At many college bookstores, revenues from textbooks and course materials continues to shrink every year – something that's already well known but proven to be difficult to fix. With competition from online giants like Amazon and a digital transformation in course materials, university administrators need new strategies to improve sales while continuing to meet student needs.

The brand new 2019 College Business Officers Survey we just completed reveals how higher ed institutions plan to meet these challenges with innovative, low-cost, digital options.

As technology permeates more and more aspects of our lives, colleges and universities continue to implement new programs and tools to help administration, faculty, and students simplify their day. Most schools have software systems for managing everything from admissions to finances to curriculum, but when it comes to the adoption and purchasing of course materials, many institutions still use a manual process through a physical store.

As access to affordable higher education has become more important to the success of both students and colleges, skyrocketing textbook prices have often faced scrutiny as one of the roadblocks to success and have inspired a search for multiple solutions.

Ironically, textbooks have gone from being perceived as a main offender to one of the main opportunities for reducing higher education costs. Through innovation and technology, affordable course materials can be made available to all students while universities can reduce or eliminate many of the costs associated with acquiring and distributing course material content. Ultimately, online bookstores are rapidly gaining acceptance as a way to generate cost savings, a win-win that helps ensure prepared students and healthier university financials (learn more about the 5 benefits universities see after adopting an online bookstore).

Operating a campus store can be a complex task, especially when it comes to providing textbooks and course materials. From managing adoptions to working with publishers to the logistics of inventory, back orders, and returns, it can be immensely difficult to ensure that every textbook is made available to students in multiple formats, at an affordable price. College students are some of the most price-sensitive shoppers in the world, so it comes as no surprise that textbook revenues at the campus bookstore continue to decline as students shop around. Losing students to other shopping platforms causes wasted time and resources and hurts institutional programs that depend on bookstore revenue. In addition, when students purchase outside the campus bookstore, the school loses important information on student preparedness that can be used as a data point to analyze retention and graduation rates.

If you’ve noticed life as a consumer has changed over the past decade, the transformation can be traced to one word: convenience.

It’s why Amazon has one-click purchasing, Instagram is now shoppable, and retail stores have implemented easy cashier-less checkouts. Consumer expectations have transformed at a rapidly accelerating pace—and university bookstores and their customers are not exempt from this desire for convenience.

Even as shopping becomes more accessible from wherever, whenever, many universities have struggled to keep up with the pace of change: it’s one of the reasons why bookstore sales are down by as much as 35%.

As universities continue to find ways to evolve with their students to ensure student success and retention, the model of an online bookstore managed through a partner is becoming a clear and convenient solution.

With 24/7 availability, expanded selection of inventory, lower costs, and convenient ordering and shipping, online bookstores are allowing universities to focus on meeting faculty and student needs when it comes to course materials and their effectiveness  (learn more about the 5 benefits universities see after adopting an online bookstore).

Dozens of variables impact how well a college student learns and retains information, and the most obvious factors are the textbook and course materials the student uses.

But until recently, it's been difficult to make a connection between course material content and student success. Knowing if a student has obtained a textbook, let alone opened it, is something that faculty and administrators have largely been unable to monitor or measure.