Ebusiness

Marketing Tools: Barnes and Noble

Barnes and Noble offers a variety of marketing tools to enhance the online shopping experience and add value to their relationships with their customers. The search engine on the site allows the customer to define book searches via a variety of methods including using the ISBN number for a known book. This tool is a very useful feature for academics and serious book lovers. This is a feature also offered by Doubleday and Amazon. A nice feature is that many of the search returns provide the customer with the option to buy a used copy of the book, of a slightly damaged copy at a significant discount. While Amazon also offers this service, Doubleday does not. This is a useful promotional tool that coupled with their discount membership offers their customers and excellent value.

A customer value add from the Barnes and Noble site is the existence of a Barnes and Noble "University", where a person can register for a series of web based training programs on a variety of topics from literary studies to musical instrument lessons. This is a value add that promotes further online and in store sales volume while providing a useful service. This service is an edge over Amazon that does not support a similar program.

Barnes and Noble also offer a series of "audio podcasts" on a regular basis with featured authors as the guest speakers. This program comes as a subscription service with Barnes and Noble downloading a new podcast to their member's computer each week. This is an excellent feature for the avid reader that wants to learn more about their favorite authors.

While not as broad in their product offerings as Amazon, Barnes and Noble offers an interesting online experience, offering a number of useful services for their customers. Customer service and a help section with answers to frequently asked questions section serve to promote comfort with the shopping and purchasing process

For a comfortable online shopping or browsing experience it helps to have good customer service available on the web site itself. According to Connect4Business good customer service comprises of the site being easy to navigate with the information available that the viewers are looking for, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) in an easy-to-find location, and a Customer Service phone number displayed on the site that the viewers can call and talk to a live person (Connect4Business, 2000). After reviewing the web sites of Doubleday, Barnes and Noble and Amazon it was found that two of the sites were well equipped while the third site had little support available.

The Doubleday web site has very few hyper links on the site. The links that are available take the reader to suggested authors, featured books, reader's companion and a search page. The search page is very basic and needs to be detailed to pull the information you are looking for. This makes it very hard to find books in a general interest area. This web site also does not have a "Help" section with links to help guide you through any of the processes for ordering or locating a retailer. They also do not list contact phone numbers. Amazon will phone you if you give them your number in the help section. Barnes and Noble offers a customer service telephone number. When going to the Doubleday book club web site registration is first required to enter the site and browse, definitely an annoyance for the online casual browser.

Barnes and Noble have very good levels of customer service on their web site. Not only is the site extensive in what it has to offer but also has a hyper link taking you to a "Help" page within the site. Once on this help page there are several categories with sub-categories to choose from for additional information. At the bottom of this page there is also a link taking you to a "Customer Service" page with even more information links. At this point if the user still needs help with questions being answered, the viewer can then either email their questions to customer service or he or she can call the "Customer Service" department and speak to a live person.

Like Barnes and Noble, the Amazon web site has a very complete help section for the viewer. On this page there are several help subjects listed along with sub-categories to choose from to have questions answered. Amazon does not give the customer a phone number. Instead they offer to call you if you need assistance. Amazon's site does have one minor annoyance. Customer service, terms and conditions and privacy policy pages are printed in a much smaller font than their goods for sale. The appearance is that they are discouraging requests for help or review of their terms. They are truly "microscopic" and difficult to read.

Each of the three websites evaluated use different marketing tools and promotional offerings to reach their target customers. Doubleday's website does not make extensive use of marketing tools or consumer friendly features in the manner of Barnes and Noble and Amazon's websites. Both Barnes and Noble and Amazon heavily promote customer services and offer very similar services right down to shipping and return policies. To be a successful website the use of marketing tools and easy to use customer service tools are needed to attract and hold the consumer until a purchase is made. Both Barnes and Noble and Amazon fulfill those needs and through their membership programs and discount offers, thus providing ample enticement for repeat business. Doubleday could consider adding additional tools to their site.

The Ethical, Legal, regulatory issues analysis

Legal Analysis

One method for Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Doubleday's book club web sites in addressing legal issues is by posting "Terms of Service Agreements" contract. Amazon.com provides a link on its home web page entitled "Conditions of Use," Barnes and Noble has "Terms of Use," and Doubleday book club uses "Terms and Conditions." Following these links would lead to another page that indicates a detailed description of rules and regulations. Some rules and regulations focus on protection of intellectual properties such as copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Other rules and regulations include privacy use, disclaimers of warranties, jurisdiction, and other conditions that are intended to limit Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Doubleday book club's liability for what a web site visitor might do with the information that is taken from the web site. Although Doubleday book club does not sell from their web site, the web site "Terms and Conditions" provide other links to third party companies that