Xinhua Bookstore In The New Era Of Marketing Strategy

In the 20 years of reform and opening, China's publishing industry has developed rapidly and has gradually become an independent industy with extended scale and great potential. Xinhua Bookstore, a major national distributor, has been a significant player in Chinese publishing market. Its business operation mode reflects centralized economy on one hand, and reform triggered by sharp competition in market economy on the other. Institutional reform has become crucial for Xinhua Bookstore in the next few years. Reform experiments by Xinhua Bookstore will have far-reaching impact on book and publishing industry in the country.On a formal note, the research of publishing marketing encompasses three areas -publishing, distribution and customers. Major concerns are market requirements, editorial planning, publication publicizing, expanding market share through distribution channels, as well as sales and marketing techniques and logistics management of distributors. Due to time constraints, the author of this paper only discusses marketing strategies of Xinhua Bookstore, concentrating on innovative marketing ideas and approaches.It is only in recent ten years that the book and publishing industry in China began to learn to operate in market economy. Though studies and researches on publishing marketing in the country has born fruits, in practice market oriented operations have proved full of problems. To survive competitions, Xinhua Bookstore needs to steer toward more market-oriented marketing approaches as soon as possible.The paper first briefly studies the three-stages of Chinese publishing development of the past 20 years, comparing and analyzing distribution and publishing situations of all three stages. The paper points out that book and publishing in China has been transforming from a sellers' market toward a buyers' market. It goes on summarizing several characteristics of a buyers' market in China. With background analysis of book and publishing reforms in the country, the paper attempts to find out problems confronting Xinhua Bookstore in a transitional time.In a bid to understand challenges that Xinhua Bookstore faces, the paper sets out to analyze four influencing elements, including the supply-demand relationships, competitions in China's book and publishing market, opportunities and challenges brought by China's entry into the WTO, and the Bookstore's own historical development. The paper calls for careful study and planning as the challenges are real and imminent. It concludes that one way for Xinhua Bookstore to survive and develop in the stormy market is to restructure its marketing strategies and operational approaches.The last pages of the paper explore the subject of how an enterprise establishes core competitiveness based on the case study of Xinhua Bookstore. A morecustomer-oriented marketing approach and service model is the key to all reforms attempts by Xinhua Bookstore. If Xinhua Bookstore wants to gain the predominance and continued development, it must set the marketing notion and regulate the marketing developmental strategy oriented by customers, the paper concludes.