Amazon vs. Borders

Amazon vs. Borders

Dr. Joaquin M Angles

Management Concepts

August 22, 2012

In today's ever changing society, people are shopping and buying products more and more online, which has opened up new aspects of money making strategies that businesses have built on to sell and market their products. The Internet has been a part of our daily lifestyle for many years. Electronic business or e-commerce are interchangeable and is a whole new way of doing business over the internet. E-commerce is done through web-based technologies and it includes transactions, order forms, selection of merchandise, warehousing, availability of products, and descriptions of a product. This paper will explore Borders book store which was not successful and had to file bankruptcy compared to Amazon’s online website which has been successful by primarily selling books and other products online.

Borders Group, Inc. came into existence following their spun off from its parent Kmart Corporation in May 1995. But the Borders name dates back over two decades. Borders began as a single used bookstore headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The store was founded by Louis and Tom Borders in 1971 while they were attending college at the University of Michigan. Borders bookstore was once a leading retailer of books and educational items with stores located throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Kmart acquired a company by the name of Waldenbooks and in 1992 Kmart acquired Borders only to merge the two in hopes of generating greater sales. In 1998 things quickly began to change for the worst after being one of the country’s leading bookstores. Several stores began to close due to competition with Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other book stores. The reason why is because Borders had failed to change their business model. With technology and customer demands rapidly changing Borders was unable to keep up with the times forcing them to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and closing all their stores....