In the world of business, conforming to changes and societal advancement is imperative for long term sustainable success. Abercrombie (as mentioned in blog post- A Flawed Business Model Canvas is a Flawed Business) is struggling to keep up with major competition such as H&M and Forever 21 because Abercrombie has been unsuccessful in keeping up with changes in the market. There is still hope for Abercrombie however. Their leading competitions offer the same type of service as Abercrombie (selling clothes) but the main difference lies in how they deliver that product to the consumers. Technological advancement isn’t the reason of defeat, and therefore it is actually likely for Abercrombie to bounce back into the market.

In Mary’s blog post ” Saving Paris’s Oldest Bookstore”, she talks about an interesting case of Paris’s oldest book store succumbing to the market domination of e-books and e-commerce and its inability to generate enough revenue to cover just its rent. Mary provides many suggestion to how the bookstore could turn its business around such as partnerships with e-book companies and also creating a strong shared value to try to differentiate themselves.

With respect to Mary, I believe that all her solutions do have a viability in sustaining the business but only in the short run. The difference between bookstores from around the world and  Abercrombie is that the changes that have been affecting bookstores are simply technological. E-books and e-commerce are extremely convenient and this is especially important in markets where consumers are generally busy and don’t have the time to go to a bookstore. Some may argue that there is still some market for consumers that like the paperback feel of non e-books, but I strongly believe that this market is slowly decreasing. School textbooks, for example, have slowly been made more and more available online. The point I’m trying to get at is the market for traditional books is inevitably dying and there is nothing bookstores can do, other than remodel their business. That is a problem in its own right. Knowing when to back out of a dying market is imperative to minimize the potential losses from stubbornly staying.

SOURCE:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/liqiaoma/

https://blogs.ubc.ca/liqiaoma/2014/09/27/saving-pariss-oldest-bookstore/