It's no secret that Barnes & Noble is in big trouble. Lower sales, a declining stock, employee layoffs, and CEO troubles have plagued the company. It's a shame to see this once vibrant book chain in the state that it is now. There used to be a Barnes & Noble bookstore in my town, but it closed a few years ago. It was my go-to place to browse and to buy books because of their large selection. Even compared with the new Amazon brick-and-mortar bookstores, I prefer shopping at Barnes & Noble because I can find almost anything I want at B&N, while Amazon's physical bookstore selection is sorely lacking. During my last two experiences with Barnes & Noble though, I can see why it's losing out to Amazon.
The first experience was in store. I went on a weekend afternoon, and the store was empty, of both customers and employees. While I was browsing, I checked their website for a book I wanted to buy and found that it was available at this location. However, when I saw the book on the shelf, the price was significantly higher than the cost on the website. I waited in line and asked the cashier (yes, the cashier, because there was only one working at the time) how I could get the price on their website instead. She referred me to the Customer Service desk. When I arrived at the desk, it was unmanned. I waited over five minutes before someone showed up. I asked my question about price-matching again, and the Customer Service person said I needed to place an order via the website for pickup at the store if I wanted the website price. The reason, he explained, was that the website and physical locations weren't integrated. Big red alert! So I spent more time placing the order from my phone. Did I get the book then? Of course not! It took another twenty minutes for the order to be routed from the website to the store. Finally, after half an hour wasted, I was finally able to get the book I wanted. You can bet I'm never going through that again. If I see that a book is cheaper online than in the store, I'm walking out, even if I already have the book in my hand and am ready to pay for it. Sorry, B&N, that's a lost sale right there.
More recently, I placed an order through the B&N website for four books, this time to be delivered to my home. For some reason, despite ordering all of the books at the same time, B&N shipped one book right away and delayed sending out the rest. There was no indication that the other three books were out of stock, so I don't know why it took so much longer to receive them. If I had known that I would be receiving the books so far apart from each other, I may have chosen different books.
I relay my experiences not to bash Barnes & Noble but to point out a couple of examples of why I understand its decline. It seems that in the two decades that the retailer has had to compete against Amazon, it still hasn't figured out (1) how to integrate its online and physical stores and (2) how to offer an online buying experience as painless as Amazon's. It really is unfortunate because B&N had the time and money to still be the leader in book-selling, but I can see why it continues to lose customers.
