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Composition Program.
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Most of the students think that the real stores will rip you off and online and off-campus booksellers will save money, when they purchase textbooks for classes. There are some online textbook sellers like VarsityBooks.com and BigWords.com who suggest lower prices than on-campus bookstores to lure students. Students who have a personal computer have easy access to online textbook sellers who provide them discounted prices. For that reason, do students utilize such booksellers for getting cheaper textbooks? Actually, most of the students use the on-campus bookstore at present despite having complaints of expensive prices. This is partly because they undoubtedly provide students some outstanding customer service like their long-term refund policy and package services in advance. Also, there are some reasons why online booksellers can not lure students into their services. However, there are certainly the threats of competitors who take advantage of lower prices to deprive on-campus bookstores of their customers. Prices are one of the biggest factors of decision making for purchases of textbooks. In fact, a journal said that some on-campus bookstores shut down their stores due to the appearance of booksellers who offered lower prices. On-campus bookstores should differentiate their customer service to be clearer and more beneficial to students so that they will survive the competitions with lower pricing oriented booksellers.
The purpose of this report is to analyze the current situation of the U of A bookstore and t to propose readers with some recommendations that how it can survive the high competitions with off-campus and on-line booksellers. All booksellers should provide customer service satisfying customer' needs to survive these competitions with earning their profits. This report will provide some recommendations with readers; how the U of A bookstore can satisfy customer's need and increase its sales. These recommendations will focus on the improvements of personal selling, buying-back price of used textbooks from students, and availabilities of on-line order. These brief strategies lead to satisfactions of customer's needs and increments of profits. This report will be beneficial to both customers and sellers and give readers recommendation about a conflict of interests between customers and sellers. However, I need to mention the scope of this report. That is, there are different concerns between customers of students and sellers of the U of A bookstore. Customers rightly think that the U of A bookstore should provide beneficial customer service with them from the viewpoints of customers. On the other hand, the U of A bookstore has to do its business by earning profits. Even if the U of A bookstore can meet customer's needs, it can not do business unless they can gain enough profits to manage its business. Proposed recommendations should make the U of A bookstore earn its profits.
As of this proposal,
there are discrepancies between consumer's cognitive value for prices and
actual value of customer service at the U of A bookstore. Often times, actual
customer service does not match the payment for products. It must provide
consumers for valuable customer service more than what is expected for payment
of textbooks. Off-campus booksellers offer consumers lower prices and easy
access by online, which are advantage for them. The U of A bookstore has to
compete with such booksellers. The purpose of this proposal is to examine
how the U of A bookstore can maintain its sales under competitions with off-campus
and online booksellers by compensating for the proposed discrepancies.
In order to attempt to solve the customer dissatisfaction, specially focus
on customer's cognitive discrepancy between the product's prices and customer
service, research and interview will be conducted. Also, the current system
of the U of A bookstore will be analyzed and compared with off-campus bookstores.
Also, some interviews will be conducted to analyze the present condition of
the U of A bookstore in more detail, which makes a following report be beneficial
to it. Along with this information, a series of recommendations can be created
for the U of A bookstore. These recommendations will be critical to solve
the problems of customer dissatisfaction.
As I showed in the problem statement, basically, this proposal will use marketing strategies; It specially focus on SWOT analysis (Figure A, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). This analysis also enables the proposal to be divided into internal (Strengths and Weaknesses) and external (Opportunities and Threats) environment, which make the point of arguments clear. For example, strengths are high qualitative customer service. The U of A bookstore has a refund policy, personal assistants to search textbooks, and online services. Strengths should be utilized to differentiate off-campus booksellers. Weaknesses are long time waits to purchase textbooks. This factor will cause loss of businesses, so it should be remedied. Opportunities are possibility of extension of market share. It makes the sales of the U of A bookstore considerably increase. Threats are possibility of negative affections from competitors such as shrinkage of the sales. Lower prices and easy access by online deliveries at off-campus booksellers will become one of these factors. Like weaknesses, the U of A bookstore should decrease influences from competitors to maintain its sales.
