The Reclam Publishing House and its Cost Leadership Strategy. An Investigation

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,7, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, language: English, abstract: Strategic decisions can be divided into two main categories: business strategies and corporate strategies. One of these business strategies, which will be the focus of this work, is the cost leadership strategy with the publishing house Reclam as an example. In the following, therefore, the main question to be clarified is to what extent the success and the acquisition of the competitive advantage of the publishing house Reclam is related to the strategy of cost leadership. That there has been a book series for well over 100 years that still has the same idea and roughly the same format, is something very special. The book series that is meant by this comes from Reclam and is known in Germany as “Universal-Bibliothek”. It was intended to constitute a canon, indicating what an educated person should have read. In addition to the long-standing existence of the book series, the very high level of awareness of these books stands out in particular. Today it is difficult to find a student who does not know the yellow books from the publishing house Reclam, because everyone read them – out of obligation or even for pleasure. The reason for that is when classics like Goethe’s “Faust” are on the curriculum, teachers usually recommend buying the low-priced books by Reclam. Another important fact is that Reclam’s “Universal Bibliothek” became one of the most important book brands in Germany. But how did the publishing house Reclam gained this competitive advantage? In this context, the strategy of companies and thus also of publishers plays a very important role. Especially the strategic management model helps “to identify potentially superior positions in the market place and to find ways in which firm competencies can be used effectively to assume these positions.“