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Online Retailing Technology >> Surviving the Amazon Jungle
10/29/2004
But Buttram emphasizes that online book sales aren’t nearly as lucrative as online sales of other merchandise, and notes that in any given year, his online store can make “millions” on Duke Basketball paraphernalia alone. At the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Manager Peggy Falgien concurs: Sweatshirts and other hard and soft goods produce the biggest ROI online, hands down. Falgien’s bookstore uses the Prism solution from Nebraska Book to handle its etailing efforts, and doles out a monthly fee of a few hundred dollars for services that include online inventory management, accounting, and the eCommerce engine itself. She adds that the online store has attracted dozens of customers that the physical bookstore never would have; in fact, a majority of her soft goods customers are online surfers from the Eastern US who want the UW sweatshirts and hats for their collections.
Terry Pepperdine, general merchandise buyer for the bookstore at Butte College (CA), reports similar results with the same Prism system. In the past, before Butte invested in etailing of any kind, Pepperdine says the bookstore dispatched trucks with books and merchandise to open up satellite locations on some of the college’s remote campuses. Now, the junior college has curtailed satellite selling, instead requiring all remote students to buy their books online, saving the school thousands of dollars in overhead. To generate additional revenue during their twice-annual online sales events, Pepperdine has programmed the Prism system to automatically push certain merchandise like sweatshirts and T-shirts as add-ons with every purchase. Generally, Pepperdine reveals, the suggestive selling works.
Other Innovations
Judging from the variety of things PLU students can buy on LuteWorld, there’s no limit to what institutions can now sell online. At Cornell University (NY), campus officials have resisted selling books online (see box, left), but have invested millions in a proprietary etailing site (www.store.cornell.edu/tc) that they designed for the sale of computers and general merchandise. The site was actually designed to help students buy their computers and related hardware, but also serves faculty and staff. According to Kevin Drake, assistant director of Technology and Digital Services for Cornell Business Services, the site replaced a print catalog that his department published three times a year to keep up with fluctuating computer prices. Now, he says, the school can adjust prices as vendor prices change, and instant ordering has freed up technicians to spend their time building machines instead of taking orders over the phone.
And at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, students can log on to a special Web site (www.parking.gatech.edu) and, from the comfort of their own rooms, purchase annual parking passes. At the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, campus store director Debbie Harvie describes a new section of The Outpost (http://www.ams.ubc.ca/businesses/outpost), where customers can purchase pendants and necklaces customized with the school logo. Finally, at Syracuse University (NY), bookstore officials recently developed a grocery delivery service that lets students order food and toiletries along with their books; orders can then be delivered to dorm rooms for a nominal delivery fee.
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