TEAM NUMBER: 45 QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS AND INFERENCES

Sample Chosen: The sample chosen for survey mostly belongs to the age group 23-27 years consisting about 56.80 %. The detailed age categorization is given in the figure below:

Age Group
11 14 14-18 16 18-23 23-27 27-35 42 35 and above

Figure 1 Market Potential: The present market potential can be gauged from the current buying trends with around 17.6% people regularly buy second hand-books and 55.4% have bought few times. The figure 2 gives the detailed response.

Market Potential
18% 27%

1. Yes I buy it quite often 2. Yes have bought it a few times before 3. Never/ or only once or twice

55%

Figure 2

TEAM NUMBER: 45 Attributes: The result about the importance of attributes shows that most of the people are sensitive to price of the books i.e. if the prices of the books are over-priced then there is a chance that the customers will not prefer to buy second hand books. Following price, availability of variety of books is also important. This trend can be attributed to the fact that customer wants everything in the same portal so they need not to search different places for different types of the books. Ease of navigation of website and innovative and flexible features are also favored attributes for second hand buyers. Figure 3 gives the list of attributes and their importance level in a scale of 1-7 (higher the number higher the importance).

Attributes
6.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 2.0 1.0 0.0 5.7 4.8 3.8 5.3 5.3 5.2 5.0 4.1 5.0

Figure 3

TEAM NUMBER: 45 Delivery Time: The response for delivery time clearly indicates that customers are ready to wait for 2-3 days for the same (43.20%). Although a good number (35.10%) of customers are ready to wait for even 3-4 days. This raises the need for local warehouse or decentralized model for warehouse which can easily bring down the delivery time and also the transportation costs. (Figure 4) The average delivery time came out to be 2.91 days.

Delivery Time
40 Percentage 30 20 10 0 < 1 day 1 -2 days 2-3 days 3-4 days > 4 days 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% Response Count Response Percent

Figure 4 Inventory Updating: The customers prefer one edition old books which clearly reflects that there is a need for constant updating of inventory because demand for the books will go down as soon as edition of the books become obsolete. But in case of competitive books around 60 % prefer first hand edition thus making updating of inventory more critical. The findings revealed that till 2 (1.82) editions old books have reasonable demand and in case competitive examination the average came out to be 1.34 edition.

Textbooks
2 0 5 15 Latest edition 15 One edition 37 Two edition

Competitive Books
12 5 9 15 42
Latest edition One edition Two edition Three edition

TEAM NUMBER: 45 Figure 5 Price Range Price Range which is ranked one in the list of attributes has been preferred to be in the range of 33%-50%, thus leaving very less scope for making margin on the second hand books. Almost same trend has been observed in the selling pattern of the books. The average buying price is 49.55% and average selling price is 29.86% of printed price, thus a margin of 19.68%.

Price of Books(Buy)
40 35 30 Responses 25 20 15 10 5 0 <20% 20%-33.33% 33.33%-50% >50% 10.00% 0.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% Response Count Response Percent 60.00% 50.00%

Figure 7

Price of Books(Sell)
30 25 Responses 20 15 10 5 0 <15% 15%-25% 25%-33% 33%-50% 40.00% 35.00% 30.00% 25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00% 5.00% 0.00% Response Count Response Percent

Figure 8

TEAM NUMBER: 45 Special Request: On the basis of special request, the customers (~50%) are ready to wait for 3-4 days for special request. Thus there is very good potential for the market where we can take orders from the customers in case inventory is not available.

Special Requests
40 35 30 Number 25 20 15 10 5 0 Other Sources 3-4 days 5-6 days 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% Response Count Response Percent

Figure 9 Other Opportunities: Customer responses indicate that there is very less market for electronics goods including Mobile, Computers, Television, DVD Players, MP3 Players and iPods, Projectors and Camera. The response is indicated in figure 10.

Other Opportunities
50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% Number

Response Count Response Percent

Figure 10