A customer goes into Borders and Barnes & Noble to see whether the differences the two companies talk about really exist.
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determine whether the declared distinctions between Borders and Barnes & Noble
are relevant--or even real--Maria Alderink, a Minneapolis-based lawyer and
fiction lover, recently went to both stores and made the same request: "Suggest
an author similar to Margaret Atwood" (a popular fiction writer whose work
includes The Handmaid’s Tale and The Robber Bride). Her
experiences at the two stores were surprisingly dissimilar, exemplifying the way
each shop really does use employees to differentiate itself from the
competition.
At Borders, it took several minutes for the first person
she asked to find the store’s "fiction expert," a wiry, heavily perfumed young
woman in pigtails and a tight sundress. When she heard Alderink’s request, the
woman lit up, going on and on about the density of Atwood’s work while taking
her on a tour of several authors Alderink had never read or even heard of. She
ended up buying a copy of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body, then
headed to Barnes & Noble.
When she made the same request there, the first person she
asked--a middle-aged woman in a neat polo shirt, navy slacks and matching
cardigan--was immediately ready to help, and other salespeople quickly joined in
the hunt, Alderink says.
They were eager to help her, but their suggestions were
mostly best-sellers such as Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and
Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone. "They were all great books, but I’d read
most of them."
The variety of responses to the same request demonstrates
how the stores adhere to their unique business visions through the inventory and
the people who sell it. "I was surprised at how different the experiences were,"
Alderink says.
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