Overview Zappos, founded in 1999 by Nick Swinmurn, became the first online retailer specializing in the sale of footwear. Over the course of the following eight years, sales consistently escalated and by 2008 Zappos had surpassed their goal of one billion in gross merchandise sales. Strategic partnerships with brands such as Nike and Burberry allowed the company to create several vertical websites for specialty items under the Zappos corporate umbrella. This prosperity allowed the company to expand their product line to include items such as handbags, sunglasses, apparel, watches, linens, luggage, cosmetics and electronics. In July 2009 Amazon announced they had reached an agreement to acquire Zappos and the merger brought together two companies with similar ideologies in regards to customer service. From inception, Zappos has prided itself on providing outstanding customer service and each employee hired undergoes five weeks of training in customer loyalty before beginning in the role they were hired for. Zappos’ strives to employ individuals who share the mindset that customer satisfaction is a priority and offers trainees $2000 to quit during training if they do not feel they are a good fit to the organization. Despite employing over 1300 individuals, Zappos has maintained a fairly flat structure with open communication and transparency throughout all levels of the organization. Through a culture of caring with an emphasis on building a team and family of its employees, Zappos has successfully created an environment where personnel are motivated and able to fulfill workplace as well as individual needs. Issue Identification Obstacles and complications are often unavoidable when companies embark upon the process ... ... middle of paper ... ...stem that does not necessarily warrant changes may have a negative impact on employee attitude. By retaining a separate identity, Zappos can reiterate a sense of community and family values to their employees which may strengthen employee loyalty and commitment. Disadvantages While Zappos’ present culture and values are very effective at producing empowered, engaged and motivated employees driven to excellence in customer service, there is a disadvantage to remaining static. Organizations need to change to reflect variances in the overall structure of the organization as is so often the case during mergers. Improvements in technology, fluctuations in workforce demographics and market conditions are all impetus for change as well. Preserving their existing culture and excluding expert advice from Amazon management may impede growth and development at Zappos.
Nordstrom is one of the top retailers in the United States. With a solid brand image and a sound financial situation, Nordstrom is relentless in their expansion in the US, and are beginning to expand into international markets. Nordstrom takes pleasure in providing state of the art client support and having experienced sales people. In order to hold their position as the most successful high-end retailer in the United States, Nordstrom must continue to figure out ways to improve their brand image and customer satisfaction. Nordstrom’s current business working strategy is successful but I believe there are a few ideal solutions that the organization could apply to further enhance the organization. Due to the aggressive characteristics of the fashion retail store market, it is crucial that Nordstrom preserves an aggressive advantage providing the highest level of customer support as possible.
When horrific crimes occur in large cities, many of them can be chalked up to gang violence or to the larger population of that specific city. But when horrific crimes happen in small cities like Lincoln, Nebraska, people begin to ask questions like who did this and why. In 1958, a nineteen year old man named Charles Starkweather put the entire state of Nebraska and possibly the entire nation in a state of terror. With his murder spree taking only three days, Starkweather had collected a body count of ten bodies, including two teenagers and a young child. Understanding Starkweather’s past and state of mind begins to answer the second question of why.
Amazon was founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos and became one of the first major companies to sell goods over the internet
Almost twenty years ago, an individual named Jeff Bezos had a vision. He saw financial potential with the growth of the internet. He wanted to change the ways of retail commerce in a way that had never been done before. Amazon began as a vision and was born in Jef...
Zappos is an online shoe and clothing store. The idea of an online shoe store originally came from Nick Swinmurn in the year 1999. He then pitched the idea to Alfred Lin and Zappos’ current CEO Tony Hsieh. Zappos quick rise to success is mostly attributed to their ten core values. These values vary from creating fun and weirdness to being humble. However, the root of this company’s success lies only on one important thing: their regard for customer service. They value the quality time spent with customers over the phone rather than the quantity of customers.
Lowe’s tries to foster collaboration and strength in a variety of methods; many are through leadership training tracks and supporting employees and their families. During times economic uncertainty, it is important that individuals know that they an organization that cares and supports them. In a comprehensive report released by Lowes, the company detailed improvements Lowe’s achieved in important focus areas, including the health, safety and engagement of employees, the company’s advancement towards its 2020 goals and its partnership with suppliers to maintain the highest ethical standards and improve the products it sells (Lowe’s Companies, 2015a). According to Lowe’s Companies (2015a), “For the first time in Lowe’s annual Employee Opinion Survey, all of its U.S. stores, distribution centers and customer support centers all reached the company’s benchmark engagement goal of 65 percent, indicating a highly engaged and satisfied staff” (para 4).. “Career Bliss recognized Lowe’s as one of the 10 happiest retailers to work for in 2014” (Lowe’s Companies, 2015, para 5). To keep an organization running efficiently and effectively, you need a good customer base; you cannot achieve this without helpful, courteous and willing employees. Lowe’s understand that to keep up in the industry, they need to ensure they employees are taken care of
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...
As all organizations are striving to meet goals and objectives of the business, so must any comprehensive staffing strategy. Applying this to Tanglewood, the leadership realized that the business must remain competitive with their rivals of Kohl’s and Target. Even so, the company’s culture and values has set them apart, where employee involvement, engagement, and recommendations have been truly valued.
Technology has played a huge role in how companies today conduct business with their consumers. Over the past few decades there has been a shift in business models and strategies because of the emerging innovation in technology. One of these innovation are e-commerce, businesses that use e-commerce can now see a major difference in sales and revenue. Amazon has taken the idea of e-commerce and turned it into a successful and profitable business. Amazon Company developed a brilliant strategy for emerging into an already competitive market. This entails the revision of an existing concept. Unlike major companies like Apple, Microsoft that invented new products and services, Amazon did not need to create a whole new product but to create a better business model system that can be used in the future. This helped their rise to fame by taking over an existing idea but improving it to match consumer needs and wants. Overall companies will need to develop better business strategies to be able to evolve into e-commerce industry moving forward.
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).
The most significant component of Wal-Mart’s success was the way it treated its employees or as they are known as in Wal-Mart “associates”, the beliefs or rules of the Wal-Mart culture makes associates want to provide excellent service to its customers. During visits Walton encouraged associates to pledge to greet customers and ask if they assist them or walking into a Wal-Mart store customers are met by a greeter, an associate who welcomed them and handed out shopping carts (Farhoomand, 2006).
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.
This paper describes the various aspects of the Zappos case. The objective is to evaluate the depth analysis of the Zappos strategy. It enables to determine the Zappos strategy, business model & marketing strategy, and smartness of the Zappos acquisition.
Amazon is one of the largest brands in the world, reporting $23.18 billion in sales last quarter. They operate with a customer-first mentality. This is clear in their mission statement, which is as follows: “We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for four primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators (Amazon).” Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos seeks to bring the highest quality products and most efficient services to their customers. According to critics of Amazon, Bezos’ goals have lent themselves to a
Business strategy and model: Zappos.com had a differentiation strategy with which they had differentiated themselves from the rest of the market. They had use a unique corporate culture in their company which was one of the major competitive edges of the company. According to the CEO of the company, Tony Hsieh, that everything that they had done at Zappos such as their relationships with 1,200 to 1,500 brands, policies and website style could be copied, however, the only thing that no one could copy from them was their unique culture. Zappos had 10 unique core values as a basis of their company’s culture, employee performance and their overall operations. They were hiring and firing people on the basis of their abilities that whether they were living up to these core values or not.