Core Competencies Of Zappos

The competitive advantage of Nordstrom is that they have extraordinary services, high wages, promotion possibilities, product availability, their image, customer loyalty, and patronizing sales in which source is superior customer service. Their current competitive strategy is broad differentiation strategy where Nordstrom seeks to differentiate their product or offering from competitor in ways that will appeal to a broad range of

Unlike its competitors, Crocs had a highly responsive and flexible supply chain. Owing to the Crocs executives’ experience in electronics industry, they were accustomed to producing what the customer needed and when it was needed. Thus the business model was focussed on customer needs and responded promptly to changes in demand and trends. The retailers of shoes, therefore, had neither the pressure to forecast exact demand nor the obligation to order bulk orders several months before the selling season.

Zappos is an online shoes retailer that started its business in the year 1999. Later on the company had expanded its business to include the beauty products, clothing and even the housewares within its leading e-commerce website. This case emphasizes on the customer service department of Zappos Company and initially the business focused only on the drop ship method. Later on the company also increased the variety of the products. The company had also created a bricks and mortar storefront to expand the business and increase the sales of the business.

First of all, Amazon was an early exploiter of online technologies for e-commerce, which made it one of the first online retailers. Amazon has developed a customer base of around 30 million people. Since it was founded, Amazon has been expanding its product categories. As a result, not only can customers buy almost everything they need in regular life, but also they can open their own business on Amazon. Secondly, Amazon carefully records data

Wal-Mart is a company that has taken its core competencies, which are the capabilities the firm emphasizes and performs especially well while pursuing its vision (Ireland, Hoskisson, Hitt, 2008), and turned them into competitive advantages. Core competencies must satisfy four characteristics in order to be a competitive advantage. These advantages, according to our text, include: *valuable, *rare, *difficult to imitate,*nonsubstitutable.

For a business to be successful and have a competitive advantage, it is important to evaluate the company’s resources and capabilities (Pitt & Koufopoulos, 2012). Resources in a company are the productive assets owned (tangible or intangible) whereas capabilities are what the company can do with this (Grant, 2010). “Establishing competitive

The case study is upon on the resource based view. First, the firm resources were divided into three major parts: tangible resource, intangible resource and human resource as Grant suggested. The main body of the essay will also be divided into three parts according to the resource classification. Then, a VRIN test would be carried after listing different types of resources to inspect whether they are able to provide a sustainable competitive advantage for Zara. Finally, Zara’s dynamic capabilities will be discussed to state how Zara used the resources based on their organizational culture.

“Competitive advantage refers to what sets the organisation apart from others and provides it with a distinctive edge for meeting customers or client needs in the marketplace.” (Daft and Marcic, 2011, p.152) I will use a SWOT analysis to identify Tesco’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats so it will be clear what Tesco need to improve so they can go on to making decisions to compete with their competitors and threats.

Through an internal environment analysis, companies can identify and understand their own unique resources, capabilities, and competencies that are required for their sustainable competitive advantage. Resources, capabilities, and core competencies are the foundation of competitive advantage. There is no competitive advantages are permanently sustainable in any companies, so they have to consist on their current advantages and develop new advantages by internally understanding and analyzing their resources and capabilities. Competitors have their own unique resources, capabilities, and core competencies to create values for their customers. Both tangible and intangible resources, which include individual, social and organizational phenomena, are combined to generate capabilities. In turn, company’s capabilities are used to build core competencies. Also, core competencies are as a source of competitive advantage for a company to win in the competitive market.

This strategy emphasizes the use of an organization’s resources and capabilities to achieve a core competence that cannot be imitated by competitors. Furthermore, the resource based school argues that if an organization distinctively improves its internal capability; that is being able to have effective inside machinery to deliver products and services to customers, the organization will enjoy a massive advantage in the market. This school also argues that in order to have a competitive advantage, an organization must have resource and capabilities that are sophisticated to those of competitors (QuickMBA,

Zappos, as the first and the world’s largest online shoes retailer, has developed a high quality experience and delivered “wow” to customers. It has established a strong relationship with customer and stick to bring the store to the customer’s home. It has used less twenty yeas to become a profitable company holding an outstanding reputation for customer service and its employee are passionately engage in their works. In this paper, I aimed to analyze the relationship between strategic capabilities and performance in Zappos’s success. The business environment is not constant rather than changeable, so how Zappos goes ahead of revival and forms its unique competency advantages. I will utilize VRIO test to detect the company’s level of competitive advantage. In addition, I will continually combine Barney’ theory of resource based view(RBV) with Zappos to identified which resources it processes and how Zappos used those to form its core competency.

Zappos started out by selling shoes online to become the world’s largest online retailer of shoes. Subsequently, in their quest to boost sales, they moved beyond footwear to become an E-tailer that sells ‘anything and everything’.

Zappos.com, established in 1999, has rapidly become a strong competitor in online apparel and footwear sales. With the original corporate vison of offering the absolute best selection in shoes; the vision has evolved over the past several years to include the goal of being the retailer that “provides the absolute best service online -- not just in shoes, but in any category” (Zappos, 2014). The online retailer stocks millions of reasonably priced footwear products; carrying thousands of hard to find brand named shoes, handbags, apparel and accessories via the company website and 7,000 affiliate partners. In recognizing their rapid success, Zappos credits it to their commitment to the customer, stating,

The resource-based view (RBV), which emphasizes the internal capabilities of a firm to attain sustainable competitive advantage in its market and industry, could be an excellent tool to explain why a company can be superior to others (Sheehan and Foss, 2007). Hence, the main purpose of this essay is to evaluate whether and how Zara generates its sustainable competitive advantage, drawing on the resource-based view literature.

Competitive advantage is explained by Mahoney and Pandian (1992) as the function of industry analysis, organizational governance and the firm’s effects in the form of resource advantages and strategies. In order for a firm to be competitive it must adapt to the volatile business environment and through strategic management decisions establish a competitive advantage that will ultimately produce superior performance relative to its competitors (Akimova 2000).