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Comprehensive essay on swot analysis
Comprehensive essay on swot analysis
Swot analysis overview
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Part 1: Introduction The purpose of this assignment is to explain how environmental factors influence the marketing decisions of Amazon.com Inc. We will examine the SWOT and PESTLE analysis, segmentation, targeting, cost and benefits, and positioning strategies implemented by the company. Amazon is the world's largest online retailer, founded in 1994 as an online bookstore. It quickly expanded its catalog to include software, video games, electronics, furniture, food, toys, and more. 2.1 Macro and Micro Environmental Factors There are two types of environmental factors that can influence a business's marketing decisions: macro and micro. For Amazon, these factors include: The micro-environment includes various factors such as customers, competition, employees, general public, and suppliers. Amazon's customers come from different age groups, genders, and interests. The company faces stiff competition from eBay, Priceline.com, Buy.com, BN.com, and many others. Employees play a crucial role in the company's success. The macro-environmental factors that affect Amazon's operations include political, economic, social, technological, and environmental factors. Political factors affect companies operating on an international level. Economic factors such as inflation and currency rates can have a positive or negative impact on the company. Social factors such as ethical and religious beliefs can also affect the company's operations. Technological factors are critical for Amazon's success, and the company faces many technological challenges. Environmental factors are also important, and buying online can help reduce our carbon footprint. Legal Factors: Amazon is following legislative constraints and changes, such as health and safety legislation. Using a range of tools and techniques helps companies make fast decisions and remain competitive in the market. Here, we will examine some of the tools used by our chosen company: SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis, and Porter's Five Forces analysis. As we can see, the SWOT analysis is an analysis of the micro-environment of the company, while PESTLE and Porter's Five analyses are from the macro-environment of our company. These analyses help the company be aware of the market, competition, and threats to the business. Part 2 1.1 Various Elements of the Marketing Process The elements of marketing, also known as the Marketing Mix, include the 4P's analysis. Using this analysis, we can see how our chosen company can meet the expectations and needs of their clients.
The most obvious technological advance that helped Amazon, and the one that launched the company, was the internet (Parnell, 2014). Jeff Bezos knew that he wanted to open an online business and decided to start with a bookstore due to low pricing and an existing worldwide demand (”Amazon.com, Inc. History”, n.d.). After deciding on a model, he chose Seattle as a home for his business due to its proximity to high tech workers and a large book distributor. The website opened with a database of more than one million titles, whereas many competitors only stocked 2,000, and the orders went directly to wholesalers. Amazon quickly expanded their database to 1.5 million books and started offering deep discounts which attracted many new customers.
Growth is core to Amazon.com's business strategy, and that has had a significant impact on the way they use technology: growth through more categories, a larger selection, more services, more buying customers, more sellers, more merchants, and more developers, increasing the different access methods, and expanding delivery mechanisms. The impact has been on many areas: larger data sets, faster update rates, more requests, more services, tighter SLAs (service-level agreements), more failures, more latency challenges, more service interdependencies, more developers, more documentation, more programs, more servers, more networks, more data centers. A large part of Amazon.com's technology evolution has been driven to enable this continuing growth, to be ultra-scalable while maintaining availability and performance.
Amazon’s macro-environment is made up of six external factors: political, economic, environmental, technological, social, and legal conditions. These factors are important because they shape how the company operates and you must know each piece to be able to compete within the retail and eCommerce industry. An evolving political factor are the efforts the government has made toward punishing offenders of cyber-crime. This kind of thief wasn’t walking into your store, but hacking into your computer. This type of crime wasn’t possible before the internet. The government has started to take these crimes more serious as technology evolves. Technology is a factor that Amazon.com must invest heavily in. They are reliant on having top of the line technology to survive against cyber-crime and to stay relevant in the tech world. ECommerce is everywhere now and competition is very high. This brings in legal conditions; Amazon must know what laws exist in which countries because they are a
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.
