The Market For Textbooks Is Characterized By Perfect Competition

could then result in perfect competition in the supply of products. Firms would be price

“Marketing Professors’ Perspectives on the Cost of College Textbooks: A Pilot Study” is a paper by Lawrence S. Silver, Robert E. Stevens of Southeastern Oklahoma State University and Kenneth E. Clow of University of Louisiana. It was published in the Journal of Education for Business Volume 87. The first half of the paper starts off by explaining why the cost of textbooks is an issue. They go on to explain different competitors’ textbook have in the marketplace today and how publishers are trying to appeal new customers through professors. The second half of the paper focuses on a study that was done by surveying random marketing professors in the United States. The survey contained questions asking about the pricing of textbooks and how they

As demand for technology increases, many companies have begun to transfer every day items and tasks to an electronic version of the same program. A specific type of product that has been altered to be more compatible with growing technological demand is books. Before technology was popular, books were available as paperback and hardback copies only. However, as consumer demand for technology increases, tablets are becoming an asset to a person’s work materials. To accommodate for this shift in consumer wants, eBooks are created; these make up for the technological improvement and produce a cheaper alternative to actual books. The possibility of an eBook monopoly is steadily increasing and is already high

In this case, the traditional bookseller’s niche is overlapped the Big box retailers’. Because of the limited resources: only certain amount of people demand for popular books, they have to compete for the market of popular books. However, scale difference generates selection pressures. Obviously traditional booksellers have smaller scale and less purchasing power to compete with “Big box” retailers. When the electronic books came out, traditional booksellers struggle more. Although all booksellers were affected, “Big box”

E., & Gould, J. P., 1966). Furthermore, the members are price takers and do not have the power to influence price changes. We now understand that perfectly competitive markets are very rare and that in reality our product exists in a different type of market. The four types of markets are: Monopoly, Oligopoly, Monopolistic competition, and perfect competition. Our company has gained enough power in the market to influence price and allow it to choose its own optimal price. This means that establishing an equilibrium where QD = QS does not necessarily apply. Perhaps our company has developed an innovation that makes the quality of our microwave meal much better than our competitors or we have developed a process than drastically lowers the cost of processing the ingredients for our product. Regardless of the reason, our company now has a competitive advantage and we must take advantage of it in order to become dominant in our industry.

A book that cost 25 dollars in 1978 would have cost 208 dollars in 2013, for an increase of 812 percent, and 82 percent just between 2002 and 2013. This is a higher increase than medical care, housing, and even the consumer price index. The college board estimates that in 2014 an average student paid 1,200 dollars on books and supplies, roughly 14 percent of the students tuition cost. A survey in 1997 shows students paying an average of 642 dollars, almost doubling in 17 years time. This is a drastic increase in the price of books, but what is causing the textbooks to increase in price so severely? The regular inflation rate is one part of the increase in price, but the increase in book costs are more than double the regular rate of inflation, 6 percent over the regular rate of 3 percent. Half of the textbooks produced in 2003 were “bundled” with additions such as a CD-Rom or a workbook, nearly doubling the cost where a non bundled version was available. However, these additional resources are not always used by the instructors. 65 percent of instructors polled reported that they “rarely” or “never” used the additional materials. Another way the cost rises is when a new edition is released, roughly every three years a new edition of a textbook is released. The new edition of the textbook normally will have an increase of price of 12 percent. A text that starts at 50 dollars will cost 70 dollars or more by the time it is on it's third edition. 76 percent of the instructors polled say that the new editions that they use are justified in the “never” to “half the time” range while 40 percent say the new editions are justified “rarely” to “never”. Perhaps the largest contributing factor to the cost of textbooks rising as quickly as they do is one simple fact, there are very few publishers that release college textbooks and four of them, McGraw-Hill,

In this scenario, the Tapese people of the island of Tap are being exposed to two market structures, perfect competition and a monopoly. A perfectly competitive market is a hypothetical market where competition is at its greatest possible level and some key characteristics of a perfectly competitive market are, many buyers and sellers, a homogeneous product, which is one that cannot be distinguished from competing products from different suppliers. In other words, the product has essentially the same physical characteristics and quality as similar products from other suppliers. Furthermore, a perfectly competitive market has perfect information, they are price takers, and there are no barriers to entry. With perfect information in a market,

A pure competition market may be be rare in the real world, but it acts as a vital introduction into the topic of markets. To

Perfect competition is the complete opposite of a monopoly, this is where a single company supplies a particular service or good. This also means they can charge whatever price they want because there are no other options for the consumer.

Why should students pay millions in textbooks if they’re already paying millions in tuition money just for classes and money? Students should know that they are being forced into this textbook monopoly. There for we need to enforce a plan to change the way this scam is working. There should be a easer access to books rather than spending their life savings on these books. Students are being taken advantage by local bookstores that supplies for college like textbooks. By saying that oh this textbook will help you succeed. In the nature of it that extra textbook costs you hundreds and you wont even use it in class.

Textbook prices have been on the rise since the late 1970s. A book that would have cost 25 dollars in 1978 had risen in cost to 208 dollars in 2013, an increase of 812 percent (Follett 1), and with an 82 percent increase between the years of 2002 and 2013 (Sennack 6). This is a higher increase in the price percentage wise than medical care, housing, and even the consumer

Perfect competition: in this competition, no participant dominates the market thus; no specific seller has the power to set the prices of homogeneous goods. This therefore makes the conditions of a perfect competitive market stricter than the rest of the market structures. In this market, AT&T should be willing to sell their services in a certain price that reciprocates to their demand to maximize profits.

Some may think that the only customers of textbooks are the students but that is not the case. There are a variety of customers that buy the textbook before it even reaches the student, someone has to decide what textbook the students are going to be using for which particular course. Business school curricula is changing and therefore their textbooks needs are changing, they want textbooks that cover a variety of information and data in one single, easy to transport textbook. Some school that were moving the modular course structures wanted books that were easy to cover in a course that lasts sometimes as short as a week long. And now, more and

a) In a perfect competitive market, the sole determinant of pricing is the market demand and the supply curves. A demand curve refers to the total amount that consumers will pay for their products. The supply curve is the total amount that the producers can actually make to supply to the company at the price they can afford or are willing to pay. Another factor in a perfect competitive market structure is the equilibrium price which is basically when the supply of the market meets the market demand of the consumers. Anther unique feature of a perfect competition market is that it is a price taker. In essence, this means that the company doesn’t have any influence on the price. Again, this can only be caused through a market that has a large number of firms with identical products. (Samuelson and Marks, 2010).

Monopoly is where there is only one supplier and there are numerous buyers, where it means that monopoly firms are the only firm in the market, which it means that they control the whole market. In monopoly, as there are no other firms or competitors it means that there are no competition. An example of monopoly is PLN, where it is the only electricity business in Indonesia, where there are no other competitors with PLN. While perfect market is where there are both numerous of suppliers and buyers. Perfect competition is where there are a huge amount of competitors or there is a big competition in the market. There is no exactly a perfect competition yet, but an example of a business where almost reaches perfect competition is stock exchange. In perfect competition, all firms produce an identical or homogenous product where all of the firms are price takers. In a perfect competition, the firms have a perfectly elastic demand curve.