The purpose of this paper is to provide a managerial analysis of Amazon.com, Inc. and to discuss the key reasons behind their low profitability and whether it will improve in the future. Included in the analysis of Amazon.com, Inc., will be a thorough examination of the firms Vison and Mission statements, Amazons current strategic plans and direction, a look inside at their corporate culture and organizational structure, as well as a detailed SWOT Analysis.
History
Amazon.com, Inc., was founded on July 4, 1994 in Bellevue, Washington by its current Chairman, President and CEO Jeffery Bezos. Before starting what would become the largest internet based retailer in the world, Mr. Bezos was already highly successful. A graduate of Princeton
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Mr. Bezos and a group of five employees, began work on the software that would become Amazon.com in the garage of his Bellevue home. After a year of crafting an easy to navigate design and researching how to source books, Amazon.com opened for business in July of 1995. The success was instantaneous, by September 1996 sales had reached $15.7 million and Amazon had grown to 100 employees. On May 15, 1997 Amazon.com, Inc. began being publically traded on NASDAQ. “The IPO opened at $18.00 per share or a $1.50 per adjusted for stock splits” (Amazon.com). Amazon continued its rapid growth and the company’s stock split three times before the Dot.com bubble burst at the start of the new millennia. While a slew of Dotcom’s folded during the economic downturn, Amazon endured. In 2001, Amazon sales grew to 3.12 Billion, and earned its first net profit quarter of its existence (referenceforbusiness.com). Amazon began partnerships with major corporations in the form of 3rd party deals to feature their stores merchandise on Amazon’s site but that was just the beginning. Amazon continues to push boundaries and expand its footprint with new ventures, increasing their market share. Amazon manufacturers and produces electronic devices such as cellphones and the E-Reader, Kindle. They offer Amazon Web Services that allows companies to manage their data and websites, advertise, and sell their products all over the world. They even allow Authors, Musicians and Filmmakers
Amazon is a company that was founded in the two-bedroom house of a man named Jeffery Preston Bezos in 1994. That simple fact is something that could never happen in an economy without
In 1994, Jeff Bezos created Amazon with the idea of selling books online. Jeff Bezos was raised by his mother and stepfather, who was a Cuban immigrant that later adopted him. He quit his job on Wall Street with a New York hedge fund to work to fulfill his dream. In 1995, the dream became a reality. Bezos knew when he created Amazon, he knew what he wanted and that he wanted it to be an everything store.
Amazon.com was founded as an online bookstore in July, 1995 and went public in May 1997. In June, 1998 Amazon.com launched its music store. Since then Amazon.com has become the most prominent Internet retailer. Over time Amazon.com has added several products including electronics, health and beauty products, house wares, kitchenware’s, music, tools, toys, videos, and several services such as auctions, 1-Click ordering, and zShops. Amazon.com has expanded nationally and internationally and now operates several customer service and distribution centers in the United States and international web sites that
Amazon.com Inc. was initiated by Jeff Bezos in 1994 after realizing the rapid rate at which the internet and websites were growing in popularity among business organizations and individuals. In 1995, the company started operating its website for selling books, videos, compact discs, computer software and computer hardware before being incorporated in1996 as an e-commerce company (Reuters, 2015). Apparently, the company offers may products and services for sale; these products include merchandise for resale products offered by third parties. In this regard the
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 and Overstock.com are the two companies that will be researched in detail. Their financials will be comb through and synopsis of their financial status will be developed. These two companies are within the same industry of selling discounted products online. This is a tough industry to do well in and competition is tough. The e-commerce marketplace is intensely and savagely competitive. Their financials tell the story and show how lean and mean these companies must run. This paper is going to touch on briefly on each company, what they do, where they are financially, ratios between the two and their industry, and look at their cashflow.
Amazon.com is a worldwide American-based electronic company founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, the actual chairman and CEO. At the beginning, Amazon was just a small online book retailer, but thanks to the development of Internet at the end of the 90s, it grew quickly into a huge online retail store. Today, in the United States, one out of three online sales are made through Amazon’s website.
Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, the company went online on the World Wide Web in July 1995.Amazon focuses on increasing its market share and revenues in the long term and maintaining competitive costs of profit margins and dividends paid to its shareholders in the short term. Amazon’s sound business fundamentals include its core business and essential revenue sector of e-commerce, a new focus on media independent of Kindle, improved profit margins from Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) as well as the management of a negative cash conversion cycle (Samonas, 2015).
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.
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.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 center in Amsterdam were established in 1998 to cater for European markets. On August 30, 2000 Amazon.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. Almost every aspect of amazon
The objective of this case study is to outline and provide a brief overview of Amazon.com’s (Amazon) mission, strategic direction, core competencies, relied technologies and their future impact of new technologies, and how management and use of consumer data will impact future business.
On July 16, 1995, Amazon.com went live to the world and Jeff told the testers to spread the word that it was open. Within 30 days, the company had sold books to all fifty states and forty-five foreign counties. By September, the site had sales of $20,000 a week.
Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon.com), incorporated on May 28, 1996, is an American electronic commerce company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington and is the largest Internet-based retailer in the United States (Ungar, 2014). Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, video downloads/ streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys and jewelry (Ungar, 2014). The company also produces consumer electronics—notably, Amazon Kindle e-book readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV and Fire Phone — and is a major provider of cloud computing services (Ungar, 2014).
Amazon started with Jeff Bezos’ idea on creating a company based around selling on the internet (Int. Directory). In the 1994, Jeff left the Wall Street firm D.E. Shaw, moved to Seattle. There, he created a business plan, from which Amazon was born. Jeff projected a 2,300% of annual web growth over time from selling on the internet. He took the five most profitable products and put them on his stock. At the time, books were a strong suit for Amazon, and where most of their profit came from (Int. Directory). Their competition was Barnes and Noble, who were large retail booksellers dominating the market. By 1995,