E.
Activity #2: Amazon vs Barnes & Noble (10 points)
An upstart company called
Amazon introduced book
selling to the Web. Amazon’s success enticed long-time brick-and-mortar bookseller
Barnes & Noble to create an online
presence with a major web site.
Search both online sites for a paperback copy of
Adam Smith’s
The Wealth of Nations.
For each site, find what the total price
would be if you purchased the book and had it delivered to your address.
Is one company's price cheaper?
Identify the non-price competition
variables which would lead you to order from one company rather than
the other. (If you've been ignoring the Margin Notes and/or presentations,
you will have difficulty identifying the non-price competition variables!)
When you finish your work, write a summary of your
findings that includes the 5 points below. Your answers should be thorough,
specific, include relevant concepts from the course material and be free of
spelling and grammar errors.
-
both companies' price (Be sure
to identify which company was cheaper if it isn't obvious from the prices.)
-
a discussion of all of the ways
the companies compete for your business other than price (non-price
competition) [One caution: This is a comparison of Amazon and Barnes
& Noble Online ... two online retailers. I realize that Barnes & Noble
also has brick-and-mortar stores but they are not relevant to this assignment.]
-
which company you would buy the
book from
-
which competitive factors (both
price and non-price) were important to you in reaching that decision
and why
-
Make specific and detailed
connections to the course material you have been studying.
Always include course concepts
in your work. If you're reading your margin notes and watching the presentations,
you'll have plenty of material from which to choose on every activity.
(When it comes to making specific and detailed connections
to the course material, I always show some leniency in the first assignment.
With this second assignment, you need to begin to approach this item
in a more scholarly fashion. This is the part of each assignment in
which you should show off how much you know. You should have already
completed margin notes and power point presentations that deal with
relevant theoretical concepts so it should be easy to make those connections.
If you don't, then you miss the purpose of the assignment and cannot
expect to earn full points for it.)