BWB focuses on its strengths and long term market opportunities to be able to develop not only competitive advantages but more specifically sustainable ones. Despite the hard competition, the firm was able to keep a strong position and keep growing in the US.

 

The firm operates in a field with low barriers of entry, which makes it harder to differentiate itself and earn the market’s monopoly. In fact, the technology used by BWB is quite simple to acquire and could be used by any new start up.

In this context, it is crucial for the company to rely on its values and principles, and remain confident about its worldwide partnership, and hence keeping a good reputation.

The company was founded in a period where the book market was booming. Book distributors were using strategic solutions to boost up there sales.

 

For instance, they were investing in nice and attracting websites or also focusing on heavy advertising campaigns. On the opposite, BWB wasn’t able to afford any of these since the management refused any external funding during the first five years.
Instead, the firm focused on some core values such as interactions with customers in order to build a strong reputation.

We’ve seen that BWB has a unique way of beating competition in the US, which is by buiding their business, and making it grow around a cause. It will be then interesting to measure this strength and see if the firm will be able to use the same strategies to beat the competition in the European market.

 

BWB faces many competitors and each having a different way of competing with the firm. First, we have two main markets in which BWB should keep a strong position:

 

• Offline markets: It consists of any bookstore, library, and places selling the product, which is a book in our case, without being connected to the Internet. BWB’s main competitors in this sector would be libraries, local bookstores, bookshops in universities, bigger stores having books sections such as Fnac, borders and others.

 

• Online markets: These are basically stores that require an Internet connection for the client to buy the products desired. Competitors in this market are the big online players like Amazon, eBay, and all the other offline bookstores that also provide online shopping with shipping services.

 

Several aspects affecting the book market contribute in fluctuations in BWB’s position in the book sector. For instance, the fact that the sales have been more increasing in the online store makes it more challenging for BWB to focus on the big online players like Amazon but still force him to keep a passive strategy since the firm is also selling its books using the Amazon platform. 

 

Political:
The belgian state can have a very important influence in BetterWorldBooks’ business, we can mainly mention

three aspect that we must take into account:

 

• From a fiscal point of view, we can say that Belgium isn’t reluctant to give opportunities, with a different tax treatment for start ups in regions where there are economic difficulties. Those advantages are very diversified and we can say that we can benefit from accelerated amortization of our big starting investments, it may help to generate more cash in the beginning of our establishment. Another advantage is that our company is a B-corporation, with a very ambitious social and environmental purpose, this kind of vision makes it also possible to demand an even better tax treatment.

 

Last but not least, start ups are also able to ask for a lower tax rate.

Belgium is very famous to work with one of the most complexified tax system in the world so of course there are many complex conditions to pretend to benefit from those very interesting advantages, which concern company’s size, activity sector, opportunities of job creation and many other elements.

Actually, we must a little realistic: Belgium has a not so wrong reputation of a country with a very large tax burden and so we must be aware about the fact that it is surely not the best place to be in this point of view but it wouldn’t be the case anymore if we are able to make arrangements with fiscal administration ... and it is possible with the influence that we can have in global welfare, through shared economy.

 

• We can also expect to make many partnership with local municipalities, to make a very broad and efficient promotion of our services, this possibility must depend on a lot of factors but we can advance that the nature of the major political party has a large influence in this partnership possibility; in fact, this party must be sensitive about our long term goal: a better books’ use and diffusion of literacy in the whole world.
  
  Those partnerships would be also be very interesting to make our negociations with fiscal administration much more relevant.

 

 

Economic:

Many market conditions may be interesting to thrive our business and make our enter in the market much more relevant than ever:

• If we focus on blue ocean strategy, we must do business differently to be able to reduce competition and make even more profit or more precisely welfare for our case.

 

• Actually, selling secondhand books isn’t a new market at all but we can say that the way we collect books and our business is really a new thing in consumers’ minds so it is precisely this kind of image that may attract the consumer.

 

• A big problem in Belgium is that labour costs are very steep for companies, because of too much social security tax (even though it allows one of the most developed healthcare service in the world) and automatic wages indexation, which is a more and more abandoned policy because it rises inflation more in Belgium than in the rest of Eurozone.

 

• From a commercial point of view, it is very simple: Europe is a very good place to be and the reason is that there are nearly no tariffs anymore in Europe and especially in Shengen zone, where we want to develop our business.

 

• Another very good think to underline is that there is a fierce competition in logistics in Shengen zone, those very low costs are very interesting to pretend our expansion in other european countries in the future, which gives us large growth opportunities an incleasingly strong notoriety in the world, which would sustain BWB’ success and activities.

  Of course, BWB faces a very big competition in this aspect because many online retailers have a very efficient supply chain, so far that it is a often a very important part of their business model, BWB in facing many challenges with the adaptation of its suppky chain, which must also be in a relevant relation with its positionning.

 

 

 

Social:

Let’s focus on aspects that concern more our targeted consumers and partners, which give us an overview of trends that we should take into account.

• The most important thing is that our company has a very attractive social objective for the society, in fact, it isn’t a very typical objective, even for a B-corporation.

 

• People would like to have collecting stations, they are enthusiastic about it.
  It is very promissing because it gives a big opportunity to BWB: targeting people who don’t know how to get rid of their books, because they would like to have such collecting stations to solve their book storage problem.

 

• It is good to be able to collect books but those ones must be sold at the end and so there is an element that can lead consumer choise: prices are very low, of course BWB sells secondhand books and doesn’t want to make a very large profit, it isn’t in his business model.
  Secondhand books must be at a very low price and it is interesting for the consumer because he doesn’t have so much money now and so it can attract some segments.

