The Nook: An Unfortunate Retreat for Barnes & Noble, Inc. (BKS)

Ways to Increase Store Sales

Can Barnes & Noble make its bookstores work again? If so, how should it go about it? First, take a look at Barnes & Noble’s membership program. Presently a virtual member-benefit scheme that rewards frequent customers with discounts, could it be made into an actual member club of some sort? Why can’t bookstores sponsor or host some kind of in-store book club activities for their customers of book lovers? That would be something that an Apple device or Kindle Fire could never deliver.

Imagine what could happen when people join different Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) book clubs. Members could potentially come to the store more often for scheduled club meetings and book discussions, and they might also be willing to buy and read the required or recommended books beforehand. All these initiatives could potentially help increase book sales for the store.

Bookstores in general have a friendly policy about book browsing. While it’s wise to keep such a long-standing policy, booksellers cannot be too content with customers’ free browsing when it doesn’t subsequently generate sales. Most people probably have read a book or two for free in a bookstore. Thus, doing nothing about this reflects a lack of business initiative from booksellers.

A service like providing book-club social events can encourage interested customers to purchase a book before attending. Other book-related services could include in-store storytelling or poetry reading by customers. It’s up to bookstores to take the charge if they wish to remain relevant in the book business.

Just like that not all customers visit bookstores, only some investors may be interested in investing in bookstores. The bookselling market has indeed seen more stores going out of business amid the seemingly accelerated e-reading trend. But since most of the book sales still come from print books, as the largest national book chain, Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) stands a chance of bouncing back.

Bookstores are where investors can potentially register the most cash at the end of the day. But only those that have managed to bring in the most buying customers and are able to report increased revenues over time will remain open continually.

The article The Nook: An Unfortunate Retreat for Barnes & Noble originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Jay Wei.

Jay Wei has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Amazon.com and Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of Amazon.com and Apple. Jay is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network — entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.

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