Chegg 2013 Annual Report Download - page 55

Colleges and Brands
We secure contracts with colleges and brands through direct sales by our field sales organization, which
sells enrollment marketing services to college admissions offices and brand advertising services to large brand
advertisers and advertising agencies seeking to reach and engage college students. This sales organization is
comprised of two teams, one focused on colleges and universities, the other on brand marketers and their
corresponding advertising agencies. Both teams have field sales people and inside client success managers and
share operations and marketing support.
Student Advocacy
We are committed to providing a high level of customer service to our students. We trust our students,
understand the critical role our products and services have in their education and strive to resolve all problems
quickly and thoroughly. Our student advocacy team can be reached directly through phone, email and online chat
during business hours. We also proactively monitor social media to identify and solve problems before we are
otherwise informed of their existence. We endeavor to respond to students’ concerns within five minutes.
Competition
While we do not have any competitors that compete with us across our business in its entirety, we face
significant competition in each aspect of our business, and we expect such competition to increase. The actual
and potential competition in each of our primary areas of operations is described below.
•Products and Services for Students. The market for textbooks and supplemental materials is intensely
competitive and subject to rapid change. We face competition from college bookstores, some of which
are operated by Follett and Barnes & Noble, online marketplaces such as Amazon.com, eBay.com and
Half.com and providers of eTextbooks such as Apple iTunes, CourseSmart, Blackboard and Google, as
well as various private textbook rental websites. Many students purchase from multiple textbook
providers, are highly price sensitive and can easily shift spending from one provider or format to
another. As a consequence, our print textbook business competes primarily on price. Our eTextbook
business competes on price, selection and the functionality and compatibility of our eTextbook Reader
across a wide variety of desktop and mobile devices. With respect to the other non-print products and
digital services that we offer to students, our competitors include companies that offer students study
materials and educational content such as publishers, Web Assign and other smaller tutorial services.
•Enrollment Marketing Services. With respect to our enrollment marketing services, we compete
against traditional methods of student recruitment, including student data providers such as The
College Board, radio, television and Internet advertising and print mail marketing programs. In this
area, we compete primarily on the basis of the number of high-quality connections between prospective
students and institutions of higher learning we are able to provide as well as on price. We are able to
create these connections by providing prospective students with an easy-to-use platform to input their
academic information and aspirations, learn about colleges, locate scholarships and financial aid and
facilitate and streamline the application process.
•Brands. With respect to brands, we compete with online and offline outlets that generate revenue from
advertisers and marketers, especially those that target high school and college students. In this area, we
seek to partner with brands that have offerings that will interest or delight students and have received
very positive comments and feedback from students on these offerings. We provide these brands with
preferential access to our audience, which we believe represents a highly engaged portion of the target
demographic of our brand partners.
We believe that we have competitive strengths, some of which are discussed above, that position us
favorably in each aspect of our business. However, the education industry is evolving rapidly and is becoming
increasingly competitive. A variety of business models are being pursued or may be considered for the provision
of print textbooks, some of which may be more profitable or successful than our business model.
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