Google Merchandise Store: Competitive Analysis with Amazon and Alibaba

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Google Merchandise Store, focusing on its competitive positioning within the online retail market. The report compares Google's merchandise store to industry giants Amazon and Alibaba, evaluating their respective strengths and weaknesses in areas such as user experience (UX), marketing strategies, and social media presence. It highlights key aspects like UX thoroughness, social media marketing efforts, and customer engagement strategies employed by Amazon and Alibaba, contrasting them with the Google Merchandise Store's approach. The report also delves into the Google Merchandise Store's analytics, examining website traffic patterns, new versus returning customer behavior, bounce rates, and the impact of these factors on sales and revenue. Furthermore, it discusses the use of AI and personalized shopping experiences, drawing parallels to Instagram's successful model. Overall, the report aims to provide insights into the competitive landscape of the Google Merchandise Store and offer recommendations for improvement based on a comparative analysis of industry best practices.

GOOGLE MERCHANDISE STORE
Introduction
Google Merchandise Store is an online store developed by google that sells merchandise
based on Google's products. The Google Merchandise Store manages an assortment of
things going from clothes to packs to a different type of personal usage water bottles and
much more than this (Google Merchandise Store, 2021). Google is working for years as an
open market worldwide organization known for its popular search engine. It has been seen
that Google have been introducing different services and products that have become an
essential part of our lives. Google has been into online shopping, but it was not that specific;
therefore, Google has now launched its own Google Merchandise Store. The organization's
different ventures incorporate distributed computing, web investigation, promoting
innovations just as improving working framework, program, and Web application.
Furthermore, today, the organization has likewise put resources into online product stores
that offer different sorts of retail items like Amazon and Alibaba.
Google Merchandise Store vs. Competitors
Google has started the store and tried to be competitive with other rivals, but it has been
seen that competitors' market is pretty vast, and google merchandise store is not doing well
in front of them. For this purpose, the comparison will be done of Google merchandise store
with Amazon and Alibaba that are the biggest rivals of google merchandise store. Amazon
and Alibaba's UX thoroughness makes it engaging. Regardless of what you're utilizing the
stage to search for, you'll presumably discover an abundance of data about it. This is critical
because a ton goes into internet shopping. However, how much it is liked to be the
situation, buyers don't just go to Google, do a quick search, and pick one of the choices

introduced to them (Reyna and Martin, 2017). Along the way from motivation to buy, they
like to respond to many inquiries:
 Brands: Who's offering what I'm searching for?
 Costs: How much would it be a good idea for me to hope to pay?
 Areas: Is this accessible in any stores close to me?
 Highlights: Which alternative best meets my novel requirements?
 Surveys: What are others saying about every choice?
Although a portion of these inquiries is a higher priority than others, excessively high of a
cost can be restrictive; for instance, every one of them assumes a part in affecting buy
choices. The fewer work customers need to do to discover this data due to better user
experience, the less disappointing their internet shopping encounters. Amazon and Alibaba
have demonstrated this through their accessibility and UX, and Google has observed, and
their vision for the new Google Shopping experience demonstrates it.
Carrying out this year, the new Shopping experience empowers clients to peruse many
items and track down all the data they need to settle on informed buy choices. When
somebody looks for an item (e.g., pair of running shoes), they'll have the option to channel
the outcomes as per their requirements and inclinations. Regardless of whether they're
searching for a particular brand, shading, size, highlight, cost, or some other property you
can consider, Google Merchandise Store will convey them the most functional outcomes.
When the customer has tracked down the ideal pair of running shoes, they'll have their pick
of purchasing choices: from the vendor's site, from a close-by physical store, or, in specific
cases, straightforwardly from Google inside the Shopping interface that can be seen in
Figure 1. The last choice implies pushing to fuse the most astounding aspects of Google

Merchandise Store; Google's not precisely flourishing shopping basket and conveyance
arrangement into the new Shopping experience. On the off chance that a customer chooses
to buy straightforwardly from Google, they'll appreciate the solace of ensured returns and
client assistance (M., 2020).
Figure 1
The rethought Google Merchandise Store is an undeniable online business commercial
center, an immediate contender to Amazon and Alibaba. The key benefit is that it
empowers dealers with physical areas to drive people walking through to nearby stores. In
this way, while Amazon is a phenomenal method to sell items on the web, Google
Merchandise Store is a terrific method to sell both on the web and in stores.
It's customized with suggestions dependent on his past searches and buys. From here, you
can peruse a wide range of essential things and begin considering what you need to
purchase straight away. This is a substantial component, as I would see it, not just because it
acquires straightforwardly from the Amazon page, yet besides since it takes advantage of
the rationale at the core of another quickly arising online business stage: Instagram.

