Amazon.com is largest online retailer in the world. This online retailer was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and it made its online debut in 1995. Amazon.com got its name from the Amazon River which is one of the largest rivers in the world. Amazon.com is head quartered in Seattle, Washington. Amazon.com markets in 11 countries and ships internationally. The mission statement of the company is “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices” (Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, 1996-2014). A major strength of Amazon.com is that the company offers a wide variety of products and services. Amazon distributes only the best quality services and products. “It is reliable, convenient, offers one of the lowest and fastest shipping, the minimum price, and many free added features with its services and has an ample selection of goods. Amazon has a brand reputation for impeccable customer service” (Jurevicius, 2013). One of the more popular features that Amazon …show more content…
Amazon has always characterized itself as the low cost provider in the e-Commerce arena. Amazon is able to administer such low prices to end users in regard to brick and mortar retailers because of its low cost operations and progressively valuable network of fulfillment centers. Attributable to its colossal ecosystem, Amazon has a massive number of merchants and sellers who sell their commodities on its platform. “Amazon has more than 2 million seller accounts that make up approximately 40% of the total unit sales. And Amazon provides fulfillment services (FBA) to a number of these vendors as well for a fee. The company does not divulge its gross margins from merchant units, but is universally estimated to be in the 80% range, which is essentially higher compared to its own retail operations” (Faruk,
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
Amazon was founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos and became one of the first major companies to sell goods over the 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...
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 $0.6 billion, which held steady growth from 1998-2006 (“Amazon.com”).
Although Amazon has been active trying to find the perfect strategy to make profits, the numbers in its financial statements had not shown the most optimal results. We have discuss that even though its strategies have been right according to supply chain and logistics methodologies and theory, something had been missing to represent this successful strategies into financial results. It is seen that Amazon had spent too long time finding the right strategy which the last might be the one because in the financial statements profits started to come up. Amazon still have a long way to go to mature its strategy and represents it into profits for its shareholders.
Amazon has more warehouses than any other online retail sites. They also have them spread out all over the world in more countries than any other online retailor. This gives them a competitive advantage because they are able to get the product to the customer quicker and most of the time overnight even. This is certainly a sustainable competitive advantage for Amazon because it is not a resource that will go away or that fluctuates on price or availability.
Launched by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com website started in 1995 and is today considered as one of the most prominent retail website on the internet with a record turnover of US$ 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,
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
Competition – The biggest competitor of Amazon is EBay and all the internet retailers and suppliers as Priceline.com; Buy.com; BN.com and many more.
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.
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.
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.
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...