Read the article below and answer ALL the questions that follow.

What Went Wrong At Bed Bath & Beyond

Wharton marketing professor Barbara Kahn heard the death knell for Bed Bath & Beyond long before the company

announced last month that it was going out of business.

After several years of poor performance and skyrocketing debt, the retailer has filed for Chapter $11$ bankruptcy and will

close its remaining $360$ stores and $120$ Buy Buy Baby locations. It's an inauspicious end for a $52-$year$-$old business that

became known as a category killer for its domination of the housewares market. Loyal customers once flocked to the

oversized stores to roll through seemingly endless aisles of pillowcases, dinner plates, and window coverings.

But that was before the explosive growth of online shopping.

"There are a few things that predicted the beginning of the end," Kahn said. "The growth in ecommerce and Amazon hurt

the core concept. Category killers were built on the idea of large assortments at good prices, but ecommerce websites

typically had larger assortments and better prices."

By $2017,$ the year of the so$-$called retail apocalypse, many category killers were in trouble. Kahn, who is author of the

book The Shopping Revolution, mentioned Circuit City and Toys R Us as examples.

"Their whole core concept of 'killing a category' with a magical combination of more choice, lower price was usurped by

ecommerce," she said. "Walmart and Target were much faster to recognise the importance of ecommerce, and both retailers

invested in omnichannel strategies that built on their store advantages and capitalised on the convenience of ecommerce

shopping."

Bed Bath & Beyond was unfashionably late to the ecommerce gala and didn't adapt to changing consumer behaviours, but

the company also made monumental financial mistakes, Kahn said. Since $2004,$ it spent $$11\mathrm{.}8$ billion to buy back its own

shares, an amount that eclipses the $$5\mathrm{.}2$ billion in debt reported in its last SEC filing. The company began borrowing money

in $2014$ to repurchase shares, and continued doing so through a dismal $2022$ holiday season. In February, a $$1$ billion

hedge fund deal that was a last$-$ditch effort to stave off bankruptcy failed to materialise.

QUESTION $1$

Consider the information in the article above and critically evaluate Bed Bath & Beyond's current situation. What strategies

would you have recommended if you had been part of the strategy development team?