Brick vs Mortar

The growth of online retail has had a major impact on economies around the globe. Those impacts have been fairly well-studied in the literature on eCommerce and the growth of the internet, but I’ve found that many times students such as yourselves won’t have have much time to investigate its impact unless you’re in a graduate program. This assignment is an attempt to address that gap.

The Brick and Mortar vs Online Report is a comparative study. For this assignment, you’ll be visiting a retail store in your local area, recording and analyzing your experience, and then comparing that to the experience of shopping for the same or similar items at an online retailer.

Details about the particulars of this assignment are below.
Step 1: Choose a retailer and a category of product.
It can be any size store and it can sell basically anything. There are only two limitations:

  1. Your site must be a brick and mortar store, meaning that it has a storefront you can visit in person.
  2. The only other limitation is that you can’t choose a restaurant. Yes, you can order online. The actual product, however, is still coming from local restaurants in most cases.

The category of product can be anything you’re interested in, but you should go to the store with something in mind. For instance, I recently went to an art supply store because I needed a new brush. I didn’t know exactly what I needed, but I also wasn’t just wandering through the store aimlessly.

Step 2: Visit your store. You should record your experience, but the exact form of recording is up to you. IMPORTANT NOTE: You must be respectful of the rules of the store and your record keeping practices must not disrupt the functioning of the store or inconvenience or upset other customers or workers.

  1. The most basic form is just writing down your experience. This is also likely the least disruptive to the store itself.
  2. You can take pictures of things you’re looking at (if the store allows that), the outside of the store, the neighborhood it’s in, etc.

a. You should not take pictures of employees or customers without their express permission. That means you must tell them what you’re doing, how the picture will be used, and they must provide affirmative consent (“Yes, that’s fine.”) Err on the side of caution.

3. Video or audio recording. As before, don’t record people if you don’t have permission from them.

What sort of information should I be recording?

You should start keeping track of your experience from the moment you leave your residence to the point you get home. I want you to be very thorough in keeping track of the intricacies of your experiences. Here are some example questions you should answer, but there may be other things you want to record!

Getting There

Have you been to the store already? What do you know about this store already? What do you know about the area it’s located in? How are you getting there and how long is it going to take you?

Arriving and Shopping

Describe the area and the store front. What are your immediate impressions? What about when you first go into the store? Do you interact with an employee or owner? Is finding your chosen product category easy? What sort of selection do you have? Do you find want you want? Record the price.

If you do make a purchase, what’s the checkout experience like? What sort of return or exchange policy does the store have and how would you actually take advantage of it?

Going Home

How do you feel leaving the store? Do you like the feeling of carrying out the bag or having it sitting next to you as your drive home? When you get home, do you immediately take the item out and open it? What’s that experience like (keeping in mind the tactile pleasures that can come from opening a package).

Step 3: Repeat this process, but with an online retailer (this can include Amazon). Some additional questions to consider:

How do you access this site (phone, computer, etc.). How responsive is the site? How easily do you find what you want? Do you look at other options? How do the prices compare? How long will it take you to get the product? What are the exchange or refund procedures?

Step 4: Consider the stakeholders in each experience (watch the mini-lecture on D2L to learn more about stakeholder theory). Map out who the stakeholders are and what the positive and negative impacts are.

Step 5: Do some research on the economics of the particular product (or class of products) you were looking for. Where does it come from? Is it expensive to make? One to two sources will likely be enough. Sources like a news magazine or a trade association are great. If, for instance, you are looking at a piece of clothing, check out fashion organizations. Yes, you do need to have a works cited.

Questions to answer in your research:

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Where do they come from generally? Are they expensive to produce? Are they sold for much more than they cost to make or is there little mark-up? Do stores make money off those items or is the profit coming off secondary sales? For example, my paint brush purchase probably doesn’t make the store a ton of money, but the paint and canvas I bought on a whim when I came in for the paintbrush is probably good for their bottom line.

Step 5: Write up your experiences. Your report should be sub-divided into clear, logically organized sections that discuss 1) your brick and mortar experience, including who the stakeholders are for that experience 2) your online shopping experience, including stakeholder analysis 3) your analysis of the similarities and differences of the experience, and 4) your insights, epiphanies, unanswered questions, and thoughts on the experience.

I am not looking for you to come down on the side of either brick and mortar retailers or online retailers. Instead, this assignment is asking to you to really dig into the experiences of each type of experience, and then asking you to think about who wins and loses in each scenario, and what the impact of those wins and losses are.

This assignment will likely come out to 4-5 pages total. You should include any pictures you feel are appropriate.

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