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Amazon competitive advantage strategy
Strategies that amazon.com use to create customer value
Amazon case study and answers
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Value Chain Analysis Technology has played a huge role in how companies today conduct business with their consumers. Over the past few decades there has been a shift in business models and strategies because of the emerging innovation in technology. One of these innovation are e-commerce, businesses that use e-commerce can now see a major difference in sales and revenue. Amazon has taken the idea of e-commerce and turned it into a successful and profitable business. Amazon Company developed a brilliant strategy for emerging into an already competitive market. This entails the revision of an existing concept. Unlike major companies like Apple, Microsoft that invented new products and services, Amazon did not need to create a whole new product but to create a better business model system that can be used in the future. This helped their rise to fame by taking over an existing idea but improving it to match consumer needs and wants. Overall companies will need to develop better business strategies to be able to evolve into e-commerce industry moving forward. The best companies embrace change and make plans to create a future for their business like Amazon did. Amazon did not have to wait very long for their strategy to take affect because that the way that the future of business was going. All they did was waiting until the demand flourished and took over the book giant’s like Barnes and Noble and Borders market share. This proves that Amazon did their research and plan accordable so that their demand matches their supply. This also shows the type of value chain process and evaluation that they did in order to continue to conduct business which is quite genius. Their demand has increasable giving them many opportunities to expand. ... ... middle of paper ... ...o come in and take over a huge part of that market and keeping that position. Conclusion To recap it all, we can clearly see that Amazon has respected their value chain and by doing so created a means of delivering time after time. Demand chain and supply chain relates to how a company can gain maintain and understand how to keep their competitive advantage for a specific period in time. We have learned that amazon has brilliantly placed themselves in a position that would anchor their consumer’s future buying decisions. With the proper information, correct management and direction and support companies should follow the way this company has set themselves up to become pioneers in the e-commerce business. This inspirational company took a strategic idea and waited for the best time to act and therefore created a lasting memory on the e-commerce business industry.
History”, n.d.). But the unbelievable pace at which Amazon added new products and new customers proved to be a formidable barrier for any competitors. Within the first 10 years Amazon accomplished an unbelievable feat; it had 49 million customers and 6.9 billion dollars in revenue, and it had done so by selling some products at a loss to build market share (Rivlin, 2005). At times it was difficult leveraging so much capital to grow market share, but Jeff Bezos’ focus on the customer and long term growth of the company proved to be the real reason Amazon didn’t fall prey to the .com bust like so many other internet
The biggest success has been that Amazon.com has become a platform that other businesses can benefit from. Making Amazon.com a general platform for e-commerce operation has been made possible through their advanced technology investments and it has become a major success. Making Amazon.com available through a Web services interface to any developer in the world free of charge has also been a major success because it has driven so much innovation that...
Jeff Bezo’s began Amazon in his garage in July 1995 with three Sun workstations setting on wooden doors for tables and extension cords running from everywhere (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Right from the beginning he was a visionary leaving his well paying job as a senior vice president with D. E. Shaw to begin Amazon.com (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Being the visionary that he is he saw an opportunity prompted by the huge growth rate of internet use in a single year and ran with it never looking back. Jeff realized that the internet had “no real commerce to speak of” so he began researching possible businesses (Academy of Achievement, 2010). “After reviewing 20 mail order businesses and deciding which could be conducted more efficiently over the internet than by traditional means he decided on books” (Academy of Achievement, 2010). He thought books were perfect because attempting to send huge catalogs for all the available books would be expensive and cumbersome, but an online resource database that was easy to navigate would provide customers with easy access and a single point from which to shop. “In 30 days, with no press, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries, obviously by the success of Amazon he was right (Academy of Achievement, 2010). In a case study written by Javad Kargar called “Amazon.com in 2003” he stated that “Amazon's online store was a big hit, with about $5 million in the first year of operations” (2004). This huge success so quickly would have confirmed for Jeff that his idea was viable and drove him to continue to strive for more. Jeff Bezo’s charismatic-visionary leadership is the key to his and Amazon’s success.