| Positive Factors | Negative Factors | |
| Internal Environment | Strengths | Weaknesses |
| External Environment | Opportunities | Threats |
(Figure A)
It provides some decision-making factors that how on-campus bookstores can compete with other booksellers by utilizing their advantages and decreasing factors of disadvantages. Also, in order to organize this proposal, this project will investigate comparisons and contrasts between on-campus bookstores and other booksellers by analyzing what textbook sellers are. These analyses will help the next step that is proposal of problems and solutions because now we understand what are advantages and disadvantages of each bookseller. This proposal will be discussed in the perspective of on-camp bookstores. It will show the difference of textbooks' prices between the U of A bookstore and off-campus booksellers. What's more, these analyses deal with general to specific topics because this flow of argument can be more persuasive and compared with other on-campus bookstores by referring to articles.
I use SWOT analysis to know the current situation surrounding the U of A bookstore and generate some conclusions of this analysis. SWOT analysis is one of useful method because conclusions and recommendations should resolve problems of current situations. Once I analyze current situations, I will focus on more specific analyses by using information from the interviews (Appendices) and data base researches.
At first, I focus on Strengths at SWOT analysis. Strengths are basically advantages of internal environment of the U of A bookstore. It has more than 4,000 titles of textbook. It provides students with all of textbooks used at all classes. The full varieties of stocked textbooks give students a convenience because they can purchase all textbooks at the U of A bookstore. This service increases the flow of students at the bookstore. However, this strength has possibilities of making students irritated with crowds especially at the beginning of semesters, which result in customer dissatisfaction. The U of A bookstore has to disperse flows of students, as its strengths do not result in customer dissatisfaction.
Secondarily, Weaknesses are disadvantages of internal environment of the U of A bookstore. Weaknesses of the U of A bookstore are deeply related to flows of students. Most of the students go to the bookstore at first week of each semester. These student's flows give irritating purchasing experiences to most of the students. The bookstore also provides on-line ordering services to students. However, only 5% of students utilize this service. This service is not familiar to the students, which result in the crowd at the bookstore. The students who forget to buy a textbook are forced to wait for the long lines, even if their payments take only a few seconds. Looking for textbooks also takes a time. Though the bookstore has alphabetic indications that help students find textbooks, these indications, which shows first letter of each department's name, are not easy to find where every textbooks are placed at first glance. Students usually walk around inside store and find required textbooks for their classes. The U of A bookstore also recognizes that some students have a trouble to find textbooks because it assigns some employees to help students find textbooks. This service is not necessarily needed, if explicit arrangements of textbooks on shelves are conducted. The whole inconvenient processes of purchasing result in customer dissatisfaction.
Thirdly, opportunities at SWOT analysis are competitive advantage at the external environment of the U of A bookstore. The bookstore has competitive advantage of locating at the middle of the campus. Students can utilize the bookstore whenever they need textbooks or stationeries. That is, its convenient location has opportunities to increase its sales. Off-campus and on-line huge booksellers like VarsityBooks.com and BigWords.com are not familiar to most of the students, which result in few access to these booksellers. The U of A bookstore has definitely locating advantage. They should take advantage of it to maximize their sales. Though off-campus booksellers typically provide customers with cheaper prices of textbooks than the bookstore, they fail to acquire flows of the students because of its unfamiliarity with students.
Finally, Threats at SWOT analysis are disadvantage, compared to competitors, at the external environment of the U of A bookstore. The U of A does not seem to be placed with competitive environment so far because they have had absolute advantage of convenient location. However, most of the students are sensitive about prices. Prices are definitely one of important factors, when we make a decision on purchasing products. Once these students know that off-campus and on-line bookseller are providing lower-prices textbooks by off-campus booksellers, many students buy textbooks there. At the same time students are more dissatisfied with prices of textbooks by the U of A bookstore.
