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A brief history of Amazon Inc
A brief history of Amazon Inc
A brief history of Amazon Inc
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Our research analysis is on Amazon and the amazing mind of Jeff Bezos who started Amazon in 1994 as an online merchant of books but later found how the internet revolution was an opportunity to sell products, live streaming and web services that would revolutionize the world of the internet. The company is based in Seattle Washington with subsidiaries around the world because of the technical presence required in each region. High level engineers and technical talent from around the world are required to support the Amazon vision and it will be discussed in our final submission. Amazon has several subsidiaries purchased and acquired through the years to help their business Portfolio such as: IMDB- World Leading database of movies, shows and …show more content…
Amazon 's disruption of the bookstore industry trickled down to other industries as Amazon grew with their product line and now services known as AWS. This could not be possible if Amazon did not invest and research more in the technology space. From selling books online and now providing virtual rack servers and software applications for businesses, technology is at the forefront for Amazon. The initiatives and investments come at a heavy price for Amazon as they have spent about $12 Billion in 2015 for research and development. The amount seems excessive but for a company with sales of $100 billion in a year and some of the technology and process which has changed the way on shopping online and utilizing technology, a small price to pay for the gain Amazon has earned. Competition like Microsoft, Google, IBM and other technical driven organizations know the technology has a greater return when speed and efficiencies are involved. The developmental budget for the artificial intelligence alone for the industry is in the billions because of the constant improvements technology is making for all humans. Amazon created "Lab 126" in 2004 as the development …show more content…
The neural network is required because of the information being scanned, traded, shipped and pulled from inventory by robots and tracking systems to report to the customer as quickly as possible. We have learned examples of AI being used today such as Expert Systems, Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms, Intelligent Agents and Virtual
The most obvious technological advance that helped Amazon, and the one that launched the company, was the internet (Parnell, 2014). Jeff Bezos knew that he wanted to open an online business and decided to start with a bookstore due to low pricing and an existing worldwide demand (”Amazon.com, Inc. History”, n.d.). After deciding on a model, he chose Seattle as a home for his business due to its proximity to high tech workers and a large book distributor. The website opened with a database of more than one million titles, whereas many competitors only stocked 2,000, and the orders went directly to wholesalers. Amazon quickly expanded their database to 1.5 million books and started offering deep discounts which attracted many new customers.
Amazon.com is an On-line retailer of, originally, books. The company was established as a micro enterprise in the US in 1994. Since then it has enjoyed rapid expansion in all aspects of its operations, including business turnover, and a spectacular rise in share value since public floatation in 1997. New on-line sites based in Germany and UK and a distribution centre in Amsterdam were established in 1998 to cater for European markets. On August 30, 2000 Amzon.com launched its third site outside the US, Amazon.fr in France. Amazon.com sells only on-line and is essentially an information broker. It holds a relatively small, though increasing, inventory and outsources most aspects of its operations (but not IT). The key to its operation is to offer value added and sophisticated customised services, a continuously expanding catalogue of products in terms of both quantity and range, and deep discounts. Alliances and partnerships with publishers, other on-line retailers and technology providers are therefore strategic. The ambition of the company today is to become a premier general on-line retailer by leveraging on its existing brand and business model. Amazon.com: Business Overview
Amazon.com’s US operation business model is based on “sell all, carry few”. Amazon offers consumers a wide selection of products while keeping inventories at low levels. A major interest for Amazon in the US is optimization of netwo...
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.
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”).
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.
In the article “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Ideas in a Bruising Workplace” by Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, both authors noted Amazon’s business and work strategy as harsh and strict but rewarding and life-changing at the same time. Apparently, Amazon’s business model focuses on harsh and strict regulations to keep employees more motivated, productive, and innovative. In comparison to other companies who values benefits and positive reinforcement for their workers, Amazon values constant productivity for improvement and growth and compensation as a competitive aspect in workplace. Many people may see this business strategy and the company as harsh and a horrifying experience; however, I believe and agree that this strategy
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).
Throughout American history, it’s society has glorified the idea of being gritty and its virtues, such as perseverance, toughness, and courageousness. These ideas were apart of the American man that settled land from the east the west coasts, built business from the ground up, worked multiple jobs to singly support his family, or if need be, go off to war. Today, these virtues have spread much further throughout society, but have started to take backlash from camps of people who see life’s potential more developed by the quality of a person’s environment, rather than seeing how well someone can adapt to broken situations. These two camps have lead to opposing ideas in society, from workplaces that pamper every aspect of your life to women’s
In conclusion, Amazon has embraced innovation. The company has not had worries with the use of innovation. They use innovations as measurements and end up with flourishing business ideas. They experiment, learn through outcomes and try new ways of doing things. They have put the customer as their first priority. Everything that the company does gears towards attracting customers through quality of services, availability of products, assurance of delivery and addressing customer feedbacks. These factors have helped the company become a multinational and a multimillion company where customers flock everyday.
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.
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...