Campus bookstores are beginning to enforce policies that discourage students from recording textbook prices so they can compare with books offered for sale online.
How are bookstores trying to affect the slope of the demand curve for textbooks through these policies? If the Internet makes substitutes more available, what are some ways that booksellers (campus bookstores, textbook publishers) will respond?
Jarret A. Zafran ’09 said he was asked to leave the Coop after writing down the prices of six books required for a junior Social Studies tutorial he hopes to take.[Full story here.]
“I’m a junior and every semester I do the same thing. I go and look up the author and the cost and order the ones that are cheaper online and then go back to the Coop to get the rest,” Zafran said.
“I’m not a rival bookstore, I’m a student with an I.D.,” he added.
How are bookstores trying to affect the slope of the demand curve for textbooks through these policies? If the Internet makes substitutes more available, what are some ways that booksellers (campus bookstores, textbook publishers) will respond?
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