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Amazon to gain a competitive advantage
Amazon to gain a competitive advantage
Amazon to gain a competitive advantage
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Recommended: Amazon to gain a competitive advantage
Amazon.com is a company with a vision, that states “to be earths most customer- centric company: to build a place where people can come find and discover anything they might want to buy online” (The Balance Barbara Farfan August 14 2016).
Amazon.com mission statement is, “We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience.” This mission statement promises an attractive e-commerce service to satisfy customers’ needs. (Lawrence Gregory July 21 2016 Panmore institute)
Amazon.com objectives and strategies are well thought out, with a lot of empathy involved along with forecasted futures. Their strategy of offering their customers the following are great deals, such as...
• Lowest prices
• Best selection
• Utmost convenience
In addition to
…show more content…
Therefore, I have conducted a SWOT Analysis on Amazon.com and this is what I have uncovered.
AMAZON.COM SWOT ANALYSIS
Strengths
Strengths: Amazon.com is the world’s leading online retailer; Amazon derives its strengths primarily from a three-pronged strategic thrust on cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. This strategy has resulted in the company reaping the gains from this course of action and has helped its shareholders derive value from the company. Amazon primarily derives its competitive advantage from leveraging IT (Information Technology) and its use of e-Commerce as a scalable and an easy to ramp up platform that ensures that the company is well ahead of its competitors.
Weaknesses
• Weaknesses: As Amazon offers free shipping to its customers, it is in the danger of losing its margins and hence, might not be able to optimize on costs because of this strategy. Considering the fact that Amazon is an online only retailer, the single-minded focus on online retailing might “come in the way” of its expansion plans particularly in emerging markets.
History”, n.d.). But the unbelievable pace at which Amazon added new products and new customers proved to be a formidable barrier for any competitors. Within the first 10 years Amazon accomplished an unbelievable feat; it had 49 million customers and 6.9 billion dollars in revenue, and it had done so by selling some products at a loss to build market share (Rivlin, 2005). At times it was difficult leveraging so much capital to grow market share, but Jeff Bezos’ focus on the customer and long term growth of the company proved to be the real reason Amazon didn’t fall prey to the .com bust like so many other internet
Starting out as solely an online bookstore, Amazon has become the largest online retailer in the world.
It's important to realize that first and foremost Amazon.com is a technology company. Over the past years, Amazon.com grew from an online retailer into a platform on which more than 1 million active retail partners worldwide do business. Behind Amazon.com's successful evolution from retailer to technology platform is its SOA (service-oriented architecture), which broke new technological ground and proved that SOAs can deliver on their promises.
Since the creation of Amazon in 1995, it has been a reference of adopting a successful strategy which has preserved over time; being the largest online store in the world nowadays. In addition, i...
Another part of Amazon’s retail strategy is to serve as the channel for other retailers to sell their products and take a percentage of cut of every purchase. Amazon does not have to maintain inventory on slower-selling products. This strategy has made Amazon a ‘long tail’ leading retailer, expanding its available selection without a corresponding increase in overhead costs.
Launched by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com website started in 1995 and is today considered as one of the most prominent retail website on the internet with a record turnover of US$ 14.87 billion in 2007. Jeff Bezos’s intention was to create an internet based company with the most dedicated product portfolio on the internet where customers could find anything they might want. Amazon’s success is based on technology, services and products (Jens et al., 2003).
Amazon has been able to maintain sustainable competitive advantage based on three operational strategies. These are low cost-leadership, customer differentiation and focus strategies. Low cost-leadership is pursued by Amazon by differentiating itself primarily on the basis of price. By offering low prices to customers Amazon ensures its future success. Partially modifying the costs of lowering prices over time through achieving higher sales volumes, negotiating better terms with suppliers, and achieving better operating efficiencies. Amazon makes sure that it offers the same quality products as other companies at a considerably cheaper price. Another strategy that Amazon has is its fast delivery service and there are many delivery services that one can choose from. With Amazon Prime, there are certain, but many products that have free two-day shipping. Also, with Amazon Prime, there are many offers specifically for people that have Amazon Prime. For example,
When Amazon.com first began in 1995, as strictly a book retailer, Bezos knew he had discovered an excellent company. After all, a physical bookstore cannot stock anywhere close to the number of books Amazon can offer online. Within a year, the company had a customer base of approximately 340,000 consumers and daily site visits were huge as well. But Bezos wanted to expand the company to offer music and DVDs, because he realized there was little or no barrier of entry. In the next years Amazon would emerge as a marketplace, expanding the company globally offering products from toys to kitchenware. Because of the relatively cheap prices Amazon was offering and also the growing number of online shoppers, the company was doing tremendous amounts of sales and creating profits.
Amazon.com creates value for its customers by offering customers broad array of products to select from through their website and ensuring timely delivery of products to exhibit high level of commitment towards their business and customers
Amazon’s customer philosophy can be traced from a letter extracted to the 1997 Annual Report that stated their focal points by offering customers products that they think is worth buying. Amazon tries to set apart their operations by suggesting extraordinary way in doing transaction and start by offering online books whereby they can get access to it anytime they want. Other value-added offers include 1-ClickSM shopping, customer’s gift certificates and immensely reviews, browsing options, content and suggested features. Amazon strategy focuses on reducing the price. Thus, increase the customer value. Amazon became the market online bookselling leader by encouraging customers repeating purchases through the advertising strategy that is proven effective which was word of mouth approach.
Amazon.com, Inc Company started in 1994 and featured online in 1995. The company has done extremely well in the market achieving remarkable success. Initially, Amazon was known as Cadabra. Inc. however, the name of the company changes when the owners of the company knew that people confused the name for cadaver. Jeff Bezos is credited for founding the company. The company has its base in the United States of America as a multinational e-commerce company. Its headquarters are in Seattle, Washington. It has been rated as the largest online retailing company, in the entire world. It has close to three times the sales revenue that staples, Inc made as a runner up, in January 2010 (Shire, 2008).
Amazon is the world’s largest retailer online. Founded in 1994 it has started as an online bookstore but soon expends its catalog with software, video games, electronics, furniture, food, toys etc.
Jeffrey Bezos, the founder and current CEO of Amazon.com, initially started the company as an online bookstore in 1994. Within several months, Amazon spread its operation to all 50 states and abroad. Presently, customers from over 45 countries buy at Amazon. Over a short period of time, the company expanded sales to electronics, video games, software, CDs, DVDs, MP3 downloads, food, furniture, apparel, jewelry, and toys. Today, the company even produces its own products such as the Kindle series. Also, Amazon.com is one of the major providers of cloud computing services. Currently, the company is the largest global online retailer responsible for 20% of online retail market share.
This statement is still driving Amazon to provide the best for their customers. It is impressive when a business is able to fulfill their original mission statement, while being an E-business that is demanded to provide and keep up with the most current wants and desires of the consumer, especially as Amazon began and still is highly driven from popular department of electronic related products. Amazon began by selling their first book, progressing to 1-Click Shopping experience, then to creating their symbol “AMZN” on the NASDAQ, while launching the Music Store, Advantage Program, and opening numerous Fulfillment and Customer Service Center within and outside of the United States (History of Innovation). Next, let’s look at how Amazon uses all these characteristics to be a financially
Emphasizing on customer centricity, Amazon optimizes all of their processes to make it easier for the customer to decide and buy the product, and to make it as cheap to the customers’ as possible.