Overview of Amazon Over the past 23 years, Amazon has grown into one of the most influential companies in the United States. Based out of Seattle, Washington, Amazon is known primarily as an e-commerce retailer. However, over the past decade they have begun developing technology, maintaining cloud storage, and providing sellers and customers with multiple services. Opportunities A contributing factor in Amazon’s growth is the change in consumer’s behavior. Amazon is benefiting from the spike in online shopping as opposed to customers shopping in stores. In a report from the Wall Street Journal, jobs in the retail setting are declining in part due to the significant increase in store closures. As of May, roughly 2,880 stores have closed …show more content…
This size of the deal is certainly not typical for Amazon as it is roughly 16 times larger than their Twitch Interactive acquisition. As Amazon begins rolling out Amazon Fresh to more cities across the United States, they most likely will look to implement their logistics and an in-store pick up option across Whole Foods roughly 460 stores locations. In addition, Amazon will look at ways to change the way customers shop. There have been reports in the past of Amazon testing ways to avoid lines in stores by having an automatic charge to to customer’s cards when they leave the store. As a result, some may believe that Amazon may be able to have a similar effect on the grocery industry as they had on the book industry in the past. Considering that the edible foods industry is worth over $674 billion, it will be intriguing to see how Amazon uses the acquisition of Whole Foods to gain a larger share of the market. Big Data, Big Risk? One of the hottest topics in business today is cybersecurity. This was shinned in the spotlight with the global ransomware attack in early May which impacted 200,000 victims in over 150 countries (Wall Street Journal) . While this did not impact Amazon directly, there are growing concerns across the world about attacks on firm’s infrastructure. With Amazon’s complex logistics system, if this was to get affected in a negative way
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).
Luckily for Amazon.com, this company is one the largest retail sellers in the online world. Amazon is a company with a single enterprise that has risen to the top of the Most Innovative Companies List. It has been increased to this fortitude due to this company’s innovative ideas and the ideas for growth for their consumers as well. As technology had changed, so did Amazon by offering Prime which was a membership that could be purchased to allow the consumer to acquire items faster and receive the products more quickly.
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).
This sort of global expansion adds great complexity to the functionality of Amazon’s management, personnel, operation systems, technical performance, financial resources, and internal financial control and reporting functions. With the perplexity of current situations, Amazon may not be able to sustain growth effectively, which ultimately could bring damage to their reputation and limit their operating growth as well. .
Many consumers go for what appears to be cheapest and most convenient. The reality is, Amazon’s increasing dominance comes with high costs. “These consequences have gone largely unnoticed thanks to Amazon’s remarkable invisibility and the way its tentacles have quietly extended their reach” (LaVecchia, 2016). It is vital that consumers are aware of this superpower that is taking over.
Amazon’s early employees did not have the opportunity of work-life balance, as with many start up, they were expected to work at least 60 hours a week. And the organizations first major Christmas, 1998, season wasn’t too much better. After going through two Christmas, the organization was not prepared for the dramatic shift, the Christmas of 1998 brought. To compensate for being under-staffed, employees brought in family and friends to help out. This is why, to this day that Amazon hire so a large number of seasonal employees every year. But is also allow Bezos to realize how important his customer base is, thereby, Bezos established Amazon to be completely customer-centric or customer-obsessed organization. Unlike other companies that are focused on its competitors; Bezos believe, to not listen to your customer, is setting yourself to fail. And always looking past the right now and into tomorrow and how to make build it better. It’s because “Amazon owns the richest data set on how consumers consume, how sellers sell, and (among the richest) in how developers develop” (Research report); thereby Amazon is able to hone in to developer environment, enhances the shopping experience, and enhance its logistic network.
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.
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
Every company has their own supply chain in order to sort or produce goods. However, the company needs to manage supply chain to maximize its highest benefits. By having effective supply chain management, the company can ensure that the right product or service will be available at the time to the right place and at the right price (Kamal 2007). Amazon is one of the companies that have best supply chain practices in order to respond high level of responsiveness for the customers. Thereby, this paper explains about Amazon Company, analysis of Amazon’s supply chain, recommendations and barriers to implement will be discussed.
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.
Amazon faces threats that the company cannot ignore. First, the company has competition from various rivals, which include Salesforce.com, eBay, Wal-Mart stores, Best Buy, Apple, Netflix, International Business Machines, Barnes and Nobles, among many others. For example, Wal-Mart introduced a shipping policy to compete with Amazon’s Prime membership service. With this new policy, customers receive free two-day shipping on all orders of $35 or more. Second, cybercrime is present and Amazon should find ways to ensure that it always guarantees that customer privacy and security are protected.
Based on grocery sector, if Amazon Company keeps their food fresh their costs will increase, and also more customers are going to buy their grocery online because a lot of people don’t want to go to the store if they are busy or if there is traffic especially when they get off from work. So if they keep this thing in their mind and continue to do it, Amazon will be the best place to dominate this section of business. Amazon.com would have an opportunity to open physical stores because this company is growing every year with better annual net revenue. Also, holidays gifts and seasonal things will get more consumers to shop online on Amazon.com, and also promotional activities will also lead to get more consumers to shop on Amazon’s website.
Amazon has made a business of selling a variety media types while also making the reselling of the same media an attractive option. What better way to regain in part what you spent on media interests than to resell it and have money to put towards the next interest. As of 2004 Amazon began running the Linux operating system across the board. Amazon then became one of the largest and well known companies running the Linux operating system. As one of the largest ecommerce centered businesses with a large global customer base with high expectations of constant expansion. Currently, it is known that Amazon is running Linux servers "Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud
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.
Amazon strives in a rapidly evolving and intensely competitive industry. Amazon competitors include publishers, vendors, distributors, manufacturers, physical world retailers and producers. Other competitors include media companies, web portals, shopping websites, online and mobile e-commerce sites, web search engines, and social networks, either directly or in collaboration with other retailers. Any company that provides e-commerce services, including website development, fulfillment, customer service, and payment processing is considered as a competitor by Amazon. Even Yahoo Inc. is also part of these services now with its new framework for providing easy e-commerce website development and payment processing services. Additional competitors include companies that provide information storage or computing services or products, services related to Cloud Computing, including infrastructure and other web services, companies that design, develop, market, or sell consumer electronics, telecommunication, and electronic devices. The competitive factors in retail businesses include selection, price, convenience, fast and reliable fulfillment. Additional competitive factors for Amazon seller and enterprise services include the quality, speed, and reliability of our services and tools. Many of the current