Organizing Principles (Andronico's vs Amazon)

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In general, intentional organization system can be abstractly defined in three different layers: (data) storage, (business) logic and presentation (to user).  Intentional is the key concept that governs whether the above principles can be applied to such organizing systems. Two such organizing systems are Andronico’s and Amazon.

Andronico’s is an instance of physical organizing system and that entails organizing physical objects as well as information about those physical objects. To establish my context I would like to give the example of a general store where the store assistant fetches the items required by the customer. Hence I could say that there is more intimate relationship between the storage and logic layer. Andronico’s being a large retail shop with users navigating around the aisles looking for their product establishes a much more intimate relationship between the storage and presentation layer, whereas the business logic is represented by the checkout counter which primarily serves as a funnel for exit. This underlines one of the key principles in Andronico’s organizing model where there is a more immersive interaction of customers with the stored products. Customers can see, touch, taste (for eg in the prepared foods corner) and smell the products before they buy. Also, this being a physical organizing system it is implicitly constrained by space, and hence one of the key aspects of their storage system is where more popular products are placed more accessibly near the entrance.  

Amazon on the other hand is a digital organizing system where the organizing principle govern the digital resources as well as the information about those digital resources. This being an organizing system where retrieval is easier when compared to a physical system, the storage and business logic are hidden away from the customer and only the presentation layer is shown.  It should also be noted that all of the entities on the given Amazon page are pointers to the actual object. And this is possible only because Amazon being a digital organizing system can break its system down into pages, or smaller chunks of their organizing system like as in this case at a hierarchical level where the screen given is just a list of all the departments or categories but not actual products. The storage and business logic exist only internally for Amazon stakeholders who take care of storing and retrieving such objects . 

The comparisons and contrasts can be derived from the interactions that both the organizing system allow for their customers. Andronico’s allows users to physically interact with their objects and that physicality enhances the interaction as well as puts an implicit constraint over it. Space is obvious which I have discussed above but also what I can call user-access-errors meaning with reasonable assumptions it can be perceived that real customers will only take so few tries as finding the right item. If they don’t find it, they may just leave. And hence the data storage becomes so very critical. Beverages and Wines can be found together and so can meat or dairy products. I don’t envision a scenario where it would make business sense to break, say, the wine rack and spread the wine bottles across the store because then the customer who needs to find a specific wine has to peruse the entire store. 
In contrast, at Amazon, the user-access-errors could be high without irritating the customers. They click on a page hoping to find it and if they do, fine, but if they don’t they can just go back on the click of a button. In my opinion it is this that gives Amazon or any digital organizing system to have progressive enhancements of their customer navigation and that they can hide their storage and business logic from their customers and focus just on the presentation or user interface to the customer.
Although, there are several contrasts but I think another key contrast is data redundancy. ‘Kindle Books’ appears in ‘Books’ as well as ‘Kindle’ category and so do ‘MP3 Downloads’ and ‘MP3 Music Store’. Which seems to signify that unlike Andronico’s where you can’t have two instances of the same entity, at Amazon you apparently can, just to help users with varied needs find it. Of course, they don’t do it for every product but where it makes sense for different personas of users. 

Now, looking at both of them at a more abstract level, despite their dissimilarities both are organizing systems driven by commercial interests catering to different types of users. If we take the context of Maslow’s law, Andronico’s is generally visited by users trying to satisfy their basic needs where they would generally like to make sure what they are buying is good. Whereas, customers of Amazon do not depend on Amazon for their daily needs, and so their users try to balance their own personal convenience with their needs choosing to shop online at their own discretion. As a result both of them give a high emphasis on presentation and to enhance their presentation to the different types of users they either try to enhance the storage or business logic or hide it. They are both striving to ensure that their customers find the right items as fast as possible and as easy as possible, they just happen to have different types of customers whose needs and desires are of different kinds. Although they work in different realms, physical and digital, being of similar business interests i.e. driving higher sales, they choose varied organizing principles. The commonality is the retrieval process which both Andronico’s and Amazon strive to optimize in terms of speed and ease of use to drive their business interests.