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Amazon competitive advantage strategy
Amazon competitive advantage strategy
Amazon competitive advantage strategy
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1. The key strategy implementation efforts at Amazon all surround the use of “big data”. Big data is the growth and availability of large volumes of structured/unstructured data. The use of big data has allowed decision making based upon data and analysis instead of past experience and intuition. Big data has directed organizational change in allowing Amazon to expand from an online book store to an internet giant. Revolutionary application of big data has allowed Amazon to create superior service quality while motivating employees by providing real time information to solve customer issues. Big data has strengthened Amazon’s competitive capabilities by pioneering the application of big data and charging a monthly fee to smaller businesses …show more content…
Jeff Bezos started with an idea to sell books on-line by being able to hold more books than any other brick-and-mortar store. The first mover advantage that Amazon gained has not let up since. Amazon has created customer loyalty through the use of 360 degree customer profiles and product recommendation system. Furthermore, Amazon has allowed access to big data for a monthly fee and created a web store for businesses saving on huge investments in development for a commission on sales. Big data is constantly evolving and Amazon is ahead of the curve with the application and analytics of big …show more content…
The case study does not mention green initiatives that Amazon may have at this time. I would recommend looking toward the future with green initiatives if Amazon has not adopted any policy yet. The adoption of green initiatives will help with company image and help with environmental concerns. Ultimately, the current CSR strategy for Amazon is sound and Amazon needs focus on long term growth.
5. I would not make any strategy recommendations to Jeff Bezos at this time. Allowing third party sellers to attain access to big data seemed crazy the first time I read it, however, Amazon is making money off the competition. Mr. Bezos is looking toward the future and has applied the use of big data to provide superior customer service while producing revolutionary web solutions for businesses. Amazon should look to redouble its horizontal and vertical scope using big data. Amazon should never be satisfied with the current position of the company and constantly look for places to grow. Also, analyzing big data to improve the efficiency of the company vertically is very appealing. Ultimately, Amazon should explore every avenue to expand through the use of big
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
Starting out as solely an online bookstore, Amazon has become the largest online retailer in the world.
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.
Growth is core to Amazon.com's business strategy, and that has had a significant impact on the way they use technology: growth through more categories, a larger selection, more services, more buying customers, more sellers, more merchants, and more developers, increasing the different access methods, and expanding delivery mechanisms. The impact has been on many areas: larger data sets, faster update rates, more requests, more services, tighter SLAs (service-level agreements), more failures, more latency challenges, more service interdependencies, more developers, more documentation, more programs, more servers, more networks, more data centers. A large part of Amazon.com's technology evolution has been driven to enable this continuing growth, to be ultra-scalable while maintaining availability and performance.
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 dollars, it held a steady growth from 1998-2006 (“Amazon.com”). From
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 $5 million in the first year of operations” (2004). This huge success so quickly would have confirmed for Jeff that his idea was viable and drove him to continue to strive for more. Jeff Bezo’s charismatic-visionary leadership is the key to his and Amazon’s success.
Amazon’s macro-environment is made up of six external factors: political, economic, environmental, technological, social, and legal conditions. These factors are important because they shape how the company operates and you must know each piece to be able to compete within the retail and eCommerce industry. An evolving political factor are the efforts the government has made toward punishing offenders of cyber-crime. This kind of thief wasn’t walking into your store, but hacking into your computer. This type of crime wasn’t possible before the internet. The government has started to take these crimes more serious as technology evolves. Technology is a factor that Amazon.com must invest heavily in. They are reliant on having top of the line technology to survive against cyber-crime and to stay relevant in the tech world. ECommerce is everywhere now and competition is very high. This brings in legal conditions; Amazon must know what laws exist in which countries because they are a
Launched by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com website started in 1995 and is today considered as one of the most prominent retail website on the internet with a record turnover of US$ 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 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.
Big data is a term that describes the large volume of structured and unstructured data. These data exist and help businesses on a day to day basis. It is not the quantity of the amount of data that matters but rather the use of these data. Big data can be used to analyse for insights that will improve businesses such as better decision making and better strategic business planning (Kirkpatrick, 2013).
Amazon’s also tried to spearhead the industry by introducing the customer-pleasing traits in terms of the technology, order fulfillment and retailing strategies categori...