The firm has formed partnership with other big companies like Amazon.com in order to improve on its services to consumers. This has enabled them to deliver orders in time to the benefit of Borders.
The firm apart from operating bookstore also runs music store and coffee bars, these helps in increasing its overall sales. The firm uses modern computerized system to manage its inventory; this makes it record highest sales as compared to other competitors within the market. Borders have divided its products to serve as small business segments to the satisfaction of their clients.
They operate numerous book and music stores within the United States and additionally organize live performance events by artistes and books authors. The coming of the internet enabled multiple works to be performed by providing an efficient and cheaper means of communication between the stores and the clients (Gataric et al, 2002, pp 387-397).
The firm’s superstores engage in sponsoring community functions like story telling occasions as well as group discussions amongst others. Borders also engaged in sponsoring online magazines one of them being Salon which offers customers with opportunity to read variety of books and keep updated with current affairs.
The firm launched the use of Borders Universe which provides online inventory data connecting all the retail outlets, this makes it easier for customers to find books from other related retail stores. Borders deliver books and other products to consumers’ doorsteps and operate telephone support twenty four hours a day throughout the week (Gataric et al, 2002, pp 387-397).
Customer value
The firm’s superstores provide consumers with various selections of music and videos at affordable prices. These selections comprises of music that are rarely found but sought after by the majority, these include jazz and opera type of music. They offer the same trend within their video stores which makes available a number of title movies. The firms’ use of the internet in retailing provides the consumers with easier means of selecting variety of what they require online.
This meant that customers are now able to save on time that could have been consumed looking for items in the stores and undergoing all other required services. The merger with Amazon.com enabled Borders to provide customers with unique services that included complete information on store locations and the several events that take place at the in-stores (Feng, et al, 2001, PP 467-503).
Capabilities
The firm launched a site that had the capability of handling the largest multimedia database on the internet. It was also the only firm with the largest in-stock of multimedia selection for most of the retailers using the internet, besides they offer ready shipping services for the millions of their products purchased online.
Borders.com offers beautiful sites and choices to the consumers, on top of this they are also time conscious in the way they deliver their services. This makes the firm to be one of the most trusted internet brands. In order to build close relationship with consumers and win more of their trust, the firm created private database that serves customers at individual levels taking care of confidentiality (Gataric et al, 2002, pp 387-397).
The company needed to improve on its commercial capabilities whereby the consumers will be served in a more organized way. The firm launched internet in-store kiosks which provide customers with easy time when locating the products availability and prices online.
The costs of operating the online services seem to be high calling for further strategies. The firm increased the level of their sales through partnership with top leaders in online sales; this has helped in shifting of costs responsibility for internet sales (Gataric et al, 2002, pp 387-397).
References
Feng, et al.(2001). A New Business Model? The Capital Market and the New Economy. Economy and Society, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp 467-503. Gataric, I., Gilbert, J., Green, J., Kennedy, I. Lewallen, W., and Sumita, Y. (2002).
Borders: Responding to Change. International Directory of Company Histories Vol. 43, pp 387-397.