Instagram's fruitful change from a great online media organization to a true-blue internet
business stage is expected, in huge part, to the customized idea of the perusing experience.
Since clients have complete command over which brands, they follow on Instagram, they're
ready to clergyman their advanced shopping encounters.
Figure 2
By utilizing AI to customize clients' Shopping landing pages, Google is adequately duplicating
the Instagram experience which can be seen in Figure 2. It can be seen how Google uses the
suggestion feature of Instagram that helps to find what the visitor wants and what kind of
products he or she likes. Indeed, they're improving the Instagram experience. Google can
use the information it gathers not exclusively to show clients the brands and items they
need to see, yet additionally to foresee the brands and items clients might need to see. It is
been now done discussing a channel intended to catch a business plan; therefore talking
about a pipeline designed to rouse business purpose.
Social Media Presence

Looking at the social media platforms, the google merchandise store doesn’t have some
significant presence that shows a negative impression because people love to see their
favorite brands in the daily news feed. In comparison, Amazon and Alibaba offer some great
efforts in the social media marketing strategies they have developed over the years. The
famous online store Amazon has a significant following on different social media platforms
where only Facebook has followers that are more than 29 million. It is an astounding
number of followers of any online store, and this is all because of Amazon's great marketing
strategies and intense efforts. The response time of Amazon is inspiring as it responds to
every person who messages on the Facebook page or shares the query in the comments
section which can be seen in Figure 3. The response to such a message by Amazon is made
within such a short time that people feel satisfied with the customer support service.
Besides this, the replying team of Amazon also uses the first name of the person who has
shared his or her query. This develops an instant bonding and trustworthiness, due to which
the people feel that the company understands them.

Figure 3
Whenever a visitor visits the social media platform of Amazon and Alibaba, the online
stores' customer support responds to the visitor immediately. If a person shares some bad
experience that they have faced, then the issue is handled effectively by the customer
support team of Amazon and Alibaba. Besides the simple replies to the queries, Amazon and
Alibaba also start other discussions with the clients that build a better image of the brand in
the customer's mind. Amazon and Alibaba have also posted various surveys on their social
media platforms that have always helped them know what is on the customer's mind, and
this also created better bonding with the customers because they think that these online
stores care for them.
These online store giants ideally use social media platforms to keep people engaged
regularly. Whenever a vital day arrives, social media is filled with recommendations and
products relevant to that critical event. Taking an example of Father's Day, they post various
suggestions regarding the items that can be used as Father's Day gifts. This strategy pulls the
people into the store and somehow forces them to buy the gifts online from Amazon and
Alibaba (NA, 2017).
The campaign that Amazon ran over Twitter to target its customers on this social media
platform was to provide them with different types of videos and music that were a part of
Amazon music, which was different from usual Amazon store campaigns. The campaign
helped Amazon give its customers a different taste than what they were already having

from Amazon. This also helped Amazon get another customer base on its social media.
Amazon also posts other types of content on its Twitter account and uses this platform as a
blogging platform which helps and guides people regarding the online store of Amazon.
Twitter is also used to share the daily updates and news by Amazon, and this is one effective
way of using a social media platform as a marketing channel. Amazon also uses Twitter to
reach the locals as it helps to make different types of posts for the people present in other
regions of the world.
Besides Facebook and Twitter, Amazon is also taking great benefit from another platform
used for images known as Pinterest which can be seen in Figure 4. When people visit
Pinterest and try to find some great ideas, then they see some attractive products that
Amazon displays; at this point, when the customers try to get to that item, they are directed
to the online store of Amazon. This type of use of social platforms helps to get traffic that is
perfectly related to your products, and this type of marketing is known as pull marketing.
After getting directed to the online store of Amazon, people can buy the products they want
to buy, which helps expand the users and customers of the Amazon store (S, 2019).

Figure 4
As shown in Figure 5, except for using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, and Pinterest, Amazon launched its platform that is somehow similar to Instagram
and Pinterest's idea. This application is known as Amazon Spark that helps to get buyers a
variety of options to choose from with ease equal to a social media platform.

Figure 5
Google Merchandise Store’s Analytics
Taking a gander at the Audience Overview, there is a specific example in the number of
clients visiting the site. By and large, the vast majority of the action falls during Monday
through Friday of every week, with an underlying top toward the beginning of the work-
week. As shown in Figure 6 that the week's ends are in every case, not precisely the non-
weekend days.

Figure 6
When taking a gander at new versus returning clients, new clients make up more than
89.93% which can be seen in Figure 7. Nonetheless, even with most clients being new, they
make up about 33.95% of the complete exchanges and just 30.64% of the all-out income.
The returning clients, albeit less, represent the vast majority of the deals and income.
Besides this, the visitor's value that is considered bounce rate of the site visitors is found
lower in the clients who already visited the site than those who stayed for the first time as
old clients have the session duration of 00:05:06. On the other hand, new customers have
the session time of 00:02:21.

Figure 7
The bounce rate is characterized as a solitary page meeting in which the lone activity taken
by the client is an exit. In Figure 8, at 37.00% contrasted with 51.93%, returning clients have
a lower bounce rate than new clients. This implies that returning clients will stay past the
underlying arrival point than new clients. When seeing bounce rates, there are numerous
interesting points, for example, the traffic type and greeting page. If a significant number of
clients who quickly leave are coming from paid pursuits or promotions, the client might not
have as much interest as somebody who is now drawn in and searching for an item. This
could prompt a faster loss of interest when arriving on a page.

Figure 8
The two most significant and famous pages are the home page and the basket page. The
home page comprised principally new clients at 328,711 site visits contrasted with 58,318
for bringing users back which can be seen in Figure 9. Then again, the basket page, where
individuals complete their exchanges, had a higher level of returning clients than new
clients. Moreover, the basket page's bob rate was around eight-speed focuses below the
standard, generally speaking, ricochet rate for the site. This could be because of clients
either not arriving on the basket page or clients proceeding past the basket page.
Figure 9