Borders, the nation's second-largest book retailer,
is sharply increasing the number of titles it displays on shelves with the
covers face-out. Because that takes up more room than the traditional spine-out
style, the new approach will require a typical Borders superstore to shrink its
number of titles by 5% to 10%.
We always had
face-out titles on the shelves and on tables, but they were used as punctuation
and tended to focus on popular titles," says Anne Kubek, senior vice
president of Borders U.S. stores. "Today we're showing the front of books
even when we only have two or three copies."
Borders is carrying a
heavy debt load and its stock price has been pummeled. Shares of Borders were
near the 52-week low of $8.11 and off significantly from the 52-week high of
$24.15. It has begun a major restructuring aimed focusing on its U.S.
superstores while cutting costs, including closing nearly half of its Waldenbooks
outlets and selling off most international operations.
Unlike modern
supermarkets, booksellers haven't done enough to make books look attractive on
the shelves, says John Deighton, editor of the Journal of Consumer Research.
"Breakfast
cereals are not stocked end-of-box out," he says. "You want to your
product to be as enticing as possible. It's a little bizarre that it's taken
booksellers this long to realize that the point of self-service is to make the
product as tempting as possible."
Borders says customers
visiting its prototype store said their impression was that more books were
available. Even so, its new strategy — which at a typical superstore will mean
a reduction of anywhere from 4,675 to 9,350 titles from the former total of
around 93,500 — could make Borders vulnerable to a marketing campaign from
Barnes & Noble that promotes its own vast selection. The average 25,000
square-foot Barnes & Noble superstore stocks approximately 125,000 to
150,000 book titles, and the chain says it has no intention of cutting back.
The Borders push may
affect small publishing houses, which can often place a debut novel in Borders
because it has such a broad selection. Whether that will be more difficult in
the future is unclear, says Alexander Chernev, associate professor of marketing
at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Ill.
"If Borders carries fewer titles, then they may prefer larger publishers
that have more marketing push," he says.
Shelves: Counting on Covers to Sell, Bookseller Changes Display While Cutting
Titles Stocked,” Wall Street Journal,
March 12, 2008.