A Little Competition?
Tony Cai, whose blog is linked on the left, has an interesting post today about Facebook, the social networking site, which has started a new Marketplace. The Marketplace will allow students to buy and sell books from their classes online... what a great idea!
It's not any great revelation to say that in most instances, students can buy their materials for class more cheaply online than they can in their on-campus bookstore. There are always exceptions; I've found plenty of deals at the on-campus bookstore in my years studying and working on college campuses, and there are some cases where books may only be available on-campus, in the case of university-specific texts. But when I was in grad school, I used a lot of online resources: bookfinder.com found a book I needed at a bookstore in Kansas, the stalwart amazon.com... heck, my sister found a book on eBay that she needed cheaper than she could get it locally. (But during my undergrad years, I don't think I bought anything at our campus bookstore, as we had an off-campus store that was outstanding and saved us money every semester. In fact, they were so good, the college finally contracted with them!) Heck, I've even gotten textbooks from the library that I've been able to renew long enough to make it work for my classes.
Tony's post is exceptionally interesting because he says that he got an e-mail from our local off-campus bookseller regarding the negative comments he posted about their store! That made me laugh. I'm not necessarily advocating the blasting of local companies willy-nilly, but Tony's comments -- and the comments he posted from other folks -- didn't happen in a vacuum. My wife, who was a student at Stony Brook, refused to buy from that particular store for similar reasons to those posted, and I've heard other students say the same things to me in class. So I know of what Tony writes.
This kinda ties in with what I posted about yesterday -- finding blogs, even if they're unofficial, that are really well-written and give you real insight into a campus, not just "this place suxxx" kind of stuff. Keep up the great work, Tony.
It's not any great revelation to say that in most instances, students can buy their materials for class more cheaply online than they can in their on-campus bookstore. There are always exceptions; I've found plenty of deals at the on-campus bookstore in my years studying and working on college campuses, and there are some cases where books may only be available on-campus, in the case of university-specific texts. But when I was in grad school, I used a lot of online resources: bookfinder.com found a book I needed at a bookstore in Kansas, the stalwart amazon.com... heck, my sister found a book on eBay that she needed cheaper than she could get it locally. (But during my undergrad years, I don't think I bought anything at our campus bookstore, as we had an off-campus store that was outstanding and saved us money every semester. In fact, they were so good, the college finally contracted with them!) Heck, I've even gotten textbooks from the library that I've been able to renew long enough to make it work for my classes.
Tony's post is exceptionally interesting because he says that he got an e-mail from our local off-campus bookseller regarding the negative comments he posted about their store! That made me laugh. I'm not necessarily advocating the blasting of local companies willy-nilly, but Tony's comments -- and the comments he posted from other folks -- didn't happen in a vacuum. My wife, who was a student at Stony Brook, refused to buy from that particular store for similar reasons to those posted, and I've heard other students say the same things to me in class. So I know of what Tony writes.
This kinda ties in with what I posted about yesterday -- finding blogs, even if they're unofficial, that are really well-written and give you real insight into a campus, not just "this place suxxx" kind of stuff. Keep up the great work, Tony.
Labels: bookstores, facebook, tony cai
posted by Chris D'Orso | 1:25 PM
1 Comments:
Wow. What that comment from the bookseller in question says to me is that they really have no idea of how social networking works and how powerful online WOM is, especially among their particular target demographic. I'd be surprised if they didn't get quite a backlash from snarky behavior and comments like that. How about addressing your customer's concerns in a constructive way instead of attacking the person with the complaint? Good luck staying in business with an attitude like that.
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