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Many are baffled by the fact that Barnes & Nobles, the largest book retailer in the United States, started selling toys in their stores. I believe that the fact Barnes & Nobles diversifies into retailing books is due to the fact the firm was unable to respond effectively and quickly to the external environment.
As technology developed and many publishers began selling e-books, many national booksellers closed and their products, physical copies of novels, started to become somewhat obsolete. Ebooks became popular due to several reasons, one of the them being the fact that it’s less costly and the development and growing use of technology. While Amazon quickly responded to the changing environment by grasping the opportunity, the rapidly advancing technology, by producing an e-reader and selling ebooks, Barnes & Nobles was unable to react fast enough to produce a strategy that would take advantage of such a change in the public’s attitude towards reading books. Barnes & Nobles’s e-reader, the Nook, poses minimal threat to Amazon’s Kindle. Nonetheless, there are still a number of loyal customers who prefer hardcopy books to electronic versions. However, the fact that Barnes & Nobles began to sell toys, among other things, seems to be a sign that the firm has to find other ways to keep itself from closing.