It’s difficult for many people to commit to reading a physical book. Heck, it’s even more difficult to get people to actually walk into a book store (Wait, that Starbucks was inside the Barnes & Noble – not the other way around?!).
This week, Google has added Barnes & Noble to its Google Shopping Express, a direct move against book market mogul Amazon. Currently, Amazon’s same day delivery program includes retail giants Target, Costco, Whole Foods, Walgreens and Staples. For the floundering Barnes & Noble, there could no greater opportunity to molt its brick-and-mortar exterior and plunge into the bustling sea of online shopping.
For loyal Barnes & Noble shoppers, this opens up an entirely new addition to the customer experience. Maybe the days of your Oreo frappucino condensation dripping onto pristine pages from Dan Brown novels are finally behind you! Or, maybe you’ll always be clumsy. Or maybe you just don’t like Dan Brown.
Whether you’re the tablet type or the touch-and-feel type, the partnership promises to accommodate for both. “We believe very strongly this is a great service,” said Jamie Carey, chief merchandising officer for Barnes & Noble, “We’re interested in doing anything we can do to create more access points, to be able to serve customers in the way they want to be served.” For the company, the partnership can only yield positive results, as the addition of Google Shopping Express adds another channel for the superior customer engagement that Barnes & Noble customers have come to expect.
However, with declining sales, Barnes & Noble has ground to make up; the company reported revenue decline of 6.7% in 2014 alone. In addition, Nook e-reader sales experienced a 35% nosedive against the increasingly dominating Amazon Kindle. In the opposing trenches, Amazon’s Q2 2014 sales leapt 23% from last year to $19.3 billion - its media sales (including books) comprising 25% of total revenue. It is a modern War of the Literary Worlds, Montagues vs. Capulets, Lenny’s vs. puppies. Who knew books could be so exciting?
While the program may be too fresh to glean sales insight, initial reports show company shares increasing 4%, building positive speculation for the flailing book store. Whether the company can make a legitimate comeback against Amazon remains to be seen. Yet, with Google, all things are probable – maybe even books…