Barnes & Noble store tour reveals Amazon struggles

Barnes & Noble’s café was the busiest part of the store we visited.Business Insider/Jessica Tyler

• Barnes & Noble is struggling to compete with Amazon.
• Barnes & Noble stores have become places where customers read, hang out, and have a cup of coffee rather than just shop.
• On Thursday, Barnes & Noble reported that comparable sales dropped 6.1% in the first quarter.
• We visited a Barnes & Noble store earlier this year and saw why the chain is struggling. 

Barnes & Noble is struggling to keep up with Amazon. 

The bookstore giant, which has more than 630 locations in the United States, is losing steam in its competition with Amazon. And, some analysts say, its failure to adapt to changing shopping habits could be to blame. 

“People may drop in for a browse but they won’t make a dedicated trip to a bookstore,” GlobalData Retail’s Neil Saunders told The Guardian in May. “They don’t have the need and they don’t have the time. The way people shop changed, and that’s been detrimental for Barnes & Noble.”

Barnes & Noble has tried to combat people’s shifting attitudes towards shopping by creating a great in-store experience, but in doing so, they seem to have become more like libraries than bookstores. People come to browse books, study, have a cup of coffee, and meet up with their friends — not necessarily to buy books.

On Thursday, Barnes & Noble reported comparable sales dropped 6.1% in the first quarter. In the past five years, Barnes & Noble has lost more than $1 billion in value. It cut 1,800 full-time jobs earlier this year, and was recently sued by former CEO Demos Parneros, who alleges that he was fired without cause. 

In response, Barnes & Noble said in a statement that Parneros’ lawsuit is “nothing but an attempt to extort money from the Company by a CEO who was terminated for sexual harassment, bullying behavior and other violations of company policies after being in the role for approximately one year.”

We visited a Barnes & Noble store earlier this year and saw why the chain is struggling: