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CASE
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VERSION 2.0.2
Case
Bookbinders Book Club
By Gary L. Lilien & Arvind Rangaswamy
1. Before beginning any case, students should familiarize themselves with the model being used. Marketing Engineering for Excel comes with tutorials that demonstrate the capability of each model. The tutorial can be found under each model within the ME►XL menu after starting Excel. These tutorials are designed to work with our OfficeStar examples which are located in the My Marketing Engineering directory, usually installed in My Documents during software installation. The data required for this case is located in two files in the My Marketing Engineering directory (usually located within My Documents): Bookbinders Book Club Data (Customer Choice).xls Bookbinders Book Club Data (Customer Choice) Holdout Sample.xls
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Introduction
About 50,000 new titles, including new editions, are published in the United States each year, giving rise to a $20+ billion book publishing industry. About 10 percent of the books are sold through mail order. Book retailing in the 1970s was characterized by the growth of chain bookstore operations in concert with the development of shopping malls. Traffic in bookstores in the 1980s was enhanced by the spread of discounting. In the 1990s, the superstore concept of book retailing was responsible for the double-digit growth of the book industry. Generally situated near large shopping centers, superstores maintain large inventories of anywhere from 30,000 to 80,000 titles. Superstores are putting intense competitive pressure on book clubs, mail-order firms and retail outlets. Recently, online superstores, such as www.amazon.com, have emerged, carrying 1–2.5 million titles and further intensifying the pressure on book clubs and mail-order firms. In response to these pressures, book clubs are starting to look at alternative business models that will make them more responsive to their customers’