Economic Research
For this assignment I decided to analyze the shopping experience for books on coffee brewing. I went to three different websites: Powells, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon. Once there, I typed "coffee brewing" into the search box and browsed through the results that came up. The first thing I noticed was the amount of results on each website. Powells had 25, Barnes and Noble had 67, and Amazon had 4,652. I figured that this was because each website has a different method of obtaining their product. Powells is a used book store, and they mostly only get books if people sell-back to them. Barnes and Noble is a regular bookstore that has a specific inventory of books. Amazon has a unique way of getting its products: they offer both new and used products (for many items), and from many different stores, websites, or their own Amazon warehouse. For example, when I clicked the first link for The Art and Craft of Coffee: An Enthusiast 's Guide to Selecting, Roasting, and Brewing Exquisite Coffee, it gave me three options: 43 new, 22 used, or 1 collectible. Clicking on "43 new" brought up a list of different sellers who currently offered this title, along with their price, the price of shipping, the condition of the book, their feedback score, and where the book ships from. This is why I feel that the amount of results from my search has varied so greatly between these websites. The shopping experience was different on each website. There were several of the same books that appeared on each website. They must have been the more popular books. For example, all three websites had The Joy of Coffee: The Essential Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying. As I said earlier, the amount of results on Powells was very limited. Some of the results on the bottom of the page weren 't even available; they had a "notify me" button that I could have used to alert me when the product became available. There was also one item on "backorder" and one item I could "preorder."
Cited: 1. "Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & More." Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & More. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. 2. "Barnes & Noble - Books, Textbooks, EBooks, Toys, Games & More." Barnes & Noble - Books, Textbooks, EBooks, Toys, Games & More. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. 3. "Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell 's Books." Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell 's Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013.