Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

It’s an age-old question: How do you know what your customers really want? Coming up with the right answer leads to satisfied shoppers and increased sales (win-win!), which makes finding the correct solution the driving force behind most successful retail ventures.

While there’s usually an event planned for buyback at Riverland Community College’s three bookstore locations, that’s not always the case with the beginning of the semester. This year, Bookstore Buyer Carissa Drake decided to mix things up a bit.

WCU Bookstore produces a booklet to accompany student orientation. In addition to spreads depicting special orientation merchandise and promotions, the booklet includes the itenerary for WCU's official New Student Orientation as well as information on various bookstore programs.

In a perfect world, every customer interaction would be… well, perfect. Satisfied shoppers would leave your store with a smile, vowing to return soon to purchase more. Then, they’d promptly tweet, like, post and rate their experience on any/all social networks they patronize, encouraging their friends and family members to also visit your store to buy copious amounts of merchandise.

Are you counting down the days yet? Rush will be here before you know it, so make sure you're prepared!

The new term is right around the corner, and with it thousands of students around the country will be making the same decision: should they shop with their campus bookstore, or should they take a risk on a third party?

When Nick Offerman came to the University Book Store at the University of Wisconsin-Madison last month to promote his new book, his fans were excited, to say the least. “We told everyone they could pick up their tickets at 7:30 the morning of the reading, but we had people waiting long before that,” Marketing Supervisor Erin Lambert said. “The first row was filled up with hardcore fans from about 9 a.m. onward, even though the reading didn’t start till 12.”

Instead of sending out the same emails to faculty that they use every year, Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., has chosen to go a different route. Last summer, they decided to create and distribute about 350 “Focus on Faculty” folders in an effort to educate their professors on the role they play in the success of the bookstore. And after last year’s folders went over well, Book Manager Hannah Wallace decided to distribute them again this fall.

You and your staff know all the ways you try to provide cost-savings in the bookstore. But do your students or the campus? Probably not. Maybe they have some vague idea, but rare is the student that is fully aware of all the ways you help them save and has not bought into the myth that college bookstores are wildly overpriced. So with that in mind, we want you to get out there and educate them; show them what they don’t know!

For the University of Utah Campus Store, "Big Data" is a lot more than a buzzword. Store Assistant Director Vaughn Durfee knows how important that data is to effectively running the store. Taking advantage of MBS Systems Dashboard, Vaughn uses his store's Big Data including inventory, operations and sales figures to develop strategies for scheduling staff, manage inventory and much more.