4A Forming An Opportunity Belief

My belief is that students sometimes have a hard time finding the textbooks so they need for their classes with affordable prices.  I think the unmet need is a platform that can have information listed by students on the best places to get textbooks for the best price, and maybe students can even sell their books on the platform. UF students are the ones with this unmet need. It could always be broadened to other schools as well. I think that need always existed. For now students sometimes just use the bookstore, or go on facebook pages and try to find people selling the books they need. I am 60% that this opportunity exists. The prototypical customer is a UF students.

The first individual I interviewed is a sophomore who said that she normally buys her textbooks from Amazon. She thought a good idea was for the bookstore to match prices with online websites like amazon as it is more convenient to buy from the textbook. She did like my idea and said it will only work if it was popular on campus and a lot of students use so we can really get the best deals.

The second student I interviewed thought trying to find affordable textbooks was definitely a problem that she had. She talked about how UF claims that all access is the best price you can get  but it is actually not subsidized that much. She thought the app would only be a good idea if it was run by the students and not the school. She said that she would use and that it was useful in regards to finding an easy way to buy and sell textbooks from other students.

The third student I interviewed also agreed that finding textbooks is a problem she said that it was “such a hassle and stressful especially during syllabus week” She thought the app would be convenient and efficient, so she can compare prices more easily and find her best choice. She said she would probably use this app as it would also be safer way to buy and sell used textbooks.

After conducting the three interviews, I found that students clearly hate buying expensive books and some of them thought it was a problem. I explained my proposal to have an app that would not only include the best deals/ places to buy the best priced textbooks and give students a well established platform to sell and buy textbooks instead of looking at many different facebook pages. After they heard this proposal, they mostly thought that it was a good idea and that they would use it if it really collects all the best deals and if many students use it. 

Most of my original idea stayed the same, however, it was brought to my attention how hard it will be to get it started as people will not want to use if there is no one using it so getting a lot of students interested in the idea and advertising this would be very important in the beginning. I think it is very important for entrepreneurs are able to adapt their ideas and ways of thinking as they have to be able to see what their customers want. If they are unwilling to change their ideas they might never be able to grow their businesses or find better solutions that “fit” more of their customers.