Numerous online (used) book stores and book rental are popping up and growing everyday. These Internet companies exert significant competitive pressure on the brick and mortar stores and the textbook publishers. Brick and mortar stores are affected by the inexpensive offerings from online stores. The publishers take a hit in revenues when the companies rent the books. The royalty to authors also takes a hit due to textbook rentals. In order to mitigate the threat, the publishers have woken up and are beginning to rent the books to college students. You can read the NYTimes article for details.Now, why am I writing this? Well, for two reasons:
- I believe this a nice business (competitive) strategy to tackle the "imitation" and "substitution" threats/challenges. Something to ponder about when your business is faces similar threats/challenges.
- As a retired student, I believe this to be a sweet deal for students to save money and still get a good quality book. Check out my other blog for some tips for students.
2 comments:
Does anyone become a 'retired student'? I think we are always learning in everything we do, from every day ;)
Good catch ... To be politically correct, I should have said "retired school going student" :-)
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