 

Technological:
The first phenomenon to highlight is that innovation has changed the way we read books now.

Indeed, the arrival of e-books and the fact that people tend to use less books to their researchs have decreased books’ demand and attractivity and it also the case for some kind of specific books because MOOC’s are more and more available and interactive, so far that it can be a better way to learn some topics (such as programming) than with a book.

Even though BWB’ website is quite very well structured right now, some innovative aspects may be developed to attract even more people in this kind of moment of truth, because the moment when you discover BWB is when you discover their website, it must be as attracting as possible. 

First of all, our main objective is to collect the most books as possible, to make our offer broader and so more reliable to our consumers, which love variety.

A very important trend which must be highlighted is that people who are willing to get rid of their books through book collectors are big readers who feel conscious about protection of the environment but it also concerns people who are facing a big change in their lives, such as a house relocation or buying but it can also be a child birth. This phenomenon is easy to explain: if we have a lot of books, those ones can take of an awful lot of space and, instead of throwing those books away in trash cans, it is much more useful to recycle them or make them reusable for other readers.

To make it clearer when we see those results, showing why Belgians want to get rid of some books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other reasons are, amongst other less relevant ones, that people don’t like the book that they want to give and that it would make them proud to give their useless books for a good cause.

To go ever further in collection possibilities, people love cars in Belgium and so most Belgians have a car, they don’t feel that it is necessary to collect their books with a BWB truck, which would come regularly, collection stations in strategic places are much more efficient to reach them and it is much less intrusive.

We have asked to belgian people what was the way they found to get rid of some books in their home and those were the results:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where the other ways were mainly to give those books to official book collectors (which are of course very similar to collecting possibilities than BetterWorldBooks is developing in Europe) and other ways such as to light a fire, which can be an interesting behaviour to change with a greater notoriety of your collecting network but it isn’t a very interesting segment to target now, of course.

 

 

 

As we can see there, people tend to store their books if they want to get rid of them, which is a quite contradictory answer.

This provides a very big opportunity because we can provide an ethical solution to those people who don’t know what to do to have fewer books at home.
If Belgian inhabitants are interested in having collection station for their books, we could be a part of the solution for the consumer, which wants to get rid of his or her books.

Let’s check whether or not the Belgians’ enthusiasm about having this kind of collection stations reflects our potential offer:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can see that, even though some people aren’t enthusiastic at all about the arrival of book collection stations, most people would be interested in those collection stations in their lives, it is very encouraging about book collecting opportunities.

Secondly, BetterWorldBooks’ concept, which is that every secondhand book bought allows to send one book more to developing countries, makes it very relevant to attract readers to buy secondhand books in our shop: they care about this social aspect and want to contribute to this global objective ... and it isn’t any constraint to them because prices are very low for books in a quite good condition, which is pretty profitable for them, in comparison with other retailers such as Amazon, the main BWB’s competitor.

 

Speaking about consumers’ preferences, those ones are clear: the Belgian market prefers to sell secondhand books by Internet but especially by specialized bookstores because they would like to be sure about what they are purchasing, it is due to the fact that secondhand books have a poor consumer reliability right now.

Some specific elements must be developed in our bookstores to create a higher value added, by being able to sell our books at a higher price.
Those elements are good service and atmosphere in our bookstores but also a very good selection of the books that we receive by our donators, this selection can bring a very good image in the long run and maybe help to improve the reliability of secondhand books in customer’s minds (but it would take years, of course).

As it was said before, this evolution can bring a really significant value added to our products and sustain growth opportunities, which may be the main reasons to attract investors.
This idea of profitability - which doesn’t reflect BWB’s ultimate objectives - can reinforce this image of reliability in the soul of consumers and sellers ... and there would have a virtuous circle!

 

 

Every coin has its flip side and so all of those profitability aspects can also lead to a contradictory situation: the fact that BWB would act as a business and not as a charity (even though there is a social idea behind it), such as Oxfam’s case (St John Mackintosh, 2013).
BWB’s expansion must be much more reasoned to avoid this kind of problem and be able to hope the same success as in the USA. 

The digital revolution offers many new possibilities for the book sector. For instance, offering books to new markets, which means a huge potential of growth for the company, e-books, etc.

Taking this context into account, as BWB is an online based business which sells and collects books, there is a great opportunity for the company for launching its service in the European market.

Reading is one of the activities most European people do in their leisure time.

When entering the European market, BWB will have as a major competitor Amazon. A research showed that the Seattle based giant has a great presence in much European countries.

 

For example, the UK book market is one of the biggest as the US, where it accounts for 21% of the entertainment market. 

In Germany, the 2nd biggest in Europe, Amazon has a very big presence in the book market in Germany, including its e-books and printed books and owns roughly one quarter of the online retail business. Spain, France, Italy, such as others, have also a great influence of Amazon.

 

Having this perspective, entering the European market, mainly Belgium, can be seen as a great opportunity for BWB. Having the social and environmental responsibility as the core of their business, BWB can enter the Belgian market with a different strategy, offering something else: not just selling but collecting used books and textbooks. Taking into account that some countries in Europe have a special attachment to printed books, the strategy can have a positive impact.

Moreover, in Belgium there is not an Amazon subsidiary, so it can be also an opportunity.

Although there are other competitors, who have a great importance, not having the presence of the world-wide known American giant can give BWB a unique possibility.

One can quote for example Abebooks.com for the secondhand books online market and there are also other websites such as Troc.com and PriceMinister.com.

 

Entering the online business isn’t necessarily profitable because customers are much more able to compare offers, especially about the prices, which can be a very critical factor in the Internet (Poirel and Bonet Fernandez, 2008) and so competition is much more relevant in online market, where competition may become more and more perfect.