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Brief history of amazon company
Employing strategy
Employing strategy
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History of Amazon and Yahoo and their respectively core business. This paragraph talks briefly about the history of Amazon and Yahoo and the strategies used by the two companies and their respective core business. Amazon is a Fortune 500 e-commerce company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and launched in 1995 in Seattle, Washington. It was one of the first big companies to sell goods over the Internet. Its mission was offering million books to its customers. Amazon has grown relatively fast and its CEO Bezos has introduced variety of innovations as source of competitive advantage to strive and create the most successful company by adding most value to its customers and shareholders. Bezos continued to diversify Amazon’s offerings with the sale of CDs and videos in 1998, and later clothes, electronics, toys and more through major retail partnerships. Right in 1997, Amazon’s stock began trading in NASDAQ stock exchange. It boomed with yearly sales that jumped from $510,000 in 1995 to over $17 billion in 2011. Amazon’s mission changed to leverage technology and expertise in invaluable employees to provide customers the best shopping experience on internet and became the “Earth most customer-centric company”. The company introduced a new strategy called “Associate Program” which the goal was attracted new customers to its retail storefront and grows sales. This new strategy proves to be the most important advantage and the company’s sales revenue produced by the associates reached 40%. Another innovation announced by CEO Bezos in 2011 was shifted Amazon to tablet marketplace with the introduction of the Kindle Fire. CEO Bezos has invested aggressively to expand and leverage the customer base. By October 25, 2011 Amazon third quarter pr... ... middle of paper ... ...y. Process innovation is defined by Jones, 2013 as development of new process for producing products and bringing to the customers. Starting from Koogle to Mayer, all CEOs tried to bring innovation to the company using different tools. In 1996 Yahoo had a successfully public offering that increased $338 million by selling 2.6 million shares. Also, Koogle created a new media entertainment services that permit to be the dominant global communication, media entertainment and retail company. This strategy was made by partnership which makes a big difference, giving Yahoo internet life brand name recognition, and also connecting it to readers from many different touch points. Tim Koogle was hired as CEO and his key strategy to strength the company was hiring marketing experts who can use marketing strategies to boost company core competency and improve ad proceeds.
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 major categories or modes of shipment for Amazon.com in the U.S. are drop-ship, split, partnered, and postal-injection.
Looking at Bezos’s business model from an entrepreneurial standpoint is very interesting. He decided to take a very unique approach to business and in doing so he took some big risks to get where he is today. For a company like Amazon that is constantly pushing the boundaries and moving into new territory one could do a SWAT analysis for nearly every year they have been in business and it would look drastically different. For now I want to retrospectively focus on the initial plan that Bezos laid out and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that came with it.
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”).
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.
Amazon is an online company that since its debut in 1995, has taken the world by storm. It exploded into popularity making an astonishing $147.8 million in sales within 3 years, causing all other online companies run for cover. Any company that didn’t run fast enough was swallowed up by them. Over its history, Amazon has bought around 45 companies an currently its only major competitors is E-Bay’s auction house and the very popular Brick and Mortar bookstore, Barnes and Noble (Borders lost the race). Now, you may ask what makes Amazon so popular? What is it is secret to it is success? According to Amazon, it believes that “it is main competitive factors…include “selection, price availability, convenience, [ease of use through] information [and the ease of buying something], [personalized services through], discovery [of similar products and through ability to look at your recent history], and brand recognition… [Through superb] customer service, speed of fulfillment…its ability to adapt to changing conditions… and trust in transactions with us and facilitated by us on behalf of third...
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,
Amazon has recorded a magnificent success in its business throughout the years that it has been in operation. It has attracted almost all people to use it when necessary. Amazon has built its success in business methodically and slowly. Amazon has made much success because of its ability to read market trends and diversify its operations. It started as an online book selling company. However, it changed its operations and started selling other products. Currently, many large retail shops use Amazon to host and power their websites, for instance, sears and virgin megastores. Amazon now attracts over fifty million visitors in a period of one month. Amazon has tried to make their services fit each individual user. It has based its services on the end user. It has shipping discounts, customer product reviews and a credit card with bonuses. It also has prime membership, product forums and 1-click ordering system among other services. The company has tried to make a remarkable experience for customers and visitors (Thomas, 2006).
Amazon.com was a venture into an emerging market of internet and had to face hidden and unexpected hurdles in order to survive and excel in the market. Therefore, Amazon.com kept modifying its strategies with their focus on enhancing customer experience of online shopping and to delivery exceptional services with complete convenience to their customers. One of the major strategic decisions was to compromise on cost saving stragegy when Amazon.com started to maintain its own warehouses in different countries in order to ensure timely and accurate delivery to their customers
Jeffrey Bezos, the founder and current CEO of Amazon.com, initially started the company as an online bookstore in 1994. Within several months, Amazon spread its operation to all 50 states and abroad. Presently, customers from over 45 countries buy at Amazon. Over a short period of time, the company expanded sales to electronics, video games, software, CDs, DVDs, MP3 downloads, food, furniture, apparel, jewelry, and toys. Today, the company even produces its own products such as the Kindle series. Also, Amazon.com is one of the major providers of cloud computing services. Currently, the company is the largest global online retailer responsible for 20% of online retail market share.
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.
From the consumer side, Amazon provides services like Amazon Prime, which delivers free two-day shipping on retail purchases, on-demand video streaming and a free access to the Kindle library, everything for an annual
Based on your research, how would you describe the merger or acquisition of Amazon and Whole Foods? Provide data from your research to support your conclusion.
Amazon’s customer philosophy can be traced from a letter extracted to the 1997 Annual Report that stated their focal points by offering customers products that they think is worth buying. Amazon tries to set apart their operations by suggesting extraordinary way in doing transaction and start by offering online books whereby they can get access to it anytime they want. Other value-added offers include 1-ClickSM shopping, customer’s gift certificates and immensely reviews, browsing options, content and suggested features. Amazon strategy focuses on reducing the price. Thus, increase the customer value. Amazon became the market online bookselling leader by encouraging customers repeating purchases through the advertising strategy that is proven effective which was word of mouth approach.
Zhang, Yan and Nandini, Rajagopalan. Once an outsider, always an outsider? CEO origin, strategic change, and firm performance. Strategic Management Journal. 2009. Print.