Determine Competition

The mission statement of Indigo is "to provide book lovers and those they care about with the most inspiring retail and online environments in the world for books and life-enriching products and services" (Indigo, 2011).

In order to achieve their mission statement, Indigo has a core strategy of focusing on delivering the best retail and online experience they can provide to their customers. Indigo has never lost focus on this core strategy and it is their drive to accomplish this mission that has allowed them to achieve many of their set goals. The goals they have accomplished include:

* To be the largest source of books for consumers - they are still the largest chain bookstores in Canada; they currently possess 42 percent of the chain bookstore market and they are growing their online presence to compete with companies like Amazon.

* To stay on top of the industry - from the beginning they wanted to be the largest source of books. By taking over Chapters and acquiring Coles they have proven to be successful in Canada. They continue to expand operations in Canada and will most likely start looking into growing their presence in different countries

Their core strategy revolves around successfully accomplishing the goals above while continuing to uphold their standard of an inspirational retail experience. However, with the advancement in technology - it is clear that the goals must change with the times. With the increase in globalization and popularity of the Internet, in order to maintain their position on the market, Indigo has incorporated a web-based system. They have implemented this core strategy in order to maintain their position in the bookstore industry. Though this may be a change to their original core strategy it is the correct decision for Indigo because an inspirational retail experience means something different to customers today than it did when Indigo first started operations. Ultimately an inspirational experience is not decided by Indigo or their chain stores but by the customers who frequent their locations, and as these customers' tastes change so too must Indigo's service.

Question 2: Do you think Indigo should go into the e-reader and/or e-book business immediately and why?

We believe that Indigo should definitely invest into the E-business aspect but should focus more on the E-book business than the E- readers. This is because Indigo already has the potential to obtain a very large library of E-books to market off to the current big E-Reader providers, however it would be very difficult for Indigo to develop the software/hardware required for an E-reader themselves. Obviously developing an E-readers business will be very costly but also it's likely entering foreign grounds for Indigo. Indigo will likely have to seek out developers to create the complex software for Indigo's own personal e-reader as well as a manufacturer to produce them. They'd also have to focus on ensuring their reader has an easy GUI as well as all the formats required for the different varieties of E-books. Finally it will cost around 2 million dollars to produce the e-reader and this does not include the cost