This strategy can benefit the company and its employees by direct and strict policies, in which it will relay to the employees to work harder and keep improving. In addition, this hard work and constant progress can result to the employees deeply appreciating their work and become more confident about themselves. If both the employee and managers are pleased about the performance and outcome, then the customers too will appreciate the service and product they receive. Also, a customer who becomes satisfied with their service will most likely become a loyal customer. In turn, the company will gain growth in profits and recognition from other customers. A successful business model or strategy like Amazon’s should be adapted by other companies to ensure the success and development in both the company and its employees. Just like what David Rockefeller said, “Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever
Amazon’s macro-environment is made up of six external factors: political, economic, environmental, technological, social, and legal conditions. These factors are important because they shape how the company operates and you must know each piece to be able to compete within the retail and eCommerce industry. An evolving political factor are the efforts the government has made toward punishing offenders of cyber-crime. This kind of thief wasn’t walking into your store, but hacking into your computer. This type of crime wasn’t possible before the internet. The government has started to take these crimes more serious as technology evolves. Technology is a factor that Amazon.com must invest heavily in. They are reliant on having top of the line technology to survive against cyber-crime and to stay relevant in the tech world. ECommerce is everywhere now and competition is very high. This brings in legal conditions; Amazon must know what laws exist in which countries because they are a
...important for the companies to get aware of all the possible opportunities which have been available to company in future in order to gain competitive edge in industry. The companies must look on a crystal ball in order to analyse the upcoming change in industry and stay ahead in competitive market. Yahoo and Amazon, both of them are having tremendous competitive advantage in the industry. They have tremendous opportunities in industry which make them able to walk on and explore the new paths in order to meet their objectives. Still there are a lot of challenges which has to be taken by these companies in order to maintain and rebuilt their brands and maintain its customer’s awareness and competitive advantages over others on the market. These companies can attain their strategic objectives by reviewing its strategic approach continuously in order to get success.
Another part of Amazon’s retail strategy is to serve as the channel for other retailers to sell their products and take a percentage of cut of every purchase. Amazon does not have to maintain inventory on slower-selling products. This strategy has made Amazon a ‘long tail’ leading retailer, expanding its available selection without a corresponding increase in overhead costs.
Launched by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com website started in 1995 and is today considered as one of the most prominent retail website on the internet with a record turnover of US$ 14.87 billion in 2007. Jeff Bezos’s intention was to create an internet based company with the most dedicated product portfolio on the internet where customers could find anything they might want. Amazon’s success is based on technology, services and products (Jens et al., 2003).
Amazon has been able to maintain sustainable competitive advantage based on three operational strategies. These are low cost-leadership, customer differentiation and focus strategies. Low cost-leadership is pursued by Amazon by differentiating itself primarily on the basis of price. By offering low prices to customers Amazon ensures its future success. Partially modifying the costs of lowering prices over time through achieving higher sales volumes, negotiating better terms with suppliers, and achieving better operating efficiencies. Amazon makes sure that it offers the same quality products as other companies at a considerably cheaper price. Another strategy that Amazon has is its fast delivery service and there are many delivery services that one can choose from. With Amazon Prime, there are certain, but many products that have free two-day shipping. Also, with Amazon Prime, there are many offers specifically for people that have Amazon Prime. For example,
When Amazon.com first began in 1995, as strictly a book retailer, Bezos knew he had discovered an excellent company. After all, a physical bookstore cannot stock anywhere close to the number of books Amazon can offer online. Within a year, the company had a customer base of approximately 340,000 consumers and daily site visits were huge as well. But Bezos wanted to expand the company to offer music and DVDs, because he realized there was little or no barrier of entry. In the next years Amazon would emerge as a marketplace, expanding the company globally offering products from toys to kitchenware. Because of the relatively cheap prices Amazon was offering and also the growing number of online shoppers, the company was doing tremendous amounts of sales and creating profits.
Amazon creates value for its customers by offering customer satisfactory services by managing retail operations with efficient use of technology. Operational efficiency is the strength of Amazon.com and supports the management to maintain its competitive advantage and enhance corporate performance.
In 2002 Annual Report, Amazon has made numerous attempts so that they will remain ahead among its competitors in the industry. Among those efforts includes store personalization that cater for each customer, show customer reviews on its offering products and wide selection to the customer by placing used products next to the new products.
Amazon is best known for their kindle, fast shipping, and selling various products (Smith). With Amazon being such a large corporation, professionalism, academics, character, and engagement are crucial parts of the success of the company. Professionalism: Amazon has grown to become the largest internet-based retailer in the world by total sales. It began as primarily an online bookstore and soon began to sell more and more electronics and then over time began to sell pretty much anything. In 1998, Amazon earned about $0.6 billion, which held steady growth from 1998-2006 (“Amazon.com”).
In conclusion, Amazon has embraced innovation. The company has not had worries with the use of innovation. They use innovations as measurements and end up with flourishing business ideas. They experiment, learn through outcomes and try new ways of doing things. They have put the customer as their first priority. Everything that the company does gears towards attracting customers through quality of services, availability of products, assurance of delivery and addressing customer feedbacks. These factors have helped the company become a multinational and a multimillion company where customers flock everyday.
Firstly, Amazon.com employed the cost leadership strategy by offering products and services at lower costs than competitors. The key to making this strategy successful were the economies of scale that allowed the company to offer the largest range of products to its customers.