Essay Amazon.Com’s European Distribution Strategy

The ordering process begins with the decision of the customer to submit their order simply by either calling, faxing or mailing their order information. When a customer calls in their order, the customer service representatives takes down pertinent customer information, which includes the customer's name, billing and shipping address, product number and description, quantity and shipping instructions. While taking down the order, the customer service representative access the company's order entry system where inventory checks are conducted as well as credit checks are processed. In addition, delivery options are advised to the customer. Here the customer decides

Amazon understood firsthand that the competitive advantage of a company originates immediately from how distinctive the organization's resources and competencies are. Amazon is able to both engage in production at a lower cost and generate a superior product at a standard cost. This is accomplished mostly via Amazon's strategy of having a wide variety of goods and competitive pricing. Customers know they can find basic products at slashed prices or high quality goods at standard prices and this is all achieved via the enormous range of products and product brands and types available on their massive marketplace. For example, the depiction displayed in the case study which shows how growth was related directly to: lower cost structure- lower prices customer experience traffic sellers -selection and convenience. While this is a grave oversimplification of the Amazon business model, it demonstrates how many aspects of the strategy reinforced one another.

How would you define Amazon’s industry? What difficulties do you encounter identifying primary competitors and key lines of business?

Getting into this enormous Warehousing infrastructure, four main elements can be explained to picture how things work in an Internet retailer; Inventory Segmentation, Order Profiling / Item Activity, Distribution Center Inbound and Order Fulfillment.

One of the companies that exploits opportunities and business ventures to create growth and sustainability is Amazon, Inc. Amazon was founded in 1994 and since then it has opted to take its business online and thus develop a global strategy that has paid off and turned the company into a technological business hub that serves consumers by offering an assortment of products and services in a noteworthy customer service. These strategies have made Amazon one of the leading online retailers with a revenue of US$ 88.988 billion as of 2014. This paper thus seeks to describe Amazon’s grand strategies of product development, market development, and concentration as part of its long-term growth strategy.

Amazon.com is a customer centric company. They put more effort in improving their system to make the experience of customer more comfortable so that he keeps on returning to the website. Jeffery Bezos who is the founder of the Amazon.com started this company after seeing the use of internet increasing rapidly.

The super computer, Telson records all the sales. The order is automatically generated that evening. At midnight, the warehouse fills that order and it sits back on

‘We believe that the principal competitive factors in our retail businesses include selection, price, and convenience, including fast and reliable fulfilment. Additional competitive factors for our seller and enterprise services include the quality, speed, and reliability of our services and tools, as well as customers’ ability and willingness to change business practices’ (Amazon10-K report 2015).

The basic Amazon sales channel is the web store front- end which serves as their core business. Customers go to the Amazon.com website, browse products, and place orders. Amazon is responsible for all front-end customer relationships and back-end logistics in this model. Once an order is placed, Amazon decides which internal distribution center or drop shipper should be responsible for shipping the order to the customers. After that, Amazon will responsible for coordinating the fulfillment of the order. When products are sourced from its internal distribution centers, then Amazon start to picks, packs, and ships the order. When products are sourced from a drop shipper, such like a book distributor, the distributor packages the products by using the Amazon box delivers it to the customer (Maltz et al., 2004). This model requires Amazon to maintain or purchase inventory for immediate selling. In this model, Amazon owns the customer relationship, provides the technology, owns or purchases the inventory, and executes the logistics as well.

After he completes his manual analysis, he then prioritizes which suppliers should be called first. Mr. Watkins manually phone, fax or email the purchase order to the suppliers.

Earlier, amazon don’t want to invest in the warehouses. But to do business, they had to invest in warehouses. So, they decided to invest in the warehouses. It was a costly decision. They had to spend $50 million for a warehouse and for getting that money, they issue bonds. Earlier, Amazon rate of return was only 0.25 % as compared to 30% for many online retailers. Amazon’s warehouses store millions of products. Their warehouses are also computerised. After Amazon faced lots of problems during catering the demands of customers during holiday sessions of 1999, they decided to change the inventories processes. They did it by changing the layouts of the warehouses. It also helped them to locate and ship products to

Amazon’s core competencies are in its ability to effectively use and develop technology to drive site traffic and enhance the customer experience. Their distinctive use of website real estate coupled with their ability to leverage their brand and effectively use that leverage to deliver low prices and high quality products, makes them a leader in online retailing. Their partner brands and their ability to adapt and recognize deficiencies enable them to effectively cut out the middle man, or at the very least, partner with them.

AMZN fulfills customer orders through US and International fulfillment centers and warehouses as well as via digital delivery for media products. AMZN’s multi-tier inventory model also allows for order fulfillment through partner suppliers and third-parties. This enables AMZN to offer a vast product selection to its customers without the risk of large inventory carrying costs. AMZN’s multi-tier inventory model is depicted in figure 2 below.

The company has many strengths. First, Amazon is the world’s leading online retailer. According to the 2016 Annual Report, Amazon had total net sales of US $135, 987 million in 2016. These total net sales include three segments which are North America, International, and AWS. Second, in comparison to many companies, Amazon has a superior logistics and distribution system, which allows the company to actualize improved customer fulfillment. Third, with its prolonged strategic drive on low-cost, differentiation, and focus, Amazon offers a wide range of product at low prices to customers. Fourth, Amazon enjoys global recognition from its customers. As stated earlier, Amazon built a strong brand in very little time. Finally, the

Amazon.com is a Fortune 500 company that has revolutionized the retail industry. In recent years, Amazon has faced increased competition in the highly competitive online retail space as competitors invested heavily in their online storefronts and infrastructure. Positioned in a highly fragmented industry, Amazon must find solutions that can sustain its long term profitability and maintain its market share. To that end, Amazon should grow the Amazon Prime membership base and expand on its media and mobile offerings.