Info 202 F12

1. Andronico's is organized by Type of food:
The produce section has items that all come from plants, the meats all come
from animals. Similar types of foods are near to one another: the dairy section
is next to the cheese section.

Beneath the structure of Type is Use: The
lunch meats and cheeses are together, so too are the spices and baking needs.

In addition, Andronico's puts the nice
smelling and looking flowers near the entrance to put the
shopper in a better mood, thus, ready to spend more money. Popular items are spread out so shoppers must peruse all the goods. Milk which most people buy, is at the far end of the store forcing
the shopper to consider buying other items as he/she walks past all the aisles. 

Lastly, Andronico’s organizes physical
resources and has to take into consideration their physical limitations: The
produce section has misting, a function that some herbs and veggies need and,
therefore, are kept together.

2. Amazon organizes by type of goods too. The Amazon hierarchy as 2 big types at the top: their own services and goods, and others
groups/3^rd party goods ranging from Electronics
to Automotive Parts. Each group has 3-15 sub-categories that allow the user to
drill-down. The leftmost topics/categories represent Amazon’s goods; they want to make their own goods and services stand out as part of their marketing strategy. For
instance, all the Kindle tablets and readers have their own category separate
from the Electronics.

The scope of Amazon’s goods is so large that popular items must stand out. Within the Audio Books
section there is a sub-topic just for the narrowly defined “new and
noteworthy.” However, at the same hierarchical level under Home, Garden and
Tools you find the broad topic of “Hardware.” This denotes the importance of
the Audio Book market that Amazon caters too. Their organizing principles
reflect their perception of the market.

What shoppers see on Amazon are digital
descriptions – metadata- for the physical (or sometimes) digital good they are
shopping for. This allows for the flexibility to organize the goods, regardless of physical attributes.

3. The grocery store and online retailer both
organize their goods by type (i.e. putting all the beauty supplies in one
place. Colocation of similar goods enables both stores to showcase related
items. However, a physical store like Andronico’s has to account for the
physical space of the store; it has to put all items in reach and keep similar
items or similarly used items in the same space. Amazon is constrained to only
2 dimensions of screen. And instead of shelves with cans of tomatoes, there are
servers with bits storing metadata representing the inventory in warehouses
across the world. In an abstract sense, “Earth’s Biggest Collection” of goods
is just a few clicks away. Amazon wants to make buying as easy as possible, so
everything is just a few clicks away. However, Andronico’s was not designed to
make it easy, rather, Andronico’s gets more money when shoppers traverse each
aisle (or at least make a full loop) finding more to buy.

4. Both stores use topic based organizational
principles. Stores want people to make purchases. To facilitate this, stores
organize their goods to make retrieval easier. Also, both stores collocate
similar goods because stores shoppers often buy items that compliment the functionality of the item he/she intended to buy. For instance, you go to buy more charcoal and realize you need a new BBQ lighter.