© 2001,
University of Arizona
Composition Program.
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Acknowledgments
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Companies all over the world are benefiting from the use of mail-order brochures. Even with online shopping as a new way to find products, consumers continue to look to mail-order to get what they want. At the University of Arizona, the bookstore handles the bulk of merchandise that is sold to the students. Currently, this is done at the bookstore itself, and on the U of A Bookstore website. Such U of A marketing practices are convenient and quick for the present student body, but for incoming freshmen, college is a new game. Freshmen look to the campus to give them a sense of community and support. And with the University's expected 6,000 new freshmen the fall of 2002, what better time to show each of them the high level of spirit that exists at the U of A. It is hard enough for some of them to find class on the first day, much less the bookstore.
The mail-order brochure we are presenting is a fantastic opportunity for incoming freshmen to get the merchandise and apparel they want before even stepping foot on campus. By the time fall semester rolls around, they will feel at home with the right amount of U of A spirit. Also, by offering a mail-order brochure with featured items, these students can choose what best meets their needs. And if the brochure isn't enough, they will be directed to the U of A Bookstore website, also mentioned on the brochure. Not only will such a service make the college more accessible as a whole, but it will also increase the window for consumer acknowledgment of the convenient ways to purchase U of A merchandise, both online and from the brochure.
To demonstrate the quality of this service, our report presents the gaps we discovered while researching for this idea. In order to fill these gaps, we conducted a student body and parental survey. All financial information was gathered into neatly organized graphs and tables. And finally, an analysis revealed results; from that we created a solution, that being the mail-order brochure.
Although the U of A Bookstore has its own website, only fifty-five percent students knew that it existed. If almost half of the current student body does not know about the website, then certainly an incoming freshman cannot be expected to find it. A mail-order brochure would easily get products out to incoming freshmen before they have arrived in the fall. Because the website would be on the brochure, then the awareness of the website would increase dramatically. As a result, the bookstore could reach a new audience, as well as increase exposure of the merchandise.
A large part of our research was done by a survey, which we had current U of A freshmen and parents answer. The questions were designed to discover participants' reaction to a mail-order type of service, the dollar amount they would expect to spend on merchandise, their awareness toward merchandise availability via the website, and their preference toward U of A merchandise.
In addition to the survey, we also quoted prices for printing the brochure once created. From Alphagraphics, the cost for printing 6,000 brochures to be used in the fall of 2002 would be $2885.04, with an individual brochure averaging $0.481.
The brochure was constructed using the details from data collected. In the survey, we asked what were items most likely to be bought, and we featured those in the brochure. We included all the information that the website displays such as price, size, and color. The U of A colors, navy and red, were used to get the attention of the consumer.
Participants of the survey were asked how much they were willing to spend on U of A merchandise through a mail-order catalog. The average amount each person was willing to spend was $51.39. Since the same survey revealed eighty-three percent of people would buy merchandise through the brochure, we calculated how much extra income would be available to the bookstore. If 83 percent of 6,000 incoming freshmen spent $51.39 on merchandise from the mail-order brochure alone, the bookstore could benefit from an additional earning of $250, 037.16, after the overhead cost of printing, in the year 2002.
What we found from research of bookstore marketing practices and personal surveying is that there is a market for this concept. First of all, the U of A Bookstore website was not reaching as many students as it could. The second downfall was that incoming freshmen could not be exposed to these products until they came to campus, or found out about the bookstore website. There was a large interest in the mail-order brochure as we found in the survey. The overhead costs are marginal, and would allow the bookstore to create a new alley for profit. Because the mail-order brochure would reach more students than ever, the awareness of merchandise would increase two-fold: one by brochure, and the other by online convenience. The desire is there for this service, and the brochure is the catalyst for freshmen to be in the college scene before even getting there.
We recommend that the U of A Bookstore use the mail-order brochure because of its obvious benefits. A sample of the brochure is provided in Appendix A.
