Answering Question number 1:
In addition to the first post, as well as adding some more information on Amazon's potential success as well as negative impact
Based on the information we have learned and applied in lectures,setting up a headquarter for Amazon in Canada will increase the amount of products offered in the market to consumers as well as increasing the amount of jobs. Amazon as a company, offers services that no other companies can achieve. The main advantage that Amazon will bring to Canada is how it is efficient at both providing and distributing its products. Being a company that's focuses on electronics and book distribution, Amazing also offers consumers products such as video games, household items, furniture and other diversity categories of
…show more content…
The wide variety and efficiency that Amazon provides with its products and services receives critical praise from a global level.
By bringing Amazon into Canada, we are creating more opportunities for global investors as well as partnerships that benefits both Canada's economic status as its development as a more recognized country. The potential increase in global consumers is also one of the biggest positive results it can achieve.
One draw back that Amazon may provide to the Canadian market is that it acts as an obstacle to other businesses, especially retail stores. The success of Amazon and its amazing distribution of products may act as a barrier towards the expansion of other businesses. Consumers may choose Amazon over other companies, and this will result in potential loss of jobs in the other companies.
In the article above, this potential barrier is also shown a bit from the introduction of a brand new Amazon feature, Amazon Go, which makes consumer's shopping experience much more
Departments stores in Canada emerged late compared to Britain, France and the United States however, they grew quickly, and even surpassed large global retail stores in terms of sales and size. The top three department stores: Eaton's, Simpson's and HBC monopolized Canada's retail market, differentiating themselves from international competitors. They were able to capture the market through innovative ideas such as mail-order catalogues and various branch stores. Retailers promoted consumerism as normal and portrayed Canada as a ‘consumer nation’ (58). Department stores attempted to construct themselves as Canadian institutions.
To find its potential, perform a SWOT analysis. Ken Andrews developed the SWOT analysis tool in the 1970 's. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (Flat World Knowledge, Inc., n.d. p.105). Amazon 's strengths include its size, popularity, competitive pricing, customer reach, and ease of access. As for weaknesses, Amazon is an online only retailer. This can be viewed as a great weakness because while much of the world has access to the internet, not all of the world has access. This means Amazon could potentially be missing out on sales from those who might have no other choice than to shop at nearby businesses. Opportunities for Amazon don 't seem to be as apparent as its strengths and weaknesses. However, one big opportunity that Amazon is currently working on is having a selection of its own brand of products. Products sold on Amazon are mainly from global brands rather than Amazon itself. Finally, the major threats to the company are its competitors (Ebay & search engines with "shopping" options) and the ever-increasing concern over online shopping. In the past few years, we have seen and heard about an increasing number of businesses which have been "hacked" and customers ' information (credit card numbers, addresses, personal information, etc.) stolen. As a frequent Amazon shopper, I can only hope that Amazon is never involved in such a threat. Overall, Amazon has huge potential and has been capitalizing on that
They also have a center in Columbia, SC that pays top dollar to its employees. The company is always hiring, but some time hours are extensive. Amazon has a specific system that helps to keep their distribution centers flowing well. The system amazon has developed it helps to predict what consumer’s patterns by the region they live in that gives them a better idea of what to or not to keep in stock. There is three flows of products come from. These are where the information is coming from, how quickly it is processed, and how it is sent out to others. Amazon uses this type of so it flows efficiently. The main goal of them is to collaborate with suppliers. Only 12 percent of their order have been sent to the wrong location. Currently they only have 4 percent of inventory
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...
Although Amazon has been active trying to find the perfect strategy to make profits, the numbers in its financial statements had not shown the most optimal results. We have discuss that even though its strategies have been right according to supply chain and logistics methodologies and theory, something had been missing to represent this successful strategies into financial results. It is seen that Amazon had spent too long time finding the right strategy which the last might be the one because in the financial statements profits started to come up. Amazon still have a long way to go to mature its strategy and represents it into profits for its shareholders.
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
Also, Amazon sells many products from many different brands and companies. The customers are most important to Amazon and Amazon knows that the delivery service is one thing that customers want the most. The way that Amazon fulfills the customer’s satisfaction of its delivery service is by having 55 fulfillment centers located in North America. Because fulfillment centers are not retail stores, Amazon products aren’t required to charge sale taxes. Along with the 53 fulfillment centers that Amazon has in North America, Amazon also has 53 distribution centers in Europe, Japan, Asia and India. Since Amazon has a lot of warehouses in many different locations, it can reach to its customers more conveniently. Amazon has been growing throughout the years has allowed its company to be able to reduce its costs. Besides being one of the top online shopping sites, Amazon has also developed the Kindle, which is now one of the most popular e-reader tablets out
Canada’s stable economic environment has reduced the threat for foreign companies to invest in the Canadian marketplace. Companies like TJX, who have been struggling in the U.S. economy have to come to Canada to find stability. Others, such as Target, have seen little growth in America and are expanding into Canada due to the economy. In addition, Canada’s culture and societal structure is extremely similar to America, thus reducing the risk of failure for retailers. Companies do not have to translate or change their brands to fit into the Canadian culture. Numerous brands are already known and embraced by Canadians like Target and Victoria Secret. Finally, entering the Canadian Marketplace is simple, as there are no tariff barriers due to NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Wal-Mart was the first American retailer to take advantage of NAFTA in 1994, when it opened its first stores in Canada. The same year that NAFTA was established. All of these factors make Canada very appealing to American retailers who want to test the international market for further expansion. Canada offers a much friendlier and more familiar market to American retailers, making it ideal for companies to start their expansions north of the border. Canada’s economic environment, culture and lack of barriers have significantly reduced the risk for American companies to venture into
Although a lot of people, including myself prior to all this research, may assume that Canada is just like the United States, there are many differences that must be acknowledged and accepted between the two countries to conduct successful business together. The cultural differences, political, legal, and economic differences between Canada and the United States each play important roles in understanding how to go about doing business together. Much like here in The United States, the Canadian culture has been shaped by the European cultures. In Canada’s case, it was mostly the British and the French cultures that have been the influence for culture in the past.
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
Technological factors. This is very important factor for Amazon therefore the success of the business depends on that. Amazon has to face a lot of technological challenges and to find a way to be ahead of the competitors.
Secondly, Amazon.com expanded internationally, pursued strategic acquisition and bought new firms to bring new services, assets, capabilities, services, and skills.
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