24A- Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity
The group of customers that my business would target is college students that attend the University of Florida. Their unmet needs consist of textbooks issues with both price and alternatives for options outside of the bookstore when purchasing books. The people who have the need are college students aging from 18-23 years old that attend UF. The potential customers in this case are of course the students, but majority of the time it is their parents. A lot of students on campus pay their own textbook costs but most are either paid through bright futures or from their parents. The nature of the need is consistent each semester as students are taking 3-4 classes on average every four months. With the great amount of students at UF, the nature of the need remains constant. The changes in the environment for this need is new semesters at UF. It forces students to buy approximately 8 textbooks a school year just due to their schedules. The market is defined demographically by young adults which falls under college students. This opportunity is very big as the demand for textbooks is constant in Gainsville and will continue to be open as long as the University goes on. Customer's are currently satisfying this need by going to the UF bookstore on campus purchasing textbooks new. I would say they are not extremely loyal as it is basically the only option for them to get the textbooks with ease.
Innovation
The innovation that I have come up with is a textbook service in Gainsville for University of Florida students. My company will provide cheaper costs than the campus bookstore with textbooks and will have many options to obtain them. What I mean by this is having the option to purchase new, purchase used, or rent textbooks for just the time they are taking the class. Not only will the company be selling textbooks, a unique thing that it will have is a trade in service with previous owned textbooks that students have. Students can bring in old textbooks and trade them in for cash value or store credit that can go to whatever books they need next for their classes. For example, a student can bring in their calculus 1 textbook and trade it in for store credit with the value of  $100. This $100 can go to their calculus 2 textbook needed for the upcoming semester which costs $230 totaling out to only $130. This saves the student $100 dollars that can go to future textbooks like this one or they can take cash value for other activities they want to spend it on. The company will make money buy students purchasing textbooks and renting them out for each semester. Textbooks new will be cheaper than the UF bookstore prices and used books will be fairly priced for the students. Renting will be significantly cheaper than both new and used prices so students can save a lot of money.
Venture Concept
The innovation will solve and address students issues with textbooks in the Gainsville area specifically UF students. There are many benefits to using this service for textbooks as it will save students a lot of money each semester and will be convenient for them. Customers would switch from purchasing at the bookstore to my company due to the lower prices and options of obtaining books my company would have. With the three options of getting their textbooks, the student has a choice rather than just the option of buying new at the bookstore. At first it will be difficult to get students to switch just due to the start up of the business. Once the company starts to succeed and people like using the service a positive reputation will go out and generate more business. The competitors would be the UF bookstore and online sources such as amazon or bookstores online. The weaknesses of the bookstore are that they only offer new textbooks and have high costs with them. For online sources, the weaknesses are people have to wait on shipping or if they rent will have to ship the book back rather than just dropping it off at my business. The customer experience and price points play a major role in my business concept as it would strive for both to generate business. Employee staff would be around 10 members to run the business's day to day operations and marketing team. The roles would be front desk, marketing, and management.
Minor Elements
The most important resource I have is being a UF student and part of the demographic I would be targeting. This allows me to promote and market directly to what students like as I am one of them myself. The next thing I would like to tackle with the business is maybe incorporate a tutoring service that is included with purchasing a textbooks. I believe this would generate more business and motivate people to use the service even more. In the next five years after launch I would like to expand to other college campuses and have the same business structure but focused to the specific universities. Eventually down the road I would want to continue to create and manage more businesses.