When of the examiners of the customs official opened a shipment of books, he demanded that duty (a kind of tax, often associated with customs, a payment due to the revenue of a state, levied by force of law) be paid on it, which according to the Florence Agreement – a UN treaty that was signed by the Philippines in 1952 – wasn’t necessary because the agreement guarantees the free flow of “educational, scientific, and cultural materials” which in that case of Twilight by Stephen Meyer was a cultural book and was exempted from duty.
Economic Lack of capital investment in more sophisticated machines, lack of skilled manpower o run the industry, proliferation of many printing firms, stiff competition, lack of government incentives, lack of government control, are Just some of the major problems plaguing the printing industry, according to an article at Gate. Or. Jp “State of the Philippines Printing Industry’. Without the printing industry, the bookstore industry would be greatly affected, especially those book publishers that prints their books locally to avoid shipping cost.
Socio-cultural Bookstore Industry consumers are sequential searchers; they visit stores to learn their prices and then compare after every visit the cost and benefit of continuing search, according to Hubert (2012) in his research “Bookstore Industry’. Power buyers (discussed in the Bargaining Power of Buyers section), although avid in buying books, summing up to purchasing at least 1 book per week, still considers in the price of the book they plan to purchase.
It is not enough that they already found the book they ere looking for, they still need to find the book in its cheapest price since book buying has been their vice, and they tend to go cheap on it. Technological Now that the economy is beginning to improve, according to the research done by the University of Texas at San Antonio, bookstore owners are coming under pressure from the many digital alternatives to traditional print books. Overall, the bookstore business is expected to contract slightly over the coming years as major bookstore companies merge.
