Amazon - Strategic Capability

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.

1. This strategy can provide customer with more choices and attract new customers to Amazon’s online retailing, through which Amazon’s customer base is spreading. Amazon originally only sold books, but now it also sells Kindle, MP3 and so on.

As of January 2010, Amazon.com has three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples. By offering a large amount of varied categories through its website and other international ones (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.fr, and so on), it has managed to grow to a customer based company with over 30 million people. In addition, the online retail format enables the company to reduce costs of managing inventory (Amazon.com; online bookstore, 2008).

Amazon’s fulfillment centers are valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and organized to captured value. Thus, they attribute to Amazon’s competitive advantage. Amazon Prime and 1-Click are also valuable to the organization. However, they can be replicated. Walmart launched a membership program to compete with Amazon’s Prime Service. With Walmart’s membership program customers receive free two-day shipping when they spend $35 or more on orders. Amazon Web Services is valuable, rare, costly to imitate and the organization has capture the value of it. Therefore, AWS has contributed to Amazon’s sustainable advantage. Amazon’s brand name and reputation have also given the company sustainable advantage. Amazon acquired enormous brand valuation in a short period of time. It is

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 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,

Diversification strategies involve broadening the scope of an organization across different products and market sectors. It requires an organization to explore new experiences and knowledge outside its existing markets and products (Business Case Studies). Strategic management is a business concept that consists of strategy analysis, creation, implementation and monitoring, used by organizations in order to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage (as cited by Jurevicius, 2013). The following parts discuss Amazon’s strategy with a focus on the company’s competitive advantage and its customers.

Amazon focuses on global reach, putting customer first,, and extensive selection of products through its vision which is “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online” (Gregory 2016).

These objectives are reasonable. However, objectives should be specific and measurable. Some alternative objectives would be to focus the Company's resources toward achieving profitability by the fourth quarter of 2000 (an annual objective), and to increase profitability by 5 percent per year for the next 3 years (long-term objective). These objectives would give meaningful, measurable goals that management would need to obtain, or it would require management to re-evaluate the Company's objectives or the Company's strategy to achieve the objectives. With the aforementioned objectives in mind, the Companyneeds to implement a strategy to achieve the desired results. It is necessary to evaluate alternative strategies before selecting the actual strategy to implement. The SWOT or TOWS, SPACE, Grand Strategy, IE, and QSPM Matrices are tools to help in the evaluation and selection of alternative strategies. The matrices indicate that Amazon is in a strong competitive position, and that the Companyshould build and grow. The matrices indicate that, despite Amazon's financial position, the Companyhas some distinct competitive advantages in a high-growth or unstable industry. Some strategies for companies that fit this profile are backward, forward and horizontal integration, market penetration, market development, product development and joint venture. One strategy that would fit into

Amazon is an online retailer focused on selection, price and convenience. Incorporated in May 1996, Amazon.com offers programs that allow sellers to sell products on the website and have the fulfillment performed by the seller. In addition to the online marketplace, Amazon also manufactures and sells Kindle devices. Through the different programs offered by Amazon, the company has the edge over their competitors. They are able to secure the lowest price, fastest shipping and offer incentives to the customer, such as Amazon Prime (Amazon, 2014).

This case analysis serves the purpose to provide an analytical framework to evaluate Amazon.com from an internal and external perspective, and to provide strategic direction based upon the internal and external evaluation. The case will begin with an introduction to Amazon.com.

Amazon strives to provide customers with the best possible online shopping experience by leveraging their powerful and innovative technologies. Part of the company’s competitiveness lies in their proprietary technology, which is licensed to companies like Target to run their e-commerce site. Its patented portal technology allows the customer to customize their on-line experience with personalized home page,

In my opinion, the best online retailer is Amazon. They easily have the best customer service and product fulfillment when compared to other online retailers. The inventory in the USA is over 200 million products, making such a feat impossible for a physical retail store to compete (Export, 2013). The following essay will discuss Amazon’s pricing and retail strategy. Both are key factors of their marketing that allow Amazon to sustain their market dominance and retain their loyal customers.

The first recommended strategic action is to focus on increasing Amazon’s brand products. The company can gradually start offering its customers more of their brand products. Amazon has already built a loyal customer base from all over the world and they must take advantage of this. According to Statista (2016), the company had over 31

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.