Amazon.com Inc. is the largest global electronic commerce and cloud computing company in the United States. Its home domain amazon.com is the sixth largest website in the world in terms of web based hits and the number one shopping portal in the United States. The company brings in over $100 billion worth of revenue a year and has an operating income of $2.2 billion a year. What makes Amazon such a successful company is their transformational leader, Jeff Bezos who is always looking out for new frontiers to conquer, and new products to sell to his loyal customers. Jeff Bezos started from nothing and had his own share of problems but he was able to overcome his shortcomings due to his brilliance as a leader, because of this Amazon.com Inc. is …show more content…
Jeff Bezos stated in a conference that “Amazon.com was actually profitable in the spring of 1995 for about one hour.” One reason for this is the scale of products that Amazon.com sells. The products range from small items such a toothpaste and soap up to large products such as a tiki hut. The products are sold at a razor thin profit margin on top of the guaranteed free shipping when a customer reaches a certain dollar amount. Offering such a large product selection has its downfalls such as not being able to buy in bulk which forces Amazon.com to take a lean manufacturing approach in their business model. Amazon.com has a motto which is “get big fast”, what they mean by this is investing aggressively in product categories and themselves instead of focusing on the company’s business health and bottom line. The problem with this is the fact that Amazon only has a 2% profit margin where the retail industry average is over double that depending on the products that a retailer specializes in. Instead of specializing in one type of product which allows for a company to buy in greater bulk to reduce their costs, Amazon focuses on every industry which is the exact opposite of a successful retail business
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
For our business profile project, we focused on Amazon. Amazon.com Inc. was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. Amazon was first started in Bezos ' garage and has turned into a billion dollar operation over the course of 22 years (Smith). Amazon is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington and has branch locations all over the world. Amazon is most 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.
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 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 creates value for its customers by offering customers broad array of products to select from through their website and ensuring timely delivery of products to exhibit high level of commitment towards their business and customers
Amazon is the world’s largest retailer online. Founded in 1994 it has started as an online bookstore but soon expends its catalog with software, video games, electronics, furniture, food, toys etc.
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.
Amazon is number eight on Interbrand’s 2016 ranking, which is up 33% from last year to 50 billion 338 million.1 This year they plan on reaching 72.8 billion.2 Amazon is an e-commerce company offering cloud based services as well. It is an extremely customer-centric company and the largest internet based retail company in the country.3 Amazon is about innovation and bringing new technology and new ideas to their customers. With all their successes, there has been a misstep or two that has kept the company grounded. This is shown for the most part with the up and down of the stock market but overall has steadily climbed over the past year.4 Consumer confidence is a great indicator of these ups and downs.
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.
Bezos turned his online book store into a multi-faceted powerhouse. Other than their retail store, Amazon has a cloud service, their own line of e-book readers, smart speakers, and their own multimedia streaming service with original movies and TV shows. Amazon has come a long way since their creation in 1995 and will continue to branch out to different markets including pharmaceuticals and even the grocery store market with
Amazon.com is a electronic commerce company with its headquarters in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the largest internet company in the world. Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos , an American business magnet and investor. He is the chairman, CEO and president of the company. Amazon is a worldwide company with 132,600 employees working in it.
Amazon.com, Inc. alternately destined to be known as Amazon is an American electronic business and distributed computing organization with home office in Seattle, Washington. It is the biggest Internet-based retailer in the United States. Amazon.com began as an online book shop, later they began to offer CDs, video downloads, DVDs, Blue-beams, MP3 downloads/streaming, book recording downloads/streaming, programming, computer games, gadgets, attire, furniture, sustenance, and toys. The company also produces consumer electronics, Amazon Kindle e-book readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV and Fire Phone and is the world's largest provider of cloud infrastructure services (IaaS). Amazon additionally offers certain low-final items like USB links under
Three years later, in year 2000 Amazon’s third-party seller business launches and Amazon also launched its new logo with arrow running from the A to Z which displays their desire to sell everything from A to Z. (15 Aug 2015, James Quinn, The Telegraph, Amazon timeline: from internet bookshop to world’s biggest online retailer)5 Everyone knows that what happen in start of 21st century. Dot com bubble busted, and many companies could not survive that means they went bankrupt or out of the business. Nevertheless, Amazon survived and moved on with their plan and they were still doing good. There are many people behind the success of Amazon.com but there is one-person, Jeff Bezos, who is really most important to the company because, in the end, he is the owner