Barnes & Noble (BKS)

Barnes & Noble's membership program offers customers discounts on purchases in exchange for an annual membership fee. This program drives customers to return to Barnes & Noble and also provides the firm with a large amount of data on customer behavior and preferences.

On July 20, 2009, the company announced that it was launching an e-bookstore that would sell more than 200,000 titles as well as give users access to 500,000 public domain books from Google Books. Not only does this open a new market for Barnes & Noble, but also gives them an opportunity to steal market share from one of its main competitors Amazon.com. In addition, the company also announced that it would be offering free Wi-Fi internet to all of its customers, which would allow customers to freely download and preview any of the over 700,000 eBook titles.

An acquisition of Borders would allow Barnes & Noble to become the only major specialty bookstore chain in the U.S. and give the company a stronger position to compete against online vendors.

Barnes & Noble offers helpful customer service representatives who can help shoppers find gifts and other products, an advantage over online stores such as Amazon.