attack Amazon’sleadership online. The battle between the two was being watched with intense interest.
The first two sections of this case review the organization of traditional bookselling in the United States and Barnes & Noble’s business models for competing within it, respectively. The next two sections describe Amazon’s business model for online book retailing and Barnes & Noble’s online offensive. Visits toAmazon.com’s and BarnesandNoble.com’s sites on the World Wide Web (WWW) are useful supplements. The final section of this case discusses some of the ways in which the online environment appeared to be changing in 1997.
Professor Pankaj Ghemawat and Research Associate Bret Baird prepared this case. This case was developed from published sources. HBS cases are developed solely asthe basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. The authors wish to acknowledge Thomas Kramer and Brian Lenhardt, MBAs 1998, for the ideas presented in their class reports and for their work on an earlier draft.
Copyright © 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To ordercopies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—withoutthe permission of Harvard Business School.
798-063 Leadership Online (A): Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon.com
Traditional Bookselling
Expenditures by U.S. consumers on books reached $26 billion in 1996. Exhibit 1 divides them up by type of book. Consumer expenditures on books hadgrown at a 5.4% annual rate since 1991, and were projected to grow at a 4.8% annual rate through 2001 to reach the figure of $33 billion. The modest rates of growth reflected, among other things, the effects of a broad array of “substitutes” for books: cable TV, VCRs, video games, and so on.
On average, about 10 books were sold per U.S. citizen in 1996. The highest purchase-intensity wasexhibited by adults between ages 35 and 75 with household incomes of $45,000 or more. Book purchases were often made while other books were still being read or were being left unread; many were bought on impulse. Relatedly, purchasing tended to be subject to spikes on weekends and in the fourth quarter of the year. In the aggregate, purchasers also demanded a large number of stock keeping units...
9-798-063
R E V: M A R C H 16, 2004
P A N K AJ GH E M AWAT
Leadership Online (A): Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon.com
The Next Big Thing: A Bookstore? Amazon.com is leading a wave of digital shops to invade established industries. They need no bricks and mortar, and they speak directly to their customers—these upstarts have a shot.
Headline fromFortune,
December 9, 1996
Why Barnes & Noble may Crush Amazon
The Amazon model is beguilingly attractive…All one needs, it would seem,
is a Website to present the face that greets customers and takes their
orders…Maybe low barriers to entry are a mixed blessing, however.
Headline and text from
Fortune magazine
September 29, 1997
Bymid-1997, the competitive battle in electronic book retailing, between Amazon.com and Barnes
& Noble, was on in earnest in cyberspace. Amazon had played a remarkable role in driving and
dominating online retailing in its targeted category, books. But during the first half of 1997, Barnes &
Noble, the leading traditional book retailer, committed to use its resources to attack Amazon’sleadership online. The battle between the two was being watched with intense interest.
The first two sections of this case review the organization of traditional bookselling in the United States and Barnes & Noble’s business models for competing within it, respectively. The next two sections describe Amazon’s business model for online book retailing and Barnes & Noble’s online offensive. Visits toAmazon.com’s and BarnesandNoble.com’s sites on the World Wide Web (WWW) are useful supplements. The final section of this case discusses some of the ways in which the online environment appeared to be changing in 1997.
Professor Pankaj Ghemawat and Research Associate Bret Baird prepared this case. This case was developed from published sources. HBS cases are developed solely asthe basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. The authors wish to acknowledge Thomas Kramer and Brian Lenhardt, MBAs 1998, for the ideas presented in their class reports and for their work on an earlier draft.
Copyright © 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To ordercopies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—withoutthe permission of Harvard Business School.
798-063 Leadership Online (A): Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon.com
Traditional Bookselling
Expenditures by U.S. consumers on books reached $26 billion in 1996. Exhibit 1 divides them up by type of book. Consumer expenditures on books hadgrown at a 5.4% annual rate since 1991, and were projected to grow at a 4.8% annual rate through 2001 to reach the figure of $33 billion. The modest rates of growth reflected, among other things, the effects of a broad array of “substitutes” for books: cable TV, VCRs, video games, and so on.
On average, about 10 books were sold per U.S. citizen in 1996. The highest purchase-intensity wasexhibited by adults between ages 35 and 75 with household incomes of $45,000 or more. Book purchases were often made while other books were still being read or were being left unread; many were bought on impulse. Relatedly, purchasing tended to be subject to spikes on weekends and in the fourth quarter of the year. In the aggregate, purchasers also demanded a large number of stock keeping units...
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