When faced with moving to a smaller location, the Belmont Store changed their textbook distribution and delivery to take the student experience to the next level.
When faced with moving to a smaller location, the Belmont Store changed their textbook distribution and delivery to take the student experience to the next level.
Foreword Online will return on January 7, 2019. Happy holidays from all of us to you.
The average person will spend a third of their life working. With that much of our lives wrapped up in serving others, creating or selling, we need to see the purpose in what we do. Students employees aren’t different. Splitting their time between school, work, friends and sports, they want to see or understand the ways they make a difference.
College stores depend on keeping a steady stream of student foot traffic throughout the year. Regular, well-planned bookstore events and sales can increase student and faculty engagement while positioning the store as a campus social hub. We recently sat down with Carissa Drake, bookstore coordinator at Riverland Community College, to discuss bookstore events and the best ways to reach the entire campus community.
Gen Z, millennials, Gen X, baby boomers, the silent generation: is there really a difference between these groups when it comes to shopping? Every generation wants a good experience that is convenient. Everyone wants to feel like they are purchasing a quality product at a good price. It is unlikely a customer of any age will come into your store and demand a terrible experience or complain that they didn’t have to wait long enough to be helped. Core consumer expectations don’t vary all that much from generation to generation. So why does Gen Z research matter? Why does your store need to understand today’s students and their motivation?
What’s the biggest retail shopping day of the year? It’s not Black Friday. Actually, December 23rd and Super Saturday (the last Saturday before Christmas) have replaced Black Friday as the busiest shopping days of the year, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the entire holiday season from Thanksgiving through the New Year is primed with shoppers who are ready to spend their money on bargains. But, how can college stores take advantage of this annual gluttony of consumerism?
In the changing educational landscape, colleges and universities need ways to improve the student experience, increase retention rates and revenue, and meet the student demand for a more affordable college education. The bookstore can play a significant role in supporting your institutional mission and helping students achieve long-term success.
College stores are a misunderstood part of campus. Tasked with supporting students and generating revenue, stores are caught in the middle of two conflicting goals. For those who don’t live and breathe the industry every single day, it’s easy to lose sight of how the store enhances day-to-day campus life and all it does to help students, faculty and the school. That’s why it’s important to share more of what you do to enhance affordability and student life with the campus community.
The image many of us create in our minds when we think of a college freshman is an 18-year-old student fresh out of high school who is financially dependent on her parents and unmarried with no children. This student attends school full-time, lives on campus and joins organizations to get more involved. However, that isn’t reality for most of today’s students. On many campuses today, the nontraditional student is the new normal.
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