Topic: Population Ecology
Description:
For Questions Two and Three, consider the case of the book retailing industry in the United States. Accept that there are three major types of organizations in this industry:
“Big box” retailers like Wal-Mart, Costco, and Amazon.com. These organizations sell a wide variety of household items and have recently entered the bookselling business as well.* They stock up on popular books (e.g., New York Times bestsellers, popular children’s books, etc.), for which there is large demand. They purchase these books at high volume and consequently pay very little per copy, allowing them to charge less and still make a profit.
In Amazon’s case, the evolution was reversed; it started out as a books-only retailer and now sells almost everything.
Traditional booksellers like Barnes & Noble and, before its demise a few years ago, Borders Bookstores. These are corporate chains dedicated to retailing books.
They sell a wider variety of books than big box retailers, but their profitability depends upon their performance in the popular books segment of the market. They have more purchasing power than independent booksellers (see below) but not as much as big box retailers.
Local, independent booksellers like University Press Books, Moe’s Books, and Shakespeare & Co. Books here near the Berkeley campus. These smaller stores carry “unusual” selections of books (e.g., academic/research books published by university presses, classical and postmodern literary works) that cater to the peculiar tastes of local customers. They may also host readings by less well-known authors and/or other community events that do not strictly have to do with books and/or reading.
Again, accept this overview of the bookselling industry for present purposes—do not get distracted by other complexities in the world of book retail. In particular, disregard for now the impact of electronic books (“e-books”) on the industry.
Question Two. Of the two traditional booksellers in the last quarter century in the U.S., one (Borders) is already out of business, as mentioned above. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the remaining one, Barnes & Noble, recently resigned amid poor company results. Even more recently, the company abandoned its Nook e-reader and may not be long for this world.
Construct a population ecology interpretation for why traditional booksellers have struggled so greatly and appear on the verge of extinction as a population.
Decide which of the three principal dimensions of population ecology theory (selection, density dependence, resource partitioning) are appropriate for this question and apply them. You do not have to spend time formally re-defining key terms. However, your response must demonstrate a working understanding of relevant population ecology concepts.