Sales of the textbooks account 54% of total sales. Increasing sales of the textbooks lead to the increments of total sales at the U of A bookstore. Analyzing the distributions of textbooks contributes to reductions of carrying cost. That enables the bookstore to provide textbooks with lower prices and attain customer satisfaction. The U of A bookstore has orders from faculties usually in advance of each semester. They need some periods to stock the textbooks from publishers and wholesalers. In addition to buying back textbooks from students, the bookstore typically orders used textbooks from wholesalers because they cannot stock adequate used textbooks by buying backing them from students. They order new textbooks from a publisher. The bookstore is responsible. The Stocks of used textbooks take more time and need more efforts to stoke them than the stocks of new ones. This is because the U of A bookstore has to deal with individual wholesalers and students who hope to sell their textbooks to stock every textbook required at classes. To the contrary, the stocks of new textbooks are completed by ordering to one publisher because a publisher usually deals with all new textbooks used at classes. These facts conclude that the U of A bookstore needs more carrying to order. In terms of profits by selling textbooks at the bookstore, used textbooks are more profitable to them. They gain 25% of the sales per new textbook and 55% of the sales per used textbook. In addition, most of the students prefer to buy used textbooks. Trading with used textbooks are benefits to both of the bookstore and students. The U of A bookstore has to increase the quantity of used textbooks rather than new textbooks.
Prices are one of the critical factors in businesses. Students often decide
whether or not they purchase precuts by prices. What is more, prices are decided
by the relations between demand and supply. Analyzing that how the U of A
bookstore estimates the demand of the textbooks has great impact on prices
of textbooks. This is because the bookstore usually adds the carrying cost
of the unsold stocks to the prices of textbooks. The more exact the bookstore
can estimate the demand of the textbooks, the more they reduce carrying cost
of textbooks. They basically estimate the demand by scale of classes, ordering
histories from individual facility and professor. When the bookstore has orders
of textbooks used by small scale of the classes, they have a tendency to order
new textbook from a publisher because they think that wholesalers typically
do not stock textbooks use at small classes. When textbooks used at small
classes are unsold, the bookstore cannot return these textbooks to the wholesalers.
They have to take a risk of unsold textbooks at their expense. On the other
hand, the textbooks used at large classes are ordered by use textbooks. Even
if the bookstore can not sell all of stock, they can sell unsold textbooks
at the following semester. This is because the demand of these textbooks is
to be higher at following semester than textbook use by small class. The U
of A bookstore uses the ordering histories from faculties and professors to
decide how many textbooks they stock. These ordering histories are how many
textbooks ordered by faculties were sold, how often they change textbooks,
and when they decide textbooks used at a class and order from the U of A bookstore.
The bookstore needs information about the number of textbooks faculties order
in advance because some textbooks, especially used textbooks, are difficult
to stock all within one month. The bookstore tells individual faculties due
day to ordering. They should get ordering information from faculties as early
as possible because they can afford to stock more used textbook.
The U of A bookstore
should take convenient purchasing processed and reduction of carrying costs
into account. I recommend two strategies to improve inconvenient purchasing
processes and a strategy to reduce their carrying costs. Firstly, intensive
customer's flows at the beginning of each semester make students take many
times to purchase textbooks with them irritated. The U of A bookstore has
competitive advantage located at middle of campus. If they sell textbooks
at the beginning of classes, especially larger scale ones, students buy textbooks
for shot time after classes. Students do not need to find textbooks and wait
for long lines at the bookstore. What is more, the bookstore can increase
their sales by selling textbooks at class room because this personal selling
attracts attention from students and give convenient purchasing processes
to buy textbooks. Secondarily, most of the students are not familiar with
using on-line ordering. This service is beneficial both student and bookstore.
Students can pick up their ordered textbooks without going into the bookstore.
The bookstore also disperses extensive flows of the students. It is beneficial
to the customers who buy stationeries and U of A goods. On-line ordering services
reduce the number of temporary employees because the flows of the students
at the bookstore can be dispersed. The U of A bookstore should facilitate
students to use on-line services and make them benefits of this service. Finally,
the bookstore should assign employees who often contact with professors into
individual faculty. Faculties usually collect ordering information about textbooks
from professors at individual faculties. The bookstore contacts with not professors
but faculties to get ordering information about textbooks. However these contacts
made sometime order of the textbooks delay. They have to know the order of
the textbooks as early as possible. Professors decide textbooks used at classes,
so they have more specific need for the textbooks. These direct contracts
with professors are useful to estimate the demand of textbook to be more exact.
Also, the bookstore gets the ordering information in more advances, which
give the bookstore have much time to stock used textbooks which are more profitable
than new ones.