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Not enough bricks to make the Nook click? B&N will sell take-home Nooks at only ‘certain’ stores
October 27, 2009 | 7:45 am
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By David Rothman
Each B&N store will get a demo Nook, but PaidContent reports that “only certain stores will carry the Nook for on-the-spot sales.”
Gee, I thought B&N would get behind this one. The brick factor is the big advantage that B&N could enjoy over Amazon. People are much less likely to make impulse buys if they can’t take home a unit now.
Hmm. Could the analysts be right after all in downgrading the stock? It’s great for B&N to have a digital strategy. But that isn’t necessarily the same as a well-executed strategy.
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So again, we get an e-book bookseller asking us to buy into their hardware, and not enough hardware to go around. B&N really needs to push other hardware for their store, so people aren’t convinced they must get a Nook or they’ll lose out.
Another mistake in a long line of mistakes by B&N regarding the Nook and ebooks. Granted some of the problems, such as the lending restrictions, are not of B&N’s making but of the publishers, but B&N hasn’t counterattacked like Amazon.
As I have written here (and elsewhere) before, B&N is really blowing it with at least some of its club members, who are the big book buyers. This is just icing the cake
I recently wrote B&N customer service and asked the following questions:
[QUOTE]1. Does my membership discount apply to ebooks purchased at BN.com’s ebook store?
2. Does my B&N Mastercard discount apply to ebook purchases?
3. If I purchase the Nook, will I get a member’s discount on the purchase?
4. Does the member discount apply to accessories for the Nook?
5. Does the B&N Mastercard discount apply to to purchase of the Nook and/or Nook accessories?[/QUOTE]
Here is B&N’s reply:
[QUOTE]Dear Customer,
Thank you for your inquiry regarding applying discounts to nook and eBooks.
Discounts, who doesn’t like to use them, especially today? But sorry, nook is priced really fairly, we can’t let additional discounts be applied and there’s no member discount on accessories.
However, Barnes & Noble members can get FREE Expedited Air Shipping if they pre-order today! This is a limited time offer, so for more information about this promotion, please visit:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/offers/index.asp
Because our eBook prices are deeply discounted from the Publisher?s List Price, the Barnes & Noble Member’s discount is not available on the purchase of digital content (including but not limited to digital books, magazines, and periodicals); certain digital devices; downloadable Audiobooks in MP3 or any other format.
We hope you find this information helpful and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Sincerely,
Herman
Customer Service Representative
Barnes and Noble
http://www.bn.com//QUOTE
Tell me — does that make any sense from a marketing perspective? If you know that your average customer buys 2 paperback books a year from you but that you have a customer who buys 25+ hardcover books from you each year, wouldn’t you do something to encourage that 25+ buyer to remain loyal, increase their purchases, and expand into what appears to be the growth area of the future? I sure would.
With the move to ebooks, what reason is there to loyally shop at B&N? Every book B&N has in ebook or pbook, is available elsewhere, and often for less. Multiple other devices can access multiple other ebookstores, so even that is not an advantage. And why buy a club membership? (Of course, I haven’t mentioned B&N’s other brilliant move: you can’t use B&N gift cards to purchase either the Nook or an ebook. So that eliminates asking friends and relatives for B&N giftcards this coming holiday.)
And wouldn’t you glean something important from your chief competitor’s announcement to the stock market that the average ebook buyer for its device buys 3.1 times as many books as the non-ebook buyer? I would.
And I don’t think it takes a genius to see that it might well be worthwhile to give the 25+ buyer a 10% discount on the Nook and ebooks in hopes of turning that 25+ buyer into a 75+ buyer or at least 25+ hardcovers plus additional ebooks.
Something is missing at B&N when it misses so many marketing advantages and concedes, albeit unwittingly, ground to its competition. I think if Lewis Carroll were alive he would have patterned many of his Alice in Wonderland characters on B&N’s ebook/Nook marketing strategy.
The problems with producing eink screens has been with them from the start. I’d hoped that now all the production lines had been tweaked and streamlined so they could just crank the screens out by the millions; but it seems not to be the case. It’s a shame.
I suspect the issue is simply lack of product.
Being a (fashionably) late arrival at the party, B&N doesn’t have an existing contract for the components like Amazon, Sony, iliad, and Hanlin, among others. Existing customers usually get first dibs at any added capacity, after all. Just an added barrier to entry…
Also, the color touch screen isn’t exactly a common component to source, which may be adding a second bottleneck to volume production. Odds are it’ll be at least six months before the things are readily available for walk-up purchases at all storefronts.
Something you should note about purchasing a nook in a Brick store. My wife pre-ordered a nook for my birthday and the sales person sold her a gift card to get me started with some books. Guess what, you can’t use a B&N gift card for ebooks. I wonder how much B&N is pocketing from nook/gift card sales?
Until we keep get discounts on the Nook, the best most of us will get from you is purchasing DEAD TREEs, with ink on them.
This may in fact be a ploy to kill off eBooks instead of sell it.