Essay on Amazon Continues to Grow Through Mergers and Acquisition

The article, “Amazon.com Is a 21st Century Deal with the Devil” from Amy Koss, published by Los Angeles Times on June 4, 2017. The death of the American mall is avoidable. It is avoidable by promoting it on the Amazon website, or it is also avoidable by closing down the website. Even if none of this happens, there will always be people who are not lazy enough to get up and go to the mall. There are also a lot of people in the world who do not know about the website amazon.com. For those who do not, it means they go to the mall instead of shopping online.

Following the emergence of e-readers, new entrants offered variations similar to the Kindle Fire (Exhibit 1). Apple’s iPad was a major success and dominated the tablet market for its multipurpose and feature rich device. Both Amazon and Apple had

Amazon is a Fortune 500 e-commerce company based in Seattle, WA. It is one of the top companies that sells the most goods over the internet.

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

Although it is the most established because of its long history and early start, competitors such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, AutoZone Inc., eBay Inc., Rakutenchi Inc., Netflix Inc., Jet.Com, Wal-Mart and Time Warner Cable among others exist (Yahoo Finance, 2015). Notably, apart from Jet.com, Amazon’s competitors are segmented according to products and services offered; for instance, Wal-Mart stores Inc. offers competition in general merchandise and electronics segment while eBay, Time Warner Cable and Apple offers competition in the media segment. Among the competitors, Apple Inc. and Google Inc. have the highest market capitalization; however, the Amazon’s dwarfs all other competitors. Amazon has a high market capitalization at $254.82 billion (Nassauer, 2015). The table below shows Amazon’s major competitors based on their market capitalization and 52-week share price range

In the process of developing its network to support its services, Amazon.com has built out an infrastructure that includes 145 warehouses around the world (84 in the United States, 29 in Europe, 4 in Canada, 10 in Japan, 15 in China and seven in India) that together account for more than 40 million square feet of space. Additionally, Amazon has made significant investments in material handling systems, including the acquisition of Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012, which is working now as an Amazon subsidiary designing robots, developing software and other hardware that has been used in the distribution facilities of companies such as The Gap, Office Depot, and Staples (Lieb, 2014).

Amazon.com, Inc., on May 28, 1996, started offering a range of products and services through on-line webpages. This new company began to offer products including merchandise and content that was purchased for resale from multiple vendors and sellers ranging from lots of third-party ways. The Amazon.com business has three different segments within its operating environment: Amazon Web Services, North America, and International make up the operating areas. The North American area for Amazon has segments that focus on the sales from retailers of consumer items or product from sellers through its website Amazon.com.

Due to the growing competition and diminishing market share, companies are opting for different strategies to achieve their survival objectives as well as growth. Companies are thus executing grand strategies to provide their businesses with a clear direction for its strategic actions. These strategies, therefore, aim at both short term and long term sustainability and growth, and they include innovation, market development, product development, and concentration.

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer that was launched in 1995 (Rouse, 2014). Amazon was mainly a book selling company that has enlarged its’ business by selling a variety of goods. The company sells all types of technology devices such as cell phones, games, televisions, movies, cameras, computers,

Its diversification and low cast strategy will help it build up an image and goodwill which will pay its fruits in near future. The strategy to partner with traditional retail partners in which amazon.com will utilize its retailing technology to build and host the traditional retailer’s online store will also be helpful as it enables Amazon to enable various brick stores to go virtual. IT innovations done in order to provide services like customer service, inventory management, fulfillment and logistics service in its already established state of the art digital infrastructure will also help them in creating a difficult entry barrier for competitors. Use of long-term debt to cover its cash expenses requirement though causes financial stress in short term, in long term economies of scale achieved will generate more benefits than expenses incurred. I would suggest Bezos to maintain its market leadership position both in terms of technological innovation as well as customer

The article “Amazon.com Is a 21st Century Deal with the Devil” from author Amy Koss (first published in the Los Angeles Times) talks about how Amazon is taking over malls, losing jobs, and how it is an overall scheme from Lucifer, which I disagree with. Why is Amazon seen as the antagonist when other major corporations are taking over online and physically too? Companies like these include ebay and Walmart/jet.com. As you can see, I disagree with the author because to be honest, the people whose jobs are being lost probably shop on Amazon themselves. Those who do not adapt to technology do not benefit from its advantages which help people find different products that would not be found in stores, for a better price, and delivered right to

In 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva for $775 million and uses it to help make AmazonFresh a success.

The effectiveness of Amazon’s financial management can be seen in the performance over the last 5 years. Largely investor confidence has been very high throughout the 5 years analyzed. This can be seen in the increase of 4 times the stock price. Stock prices were at an all-time high the end of 2013 at price of $405USD each (Morningstar, 2014). Through analysis of the financial statements and history of stock prices it can be determined that the financial management team at Amazon is doing a great job.

With the advent of the information technology, specifically the internet, it is said that more and more companies are existing in the online world. The changes in the business market also allows customers to change and become more dependent on online stores and online shopping than go and find something in shopping malls or retail store. One of the existing and considered as the largest and competitive online shopping in the world is Amazon. In this report, the goal is to analyse Amazon based on the case study provided. The analysis includes the discussion of Amazon’s s strategic intent, main resources and capabilities. In addition, this will also include analysis of the resources and capabilities that give

The threat of substitutes for Amazon is high. With the exception of its patented technology, there are quite a lot of alternatives to Amazon’s products and services. In addition to physical presence, most companies have an online store as well. Amazon’s products can be purchased all over the internet and they are just spread out among different web sites. The companies operate in brick-and-click mode providing the similar product categories and competitive prices have become the biggest threat for Amazon. However it is extremely difficult for Amazon to establish physical stores or launch price