The Biggest Risk Of The Internet Of Amazon.com Sells Many Goods And Services Around The World

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.

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.

One of the environmental threats facing Amazon was the overall economic malaise of the U.S. and world economies, the Internet Tax Moratorium law was up for renewal, with no assurance of its being extended and online stalwarts EBay and Yahoo were expanding into Amazon.com’s markets. The Founder of Amazon was faced with the task of developing an effective differentiating enterprise wide strategy to prosper against the competition over the intermediate and long-term futures. The stock market pressured the company to produce consistent operating profits and to prove that its business model worked financially over the long term.

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

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).

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

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.

Amazon’s margins are shrinking because of the continuous lowest price war and extensive delivery networks that keep customers satisfied (Bhason, 2017). This includes the “same-day shipping,” “next day shipping,” and “Amazon Prime” these services may force Amazon as a whole company to take a loss on overall profits. Amazon is known to be worldwide and has become successful globally, however, in some developing nations Amazon is “struggling” meaning, they are not generating as much profit as they do in their developed areas. These small profit margins affect the overall profitability of the group which can result in high debt (Bhasin, 2017). Lastly, Amazon has suffered from more than a few product flops, such as the “fire phone” as well as the “Kindle fire.”

Amazon’s competitors include Apple Inc., Barnes & Noble, Inc. and Wal-Mart.com USA, LLC (Hoovers, 2014). For the purpose of this financial analysis we will be comparing Amazon to the SIC Code: 5961, CATALOG AND MAIL-ORDER HOUSES, industry average. The financial analysis will take into consideration the balance sheet, income statement and ratios for the past 5 years, 2009 to 2013.

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

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.

Retailers have adapted to the online marketplace out of necessity and opportunity. The great recession placed many retail companies in financial hardship and while some failed, others innovated and became some of the largest companies in America such as Amazon. A recent trend is consumers are buying more products online than ever before. As a consumer, I enjoy shopping in the convenience of my home and having the items delivered to my doorstep in 48 hours or less. Global internet access continues to increase, with mobile devices and affordable internet for the home, consumers will continue to shift and buy products online rather than in retail brick and mortar locations. Online sales in the United States have increased over 250% in the last ten years, accomplishing $250.0 billion in 2012 (Tehrani, 2014). Therefore, Amazon is in a solid market position to capitalize on the future trends and booming ecommerce

Amazon is a relatively small player in the bookstore industry, and its main competitors are Barnes & Noble and Borders. Despite the difference in scale, the company shows great promise, because its business model overcomes many of the competitors’ drawbacks.

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