Amazon Research Paper

842 Words2 Pages

Amazon.com Inc. is the largest global electronic commerce and cloud computing company in the United States. Its home domain amazon.com is the sixth largest website in the world in terms of web based hits and the number one shopping portal in the United States. The company brings in over $100 billion worth of revenue a year and has an operating income of $2.2 billion a year. What makes Amazon such a successful company is their transformational leader, Jeff Bezos who is always looking out for new frontiers to conquer, and new products to sell to his loyal customers. Jeff Bezos started from nothing and had his own share of problems but he was able to overcome his shortcomings due to his brilliance as a leader, because of this Amazon.com Inc. is …show more content…

Jeff Bezos stated in a conference that “Amazon.com was actually profitable in the spring of 1995 for about one hour.” One reason for this is the scale of products that Amazon.com sells. The products range from small items such a toothpaste and soap up to large products such as a tiki hut. The products are sold at a razor thin profit margin on top of the guaranteed free shipping when a customer reaches a certain dollar amount. Offering such a large product selection has its downfalls such as not being able to buy in bulk which forces Amazon.com to take a lean manufacturing approach in their business model. Amazon.com has a motto which is “get big fast”, what they mean by this is investing aggressively in product categories and themselves instead of focusing on the company’s business health and bottom line. The problem with this is the fact that Amazon only has a 2% profit margin where the retail industry average is over double that depending on the products that a retailer specializes in. Instead of specializing in one type of product which allows for a company to buy in greater bulk to reduce their costs, Amazon focuses on every industry which is the exact opposite of a successful retail business

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