CampusBooks Survey
Campusbooks.com recently conducted a survey of textbook buying students and the findings were quite interesting. The survey confirmed some of my long held beliefs when it comes to the textbook buying public but there were also a couple of surprises. The results won't necessarily make the latest edition of Scientific America but they were pretty interesting nonetheless.
My first surprise was to find out that almost as many people are shopping for books online as at the campus bookstore. It wasn't too long ago when the campus bookstore was a clear cut choice. The least surprising fact to emerge from the survey was that price is the most important factor when shopping online. In fact, price was the main factor in just under 70% of the respondents. And even though price is an overwhelming factor when shopping online I was surprised that there were so many other factors at work too. Other factors included (in order) reputation of seller, reputation of website, inventory availability, and delivery time. All of these other factors were listed on less than 10% of the surveys. The reputation of seller and website were listed as the 2nd and 3rd most important factors and combined for almost 18% of responses.
This clearly shows that there is still a bit of fear on the part of the purchasing public, despite how commonplace online shopping has become. We all want the lowest price, but for close to 20% of us we fear we might be getting duped. As for the other respondents, who listed inventory and delivery time as the most important factors,well, you people need to jump start your book buying process. In all honesty, when time becomes a more important factor than price it means you should have purchased your books earlier. Time is money. And those without the time tend to pay more money.
It's very simple, the earlier you purchase your textbooks the less money you will spend. So please for your own sake, find out what texts are required for your courses as soon as possible. Then visit campusbooks.com to use their price comparison tool. Within seconds you'll know the price, availability, and shipping times from a variety of online stores.
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