This article explores the expansion of the online retail giant into Canada and ponders the impact that this could have on traditional Canadian bricks-and-mortar retailers.
Appropriate Subject Area(s):
Entrepreneurship, Internet sales, business growth marketing
Key Questions to Explore:
- What is the risk of complacency? What can a business do to combat complacency and continue its success?
Introduction to lesson and task:
Amazon.ca is growing in the Canadian online marketplace by offering additional categories of products.
Action (lesson plan and task):
- Distribute the article for reading.
- Individually, have students write down all the reasons a consumer might choose to shop online.
- Have students get together in groups of four, share their ideas and then rank them using the diamond format illustrated in the handout attached. It allows students to negotiate and invites some ambiguity by ranking some items on the same level. This serves to accommodate many perspectives.
- Once each group has diamond-ranked their ideas, combine groups to have them share.
- As a class, discuss the impact of this on bricks-and-mortar stores.
- Ask students what bricks-and-mortar stores can do to ensure their ongoing success.
Consolidation of Learning:
Music retailer Long and McQuade suggests that people who buy musical instruments want to hear the sound and therefore will continue to come to an actual store to purchase such equipment. Discuss in small groups what kind of thinking this is and what it can lead to.
Success Criteria:
Students are able to articulate how and why consumers buy online and the impact this can have on bricks-and-mortar stores.
Confirming Activity:
Ask students to find examples where online stores have had a serious impact on bricks-and-mortar stores in your community, even forcing them to close. Why did this happen? Ask students to prepare a pict-o-gram illustrating this. Cutouts from magazines, drawings and words would be suitable.
Diamond Format
1
2 2
4 4 4
7 7
9