Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

College stores are caught between two worlds: education and retail. Maintaining retails sales is imperative to the success of the business, but so is being a part of the campus community and building student trust. Finding balance between the two can be a challenge, but one way to accomplish this is to rebrand your college store as a retail destination — a place students want to be and spend time. Making small changes to the store environment can make the space more inviting to students and encourage them to spend more time within your walls.  

Many big box retailers do it: They don’t just engage in price matching, they price match with Amazon. Some will let you take your discount at the register. Others will throw in free shipping if you demonstrate that the eCommerce behemoth has a lower price on the same product of the same brand. Still, college stores face a different set of challenges from traditional retailers. Should they jump on the price-match bandwagon, or are the dangers of revenue loss too great?

Building a fanbase for your college store on social media isn’t as hard as you think. It boils down to knowing how the platforms work, understanding your audience and offering a variety of content. Once you master these elements, apply consistently. Your posts can experience what I call the web effect — a reach that expands as friends influence each other’s choices. Platform, audience and variety of posts impact your reach and audience influence. Let’s break down how each of these aspects can be utilized to increase the number of students who see your posts.

College stores face an increasingly competitive market where student loyalty is hard to win. As students choose among competitors, it is vital to communicate what you offer that they cannot get outside vendors. That’s why we sat down with MBS Marketing Coordinator Abraham Dyer to discuss how college stores can identify and use their differentiators to drive more traffic into the store and ensure it remains a vital part of the campus ecosystem.

Do you believe in luck? Do strange occurrences happen when there is a full moon? Whether or not you personally believe in superstitions, many people do. So many, in fact, that on Friday the 13th retail sales can suffer. This April, take the opportunity to turn this well-known superstition into a fun sales event for your store.

Gas stations and big-box stores aren’t the first things that come to mind when you think of employee satisfaction. Yet, that’s something QuickTrip, Costco and Trader Joe’s have in common.

Let’s pretend I’m a nontraditional student. It may be hard to picture me, because nontraditional students come from a variety of backgrounds: we are veterans just back from Afghanistan, professionals over 25 returning to school because we want to change careers or because we’re looking for advancement, and first-generation students fresh out of high school. We are also those enrolled primarily in online classes and holders of GEDs.

Persuading faculty to turn in adoptions early can be like trying to turn the Titanic. It often seems like academics exist in a world apart from administrators and retailers. In a way, they do: Many see their work as a last refuge for higher ideals within capitalist society. They take pride in how little they think about things like business and money. So, how can a humble retailer hope to catch their attention?

Faith, devotion, loyalty: College stores need more than foot traffic. They need to take centerstage as a customers’ one-stop-shop for campus necessities. Rewards programs have become one of the most common ways retailers seek to inspire fidelity in consumers, but how well do they work?

As a customer, the experience you have in stores, online and on social media reflects on the overall company. The customer experience isn’t about just mastering one of these channels, it is about providing information and support across the board. As a college store, your day-to-day interactions with students are about more than just ensuring they come back through. Positive student interactions reflect well on the entire campus community. Whether you have simplified picking up their textbooks or offer a friendly ear, you are improving the student’s overall college experience. That is what customer service is about.