The Better World Case Analysis

1. What are the vision, mission, and values of Better World Books? Critically evaluate them. Are they helpful to the company’s leaders in formulating strategic intent? Why or why not?

        BWB’s vision is to collect and sell books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide. They are aiming to create social, economic and environmental value for all of their stakeholders.

        BWB’s mission is to harness the power of capitalism to bring literacy and opportunity to people around the world.

        In addition, BWB’s values are: 1. They drive to provide customers with high-valued experience. 2. They respect and invest all talented people and their works. 3.They strive to do right thing (i.e. invest well and no waste). 4. They look for new ideas and create changes. 5. They are passionate to create chance for all people in literacy and society. 6. They equally consider the stakeholder, and lead to sustainable positive changes in the world.

        The vision, mission and values of BWB are helpful for the company to formulate strategic intent, because they set the current capabilities and resources that company has as well as future goals that company want to achieve. Based on these resources, BWB is able to set a more challenging goals in order to fulfill a higher performance.

1. Analyze the ways in which BWB strives to achieve a triple bottom line. Is this business model sustainable in the long term? Why or why not?

        In the case it is stated that first pillar of triple bottom line of company is traditional economic value which is measure by using standard financial tools and accounting tools. Second pillar is a social commitment to business practices that promotes the interests of firms fully array with BWB’s stakeholders. Third pillar is environmental commitment to sustainable business practice. This business model is effective right now, but still need some adjustments to survive in long term due to the changes in the marketplace that are caused by technology forces, such as e-book reader or copycat competitors. Because BWB is not a pure charity and it is a for profit company, it will survive over long term at financial perspective. Second, since BWB’s social power was recognized by their commitment to promote literacy and education, it will survive over long term at sustainable perspective.

1. Utilize Porter’s Five Forces framework to analyze the used-book industry. Which force(s) have the strongest influence? Is this an attractive industry? Why or why not?

        Porter’s five forces are: 1.Threat of entry. 2.Power of suppliers. 3. Power of buyer. 4. Threats of substitutes. 5.Rivalry among existing competitors. The stronger these five force, the lower the potential profits that company can gain. After analyzing these five forces, I think the threats of substitutes and entries have strongest influence because as it is stated in case, there are increasing people start to use e-book instead of paper based book are taking over the market shares and there are new competitors who just copying their business model.

        In addition, used book industry is not an attractive industry. As I talked above the threats of entry and substitutes come from the e-book reader and copycat competitors. BWB has control over power of suppliers because they offer the free shipping while its competitors don’t. Power of buyer is strong, because with the entry of e-book reader, consumers are willing to get e-book at cheaper price than used book. Finally, rivalry among exiting competitor is very high; one is that there are fights in used industry on price cut, which also make it hard to enter the industry. Another one is the adoption of technology from competitors, making BWB face the threats from technological change in society.

1. What are BWB’s resources and capabilities? What core competencies do they have to help them compete in the used-book industry? (Apply a VRIO analysis.)

The VRIO framework in the textbook indicate that a firm can gain competitive advantage if it has resources that are Valuable (V), rare (R), costly to imitate (I) and organized to capture value of resource (O). BWB’s resources are their relationships with universities, their cooperation with libraries to extend inventory and relationships with other firm such as Alibri. These are definitely valuable and rare resources to the firm, and these relationships with suppliers are hard for competitors to imitate. BWB also has ability to reuse and recycle book as well as reduce waste in environment. What’s more, they also have capability to offer jobs with benefits to the society. These capabilities combined with resources are well organized to help company gain not only profits but also goodwill. Last, key competences of BWB are: