Your Assignment

You are an e-marketing and e-commerce consultant. Mary and Joe Johnson, the owners of Book Bunker, have hired you to help them improve their sales both online and in their store. The Johnsons do not currently have a website, and are unaware of social media. They have asked you to develop an online strategy to create advertising to improve the number of walk-ins to their store as well as to create the ability for anyone to access to their site and purchase books online.

YOU DECIDE

Activity or Assignment

Assignment

For this assignment, you will generate a Microsoft Word report. You will need to write a 5-page (2,500 words minimum) business report outlining your ideas and strategies to improve their online business and increase their advertising via the Web.

Scenario:

You are an e-commerce expert and you have some friends who own their own local bookstore. The husband and wife team have owned this company for 20 years and have built an amazing business that is very successful to the local community and is known to have an amazing collection of rare and exotic books. However, due to the World Wide Web, bookstores have had challenges, as Amazon and Barnes and Noble and other online companies have hurt their business. You have been hired by the owners to help craft an e-marketing strategy to improve their local sales and introduce the ability to sell their books online.

Role:

You are an e-marketing and e-commerce consultant. Mary and Joe Johnson, the owners of Book Bunker, have hired you to help them improve their sales both online and in their store. The Johnsons do not currently have a website, and are unaware of social media. They have asked you to develop an online strategy to create advertising to improve the number of walk-ins into their store as well as the ability for anyone that has access to their site and purchase books. You will need to write a 5 page (2,500 words minimum) business report outlining your ideas and strategies to improve their online business and increase their advertising via the World Wide Web.

Players:

Mary Johnson

Co-Founder of Book Bunker

Joe Johnson

Co-Founder of Book Bunker

Hi, I am so glad to see you. As you already know, I am Mary Johnson, co-founder of Book Bunker. My husband Joe and I have run this store for 20 years and we need your help. I plan to tell you all about our background and why we are special, and in a little bit my husband will fill you in on what we need. First off, as you know, we started 20 years ago in a small store in the suburbs that specialized in rare and used books. As we grew in notoriety and customers, we started to expand our business. Over the past twenty years we have moved to two different locations as we grew and today we are located in the middle of downtown with a very nice sized store. We still specialize in buying and selling rare books, but we also offer mainstream novels and audio books. Simply put, you can get any book you want in our store that is offered by our major competitors, such as Barnes and Noble or Amazon, but we ALSO have the ability to find and sell rare books. We are proud of our niche. And we have found that people come from around the country to ask us about a book. I get a few international phone calls a week looking for a rare text. Simply put, we have a great reputation… but we are certain not enough people know about us. Locally we are the leading bookstore in our city… but we have seen sales dip due to people buying books online. With this in mind, Joe and I thought we needed to speak with an expert to discuss creating a website… yes, I know, we should have one already, but we don’t… and developing an e-marketing strategy to improve our local sales as well as begin selling online. I have given you some basic information about our company, now I will turn you over to Joe to talk about the specifics of our marketing needs.

Hello, I am Joe Johnson. Nice to meet you. I see you that you spoke to my wife in great length about our store and history. We are very proud of our niche market of rare books, but we also know that we can and do compete well with the larger stores that sell contemporary books. With that said, we have seen a 20% drop in sales over the last two years and we need to address this immediately. Simply put, we are in the dark ages when it comes to e-commerce and we need a plan.

We would like for you to help us develop an e-marketing strategy to increase our sales. We are looking for recommendations on the following: 1. Even though we don’t have a website today, I would like to understand various features we should have on our website. 2. Help us decide where we should advertise online, should we use banner ads? What sites should we choose to ad? What keywords and adwords should we choose? 3. Give me a report on the ability to advertise on the internet locally vs. globally. We want to sell books everywhere, but we also want to increase our foot traffic into our local store too. 4. Lastly, we have heard about customer relationship management systems. Could you describe what these are and tell us how we could utilize this new technology to improve our sales? Please note, my wife and I are not completely comfortable with social media, so please do not include any recommendations for social network sites. I hope this is a good start. My wife and I are very anxious to join the 21st century with our store, and hope that we can leverage e-commerce to improve our business and increase sales. Thanks for your time.

Given the scenario, your role and the information provided by the key players involved, it is time for you to make a decision.<br><br>If you are finished reviewing this scenario, close this window and begin working on your report.<br><br>You can return and review this scenario again at any time.