The start of a new school year is marked by fliers in dorms and tables lining the Bryan Center walkway hoping to lure students to particular clubs and organizations. This year, mingled with the sports teams and special interest groups were several online textbook companies.
Although students have been able to purchase textbooks online in previous years, the widespread growth in e-commerce has spurred several new companies to target students with a variety of advertising tactics.
Varsitybooks.com set up a table in the Bryan Center where a team of four student representatives gave out Tootsie pops and $10 discount coupons.
"[Varsitybooks.com] acknowledges that there are a lot of online companies so their approach was to place student representatives in the schools assuming they knew how to advertise for them," said Brandon VanGrack, a Trinity junior and head student representative for varsitybooks.com.
Other companies are also targeting students through a variety of advertising tactics including fliers, radio and TV advertisements and visits to campus.
Representatives from bigwords.com sporting flashy orange jumpsuits passed out fliers to students on West Campus last week.
"We've focused all our advertising on the campus," said Matt Johnson, CEO of bigwords.com. "We call it a 'full backpack experience,' where you can get all the books you need in one-stop shopping."
But while bigwords.com and varsitybooks.com focus on reaching students at their schools, ecampus.com is drawing national attention with a TV commercial featuring a college student belching the alphabet. Textbooks.com, which is affiliated with Barnes & Noble, is relying heavily on the company's established reputation to draw business.
"E-commerce in general has expanded in the past year," Johnson said. "It's been unbelievable for us. We're about 1,000 times busier than last year. Literally, it's grown 1,000-fold."
About 2,500 schools' students order from bigwords.com, Johnson said, and Duke is one of the site's 10 largest markets.
Many students who purchased online say they did so because of cheaper prices.
"The new price online is cheaper than the new price at Duke," said Trinity sophomore Jennifer Lee, who purchased six textbooks from varsitybooks.com. "[The delivery] came to my door in two days and it was a lot cheaper."
But other students have found that the prices online are not cheap enough to make them switch from the University textbook store.
"I went to varsitybooks.com-and even with the $10-off coupon they e-mailed me it would have only been $10 less [than the University bookstore], so I didn't bother," said Trinity junior Joanne Gonzales. "They were sold out of a lot of the titles I needed, too."
Several students noted that they had to go to the textbook store to check course reading lists. Rather than search online and wait several days for delivery, many chose to buy their books on the spot. Although both varsitybooks.com and bigwords.com have attempted to make buying online more convenient by posting course reading lists for several schools at their web sites, varsitybooks.com has no Duke courses listed and bigwords.com has a far from comprehensive list.
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