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NACS Initiative Explores Sell-Through
04/22/03
Declining sell-through percentages continue to challenge textbook buyers, and while several variables affect stores' sell-through percentages, many in the industry believe faculty members hold the key to a store's success.Last spring, stores and publishers identified sell-through as an issue that NACS might positively impact. Since then, one of NACS' advocacy priorities has been to seek ways that stores could reach out to faculty with the goals to improve relations and sell-through percentages.
Based on the results of research and testing with faculty focus groups last summer, an educational PR campaign was created that asked faculty to talk to students about the value of textbooks and gave them tips for better utilizing textbooks in the classroom.
Fifteen stores, including 12 managed by Follett, were then selected to test the campaign's collateral materials, which included an educational brochure styled like a diner menu and follow-up postcards. Also included were articles authored by faculty who had increased their use of textbooks in their classroom to enhance student learning.
The pilot store sites were selected on the basis of their year-over-year data, low management churn, lack of on-campus competition, and other variables.
Although the overall sample group showed a season-over-season decline in sell-through percentages, the individual stores' results were clearly varied. Three of the stores had sell-through increases, one store remained stable, and nine had a decline. Those stores that put forth additional effort to enhance the basic campaign messages performed slightly better than others.
The kits had a noteworthy impact with faculty members, who were quite positive about receiving the campaign materials from the bookstore. The majority of the stores (87%) reported "good" to "excellent" feedback from faculty members exposed to the kits. In one case, a faculty member even changed his spring adoption after consulting the store manager about the contents of the folder.
Additional details about the campaign, its key messages, and ways that your store can take advantage of what NACS learned during the pilot testing of this initiative will be published in an upcoming issue of The College Store magazine.
Sound Off!
Gary Spearow (gcspearow@aol.com) 4/22/2003 11:52:16 AM
Gleaning the content of this article, it becomes apparent that the effort to communicate with the respective Faculty at these sited campuses was, in iteself, the catalyst for better sell-thrus, probably more than any other factor. I have often pondered whether discussing the merit for purchasing the textbook is just the byproduct of actually making the effort to communicate with the Faculty? In other words, moreso the communication than the content?
John Marcus (Marcusj@mattmccoy.com) 4/22/2003 6:36:27 AM
And so? What is the message here? Did this process influence the sell-through? If it did, how do we do more of it? If not, what are we going to do to affect sell-through? This should be one of our biggest priorities.
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