Your group$$s task is to research BORDERS, the great book and music retailer founded in the USA in $1971.$ After decades of work, the company liquidated in $2011$ and closed $399$ stores. Borders was one of the most visited bookstores, along with its competitor Barnes & Noble, which implemented the superstore concept. Compared with small local bookstores, Borders could offer a greater variety $($about $100,000$ titles at superstores, relative to fewer than $10,000$ titles at a local bookstore$)$ to customers at a lower cost by aggregating operations in large stores. This allowed the company to achieve higher inventory turns than local bookstores with lower operating costs per dollar sales. In $2004,$ Borders achieved almost $$4$ billion in sales, with profits of $$32$ million. Its model, however, was already under attack with the growth of Amazon, which offered much greater variety than Borders at lower cost by selling online and stocking its inventories in a few distribution centres. Borders$$ inability to adapt its supply chain to compete with Amazon led to a rapid decline. By $2009,$ sales had dropped to $$2\mathrm{.}8$ billion; the company lost $$109$ million that year.

QUESTIONS:

$1.$Discuss how the emergence of the Internet affected BORDERS$$s business model

$2.$Discuss how the evolution of e$-$readers impacted BORDERS$$s business activities

$3.$Discuss how the relevance of BORDERS$$s brick$-$and$-$mortar expansion

$4.$Discuss how the failure of BORDERS revolutionized the traditional supply chain framework

Discuss how current businesses can learn from BORDERS$$s mistakes