“Disappearance of bookshop?”

Last week I read an interview with David Shelley, CEO Hachette in England, in the newspaper weekly magazine, with the title “The disappearance of a bookshop is a disaster”. It’s part of a series of interviews that shows how other book sellers see the future and how other countries, where the decline of book sales started earlier or is much more impacted already then in the Netherlands, deal with it.

David Shelley, has a holy believe in the future of printed books, he explains the importance of books, he believes that book traders and publishers should stay doing what they are good at, he warns to be careful in changing the business model.

If you look at David Shelley’s description of the situation, readers buy more and more online, it’s easy for new online start-ups to enter the market, using social media that enables startup’s with terrific marketing opportunities, the rise of e-books and the international business and divers eco-system that needs to proof itself every day, you can imagine that he is searching for a solution to cope with the disruption in the book market.

He stated that the most important challenge is to get a better understanding of customers and how they read books.

This interview shows perfectly:

• how difficult it is to define your business problem in a market in transformation
• how important a structured approach and insights are for changing business processes or business model

In my opinion, it’s more difficult to define your business problem, when you have strong believes. The business problem, “The disappearance of book- shops (is a disaster)”, derives directly from the holy believe of David Shelley in the future of printed books.

The question is Why is the disappearance of book-shops a disaster? For the sales of printed books? Will the book-sales go up when there are more book-shops? I doubt it. Or is the disappearance of book-shops a disaster because of the social impact? What is the importance of book-shops for customers and society besides the sales of books?

If you want to find a solution for the disappearance of bookshops and to stop the decline of book sales, it requires insights in the whole end-to-end customer journey of potential and current (e)book and printed book readers.

By analyzing the complete customer journey, from the awareness phase to the considerations-, negotiation- to the buying- and usage phase, you will find much more insights that will give you root causes of behavior and preference and direction for a solution.

Personally, I like to shop in our local bookshop, but I also drink coffee there and use their Wi-Fi to work for a couple of hours, while watching people that passes by.

If I’m searching for a book that’s not available, for example for the birthday of a friend of my kids, I go to web shop. Or, when I need a book quickly and can’t find the time to go the bookshop, or the weather is awful, I order online. When I get a book suggestion by a friend, I fist check my library and if they have it, I make a reservation.

So, I’m happy to have all three options, the book shop, online and the library. Based on the situation I decide where to go. I think, that because of these option, I read more than in the situation when only the book shop was available and I buy also more. Mostly for others, because we have limited space in our house for new books.

So, my conclusions are the following:

• be aware of your believes when defining your business problem. Believes reflect often the ‘old or current’ situation.
• have a structured approach to define your business problem and translate them into required insights for answers
• make use of analytics across the end-to-end customer journey to find root causes and opportunities to change your business processes or even your business model.

Do you need support in turning your business in more data driven, do not hesitate to contact us.

#Datadrivenbusiness #transformation #businessmodel #CustomerJourney