Amazon.com Inc. operates web sites that sell various products and services, which primarily include apparel, shoes, and accessories; health and personal care; baby care products; books; camera and photography; and consumer electronics. The company and other sellers also offer various new, refurbished, and used items in categories, such as health and personal care, jewelry and watches, gourmet food, sports and outdoors, apparel and accessories, books, music, digital versatile discs, electronics and office, toys and baby, and home and garden. These products are purchased from distributors, publishers, and manufacturers. The company and its affiliates operate seven retail Web sites: www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.joyo.com. It also operates www.a9.com and www.alexa.com that enable search and navigation, and www.imdb.com, a movie database Web site.
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,
Amazon.com, as an e-commerce website has emerged as a leader in the e-business world. Originally, the company began as a website that sold books at discount prices, now Amazon.com has evolved into a marketplace for the world. Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO, has changed the business model of the company many times. He is focused on expanding the selection of goods and services offered on the website, in an attempt to please customers. However, he is having trouble managing the priorities of his gigantic company, he should give the existing categories priority and worry about expansion at a later time.
Amazon.com was a venture into an emerging market of internet and had to face hidden and unexpected hurdles in order to survive and excel in the market. Therefore, Amazon.com kept modifying its strategies with their focus on enhancing customer experience of online shopping and to delivery exceptional services with complete convenience to their customers. One of the major strategic decisions was to compromise on cost saving stragegy when Amazon.com started to maintain its own warehouses in different countries in order to ensure timely and accurate delivery to their customers
Consumer behavior is how a company minimizes uncertainty when offering a goods or service to a customer. This is done through thorough research and marketing strategies developed by the seller. Amazon is a company that does not only practice current trends, but also influence and set them. They are the trendsetters in personalization, escapism, and the ever-important convenience. These are few of the many trends Amazon.com has created benchmarks for in the online sales industry. It is these trends that have taken to being number 13 on Forbes most valuable brands. Once at the top, their prioritization of the consumer over the business has helped them stay at the top. Colin Shaw who writes for Britton said, “Amazon.com puts the customer experience at the top of their short and long-term to-do list.” (http://www.brittonmdg.com/the-britton-blog/amazon-marketing-strategy-unusual-but-successful) Ludwig von Mises closely analyzed the approach Amazon.com is taking many years ago. This customer is king approach is what helps Amazon.com focus on the process rather than the product. Through consumer behavior trends, I believe a company has a higher success rate when this happens. See, if you focus on the process, the result will come. A good process ultimately will generate a well-balanced result. When your focus is on the final product, you lose sight of the process. By
Amazon model initially offered customers access to massive selection without the needs to incur cost, time and stress of opening warehouses and stores and the needs for inventory handling. Amazon realized to ensure customers get a pleasant experience and Amazon acquire its inventory at reasonable prices, they need to be in control of the transaction process from beginning to the end through operating the business from their own warehouses.
Amazon is best known for their kindle, fast shipping, and selling various products (Smith). With Amazon being such a large corporation, professionalism, academics, character, and engagement are crucial parts of the success of the company. Professionalism: Amazon has grown to become the largest internet-based retailer in the world by total sales. It began as primarily an online bookstore and soon began to sell more and more electronics and then over time began to sell pretty much anything. In 1998, Amazon earned about $0.6 billion, which held steady growth from 1998-2006 (“Amazon.com”).
In conclusion, Amazon has embraced innovation. The company has not had worries with the use of innovation. They use innovations as measurements and end up with flourishing business ideas. They experiment, learn through outcomes and try new ways of doing things. They have put the customer as their first priority. Everything that the company does gears towards attracting customers through quality of services, availability of products, assurance of delivery and addressing customer feedbacks. These factors have helped the company become a multinational and a multimillion company where customers flock everyday.
... sold in larger quantities, and the company will maintain a sufficient flow of sales. Consequently, the companies will be a positive light and will gain the popularity from the public. They will be known for supplying the needs
Thirdly, the company is committed to delivering superior quality of products and services. It earned a reputation of a convenient and reliable brand that offers the lowest prices, one of the fastest and lowest shipping, widest selection of goods, and many additional features with its services.