1. Describe how these companies use their websites for positioning. What aspects of company and product differentiation are apparent within each website?

Amazon, a multinational ecommerce organization founded in the year 1994 is a giant in the ecommerce business and is one of the largest in terms of sales, revenue and net worth. The organization started its operation as an online bookstore and today it is a one stop shop and is delivering solution to almost each and every need of human beings. Barnes & Noble started it operation back in 1886 as a retail book store and in 2017 today it possess more than 770 book stores scattered in all the 50 states of the United States. As there has been a change from reading hardbound books to eBooks and capsules Barnes & Noble has also adapted themselves with the change has formulated online bookstore in order to serve the purpose.

A comparative analysis of the organizations is unfair because amazon has a wide variety and range of products whereas Barnes & Noble has limited its business to only books. Instead is we analyze the strategies used by the organizations we will observe that Barnes & Noble are aware of the shift from hardbound books to eBooks and therefore they are allowing a discount on the eBooks because in ebooks the process simpler as there is no issue of delivery and shipment. The eBooks are sent to the cloud of the customer and the person can use it according to his or her convenience. Age group of the target population varies from kids to teenagers to adults and also the senior age group and Barnes & Noble ensure a huge collection so that customers find it easy and effortless in purchasing the book of their choice.

Barnes and Nobles also have a section of educational content which includes digital media and as it is the future so the focus is also on the future and again discounts to promote. They have tried to attract as much crowd and group of people as possible by methods like book as gifts, book as collection, recipe books and also digital media collection of famous and popular series it has been observed that we tend to collect few books and dvds and Barnes & Noble has used that opportunity and has sectioned it also provided discounts. There is also a signed edition section where the books possess the signature of its authors and generally the authors are quite acclaimed.

Amazon possess a variety of positions while marketing because of the variety of products but the concept of Amazon Exclusive is the recent hit for amazon. Amazon Exclusive is a section where the products are only available in Amazon and Amazon has been successful in convincing various brands to use Amazon as their partner. As the products needs to be delivered to the customers Amazon has devised a membership known as Prime, which ensures that the products will be delivered at a maximum of 1 or 2 days of time and has also linked various facilities for the prime members like free movies and web series, selected discount and cashback offer, etc.

Amazon currently is trying to target the maximum population and is also taking advantage of the festivals, for example just a couple of days before Christmas amazon plans a Christmas festival sale and attracts customer by providing discounts in various products and in order to make the sale popular they promote it through social media, television, online, etc. There is also seasonal collection where seasonal products will be sold out at a lower rate and product variety will be more.

Both the organizations are very well aware that online shopping is the future and in order to sustain in the market they are using the platform diligently. Today mobile applications are much more convenient, hence they are using it to make the process more convenient for the customers. Customers prefer simple but attractive User Interface and as a result both the websites are accordingly designed and also follow Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment methodology where there are changes in the website every minute. In amazon we can notice products based on categories and each category is differentiated by brands, genre and also sex (if any), for example if we are searching shoes we will select the category as Shoe then we will sections like Women's Shoes, Men's Shoes and KId's Shoes again there will be differentiation in each section like if we select the Male Shoe section we will notice Formal Shoes, Casual Shoes, Sports Shoes, etc and again if we select Formal Shoes there will brands from which we can select. So we can notice the level of convenience provided to the customers and make the business easy. Website is currently an integral part and will continue to do so in future.