E-Commerce Goes Varsity

Sept. 3 -- The Varsity Group, a Washington, D.C.-based Web site that formerly only sold discounted college textbooks, will be distributing book bags to 700,000 students nationwide this fall. However, inside the bags will not be books, but rather promotional items from companies like AT&T Wireless and Staples.

The aim, says Jonathan Kaplan, Varsity vice president, is to transform the bookseller into a company that specializes in marketing products to college students.

Just as Amazon.com has found that selling books on the Web is not enough to survive as a business, online bookstores just for students are looking for new sources of revenue from the rapidly growing student population.

Market Shows PromiseThese days most students have high-speed on-campus Internet access, making it easier for them to conduct e-commerce transactions, explains Kaplan. What’s more, he adds, for companies like Varsitybooks.com, selling textbooks online offers a lesser profit margin than its new business venture: marketing products to students.

And students are ripe for marketing, according to the Internet research firm Jupiter Communications, which reckons that college students are the most wired segment of the U.S. population, and will be for the next three years.

Popular Reads

US conducts 'self-defense' strikes in Iran

• May 31, 11:54 PM

Trump to headline 250th celebration on National Mall after several artists back out

• May 31, 3:04 PM

Bus driver charged with manslaughter in massive crash that killed 5 on I-95

• May 30, 9:01 PM

By year-end 2000, the online college population will increase to 12.5 million, Jupiter predicts. The online college audience will grow from 92 percent in 2000 to 95 percent in 2003, according to Jupiter.

What’s more, although 81 percent of college students report making an online purchase in a recent survey by Greenfield Online, an Internet research firm in Wilton, Conn., only 25 percent use the Net to purchase textbooks. By contrast, 64 percent use the Internet to buy CDs, and 58 percent buy books for pleasure, according to Greenfield.

“Students spend over $100 billion a year on products and services, and they are at an age when [they are] making lifetime brand loyalty considerations,” explains Varsity Group’s Kaplan. “They are at age when they are trend setters in the marketplace and that makes them a critical demographic.”