Student Sample #4 - Report Appendices

Appendix A: Interview with the director with the U of A bookstore, (Nov, 3 2001)

To: Mr Farias, the U of A Bookstore Director
From: Mikio Nagashima
Subject: Question about Marketing Strategies

Dear: Mr. Farias

I am researching the U of A bookstore as a class project. I am specially focusing on sales of the textbooks because its sales account most of the sales at the U of A bookstore. I would like to ask you following question about textbooks.

1. How much ratio do sales of textbooks account total sales?

2. I researched that sales of used textbooks have more profits than sales of new ones. On-campus bookstores have to increase the sales of used textbooks to get more profits. Is it true of the U of A bookstores?

3. The U of A bookstores buy back used textbooks from students. One of the criteria regarding buying prices is based on demand and supply. Do you have any other criteria?

4. I researched that the prices of used textbooks at the U of A bookstore was relatively higher than at off-campus and on-line booksellers. However the U of A bookstore provides qualitative customer service like long-term refund policies, personal assistant to find the textbooks and so on. Do you have any other differentiations from competitors to guarantee prices of both used and new textbooks?

5. How do you position on-line services against in-store merchandising? Do you provide on-line services to target on-line booksellers?

6. The on-line services of the U of A bookstore offer students some benefits like package services in advance and deliveries of textbook on-campus. These customer service also help sales of textbooks increase. Do you have any other strategies like personal selling or sales promotion to increase its sales?

7. Getting customer satisfaction does not always lead to make profits to the U of A bookstore. However, most of customers are not happy with prices of textbooks. To the contrary, discounting prices of textbooks get reduction of it profits. How do you deal with this dilemma between customer satisfaction and making profits?

Thank you for taking your time