The objective of this case study is to outline and provide a brief overview of Amazon.com’s (Amazon) mission, strategic direction, core competencies, relied technologies and their future impact of new technologies, and how management and use of consumer data will impact future business. In addition, we have analyzed Amazon’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in a SWOT analysis. Based on this analysis, and research, we have recommend a course of action as to how Amazon should respond to their weaknesses and threats and how best to leverage strengths to take advantage of available opportunities. Amazon’s Mission and Strategic Direction Amazon.com, Inc. is an internet retailer headquartered in Seattle, Washington founded by CEO Jeff Bezos. Their mission and strategy is quite simply “to offer Earth’s Biggest Selection and to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they may want to buy online and [we] endeavor to offer our customers the lowest possible price.”1 And, if they can’t help they will point the customer to a site that can. The company accomplishes this by operating six global internet sites: www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.jp, www.amazon.co.fr and www.amazon.co.uk. Through their zShops, auctions, affiliate program, Merchants@ and Amazon Marketplace programs, Amazon, and their sellers and partners, offer new and used collectibles and products in categories such as apparel and accessories, DVDs, electronics, computers, books, music, videos, cell phones, tools and hardware, the list is almost endless. In order to maintain quality, the company packages and ships all of its merchandise. They also continue to negotiate volume deals with suppliers to meet their goal of lowering prices. Additionally, Amazon has formed partnerships and alliances with publishers, other on-line retailers, technology providers, either handling their web site operations or linking brick-and-mortar entities to its virtual storefront. As part of their diversification strategy, Amazon recently acquired Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com (IMDb), which is an authoritative source of information on movie and entertainment. This acquisition is one of many Amazon is making expand its product and service offerings. The company is also preparing to sell internet domain names and already ... ... middle of paper ... ...omers. Possible future partnerships could involve companies like AT&T who is currently developing a “web cents” card for online shopping. This partnership could also lead to technology developments which Amazon already uses to leverage its position. All in all Amazon should do well if it continues to stay true to its mission – the customer. References: Amazon.com, “Investor Relations,” “About Amazon.com,” “Annual Report,” “Privacy Notice,”, “Web Services,” www.amazon.com, Online, May 2003, www.amazon.com> Kaplan, Simon, “The Right Fit,” www.cio.com, Online, May 2003 www.cio.com/archive/120101/fit content.html Dignan, Larry, “The Day Ahead: Dot-coms grow up, chief execs step out,” www.zdnet.co.uk, Online, May 2003, Fool.com, “Amazon’s CEO Letters,” www.fool.com, Online, May 2003, www.fool.com/server/foolprint.asp?file==/news/foth/2002/foth021119.htm Bannan, Karen J., “Book Battle,” Media Week,” EBSCOhost, Online, May 2003, Vol. 10 Issue 9, P72, 2p, 5c Hoovers.com, “Profile,” www.hovers.com, Online, May 2003, www.hoovers.com/premium/profile/3/0,2147, 51493,00.html Fortune.com, “Amazon: Can Amazon Be Saved?,” www.fortune.com, Online, May 2003, www.fortune.com
Starting out as solely an online bookstore, Amazon has become the largest online retailer in the world.
Taking the e-commerce market by storm, Amazon.com was founded in 1994 (Amazon.com). Bringing the company to life was Princeton engineering graduate Jeff Bezos. He first thought of the idea to create Amazon.com when he was simply searcing the internet. He first worked as an investment banker D.E. Shaw & Co. where he was looking for investment opportunities for the company. surprisingly, he found that the internet was growing over 2,000 percent per month (“Jeff Bezos the King of E-Commerce”). He saw this as a massive opportunity and decided to start Amazon.com to first sell books. Amazingly, Amazon.com now has over 232 million products for sale for United States residents including electronics, clothing, and their own movie streaming
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
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).
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
Short Corporate history review: Everything started in 1994 when Jeff Bezos founded the biggest online bookseller called Amazon. The company started its activity for the first time in 1995 in Seattle, United States.The company is well known for its continuous innovation. They are customer oriented because they have adapted the latest technology to the customer needs. (Schneider, 2014) In few time the company has reached a large number of downloads and its first success was recorded in 1999.The name of the world’s largest online retailer come from the biggest river in the world, Amazon. This choice was based on a simply reason, to give the idea of the biggest company in the world. (Benedictus, 2013)
.... Amazon uses the internet to allow customers to make content searches, for instance inside books. In addition it has used e-commerce to enable customers to buy online access to certain books through its upgrade program (Webanalyticsbook.com, 2007).
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
When was the most recent time you purchased something from the world of Amazon.com? Amazon is a staple provider and supplier for many people around the world, who are able to order a variety of products all in one place. Just this semester, my professor of my photography class assigned us to all order our necessities for our class via Amazon.com because they WILL have everything we need in one website or store. Amazon chooses to make the world their target market, because their goal is to have the biggest selection for every one of their customer. Currently, Amazon sells to 33 countries, including United States, India, South Africa, Germany, and Australia. This paper will detail the mission and history, financial and world sustainability, consumer
Legal Factors: Amazon is following legislative constraints and changes, such as health and safety legislation. Using a range of tools and techniques helps companies make fast decisions and remain competitive in the market. Here, we will examine some of the tools used by our chosen company: SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis, and Porter's Five Forces analysis. As we can see, the SWOT analysis is an analysis of the micro-environment of the company, while PESTLE and Porter's Five analyses are from the macro-environment of our company. These analyses help the company be aware of the market, competition, and threats to the business.
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.
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.
Originally known for offering books through its website, Amazon has developed a client service, stock, and shipping empire that allows it to offer everything from clothes to garden furniture to janitorial supplies. In addition, Amazon offers a wide range of digital content like movies, music