How Barnes & Noble Can Save Itself From Becoming A Kodak Moment

Kodak’s current moment speaks to the basic branding principle referred to as “fit and leverage.” Sure, many Kodak products “fit” logically into the areas in which it competed, be it cameras, film, or printing. The problem was that it hasn’t been able to “leverage” any of these things in any significant or sustainable way. It hasn’t been able to come up with a better mousetrap and has lost its competitive advantage across the board. And this is the daunting challenge now being faced by Barnes & Noble. 

What Barnes & Noble needs to do in order not to follow Kodak into the brand book of memories is to rethink its business strategy; determine how it can take the products and services if offers – good fits all, by the way – and leverage them in a way that no one else in the category is doing, or can do. Now, you don’t have to be a tech expert to know that the company’s Nook will never beat Apple at the e-reader game. Nor do you have to be an actuary to know that Barnes & Noble will never beat Amazon on pure scale, be it Kindle related or otherwise. But if Barnes & Noble looks hard enough and thinks smart enough it might find a play that’s not yet on the playing field, a way of combining the best of retail book selling with the best of what people love about reading in a digital world. Remember, Barnes & Noble has something its competitors don’t – a ubiquitous and very popular brick and mortar presence. To survive the category evolution, it has to somehow bundle its goods and services in a way that’s different from what’s already out there in a way that consumers care about (the mark, of course, of every strong brand).

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