Technologies

You don’t have to sacrifice the culture of your campus to achieve operational efficiencies. Emerging technologies and alternate store-management models aimed specifically at the needs of college stores are creating potentially game-changing advantages. Consider these breakthroughs:

Adoption-through-delivery price-transparency technology can dramatically improve course materials affordability by prodiving cost information to faculty and students before purchasing.
Improvements in open educational resources are having a significant impact on affordability of course materials.
Retail reporting systems deliver detailed revenue and cash flow data that guides store managers toward increasingly stronger financial performance.

Models

In addition to the full-lease and institutionally operated models, administrators are investigating hybrid arrangements:

There’s the physical store and the virtual outsourced partnership, in which the physical store sells either course materials or general merchandise while the other is virtual and managed by an outsourced partner. An example of this is Ohio University, which manages a spirit shop and has contracted with MBS Direct to handle course materials.
There’s also a 100 percent virtual course materials store, where all materials are purchased online and delivered to students, or to a pickup location, as in the case of UMass Amherst and Amazon. A variation of this model, at UC Davis, is Amazon’s “bolt on” solution— including a full-service, institutionally run store plus an Amazon partnership, in which the store’s branded online storefront is supplemented with Amazon lockers (self-service pickup points) and a full-service counter inside the store.

If you’re considering a change to the operation of your campus store, it’s essential that your solution is aligned with the objectives and mission of your institution, and provides the service, affordability and format options that your students and faculty need.

Instant Insights /

Look before you lease out your college store

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