Amazon.com - A Giant of E-commerce
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Electronic commerce industries that make “e-commerce” possible are growing at breakneck speed, altering not only how Americans, but also the global marketplace produces, markets, and acquires goods and services. In the e-commerce industry, it is generally agreed that Amazon.com provides one of the best business model “benchmarks” today.
Amazon.com came online in the summer of 1995 with a mission to use the Internet to transform book buying into the fastest, easiest and most enjoyable shopping experience possible. According to their home page Amazon.com “since the summary of 1995 our customer base and product offerings have grown considerably, millions of people in more than 220 countries have made Amazon.com the leading online shopping site.” When you visit Amazon.com, you can buy books, music, videos, and more--by a click of the mouse.
While the company has yet to turn a profit, they have revolutionized e-commerce by making customer interaction and feedback part of their brand image. Amazon’s method is to create a “community” of consumers. Much of their products speaks for themselves, so the customer feedback provides an objective measuring stick for the integrity of Amazon’s services. Individuals may express their opinions on all available products. Promoting such favorable business environment Amazon hopes to reinforce awareness and confidence in e-commerce customer population, as well as encouraging best practice among competitors. Amazon’s competitive threats come from other e-commerce, Web sites like: Walmart.com, Barnes & Noble.com, Ebay.com, etc. Amazon knows that customers are sensitive to product quality and price, and personal information security so at Amazon.com they can expect to benefit from all three offerings. Amazon.com has a world-class management team led by Mr. Jeffrey P. Bezos founder and company’s Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. He has exceptional knowledge of the industry. As stated in the home page new release “On a single Saturday in July, 100 airplanes and 9,000 trucks delivered more than 250,000 copies of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" to customers,” providing the hottest kid’s book faster than local bookstores. This action clearly shows the powers of our suppliers and buyers. Amazon.com is committed to customer satisfaction despit...
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The Crucible is interpreted as an allegory on the intolerance of McCarthyism, allowing Miller to express his criticisms towards the practice through a crucial period in American history. After its publication, it was widely expressed that the Crucible illustrated Miller’s opinion on McCarthyism and its effect on society. McCarthyism is defined as the political practice of broadcasting accusations of disloyalty and undermining power and authority without providing legitimate evidence. This was specifically targeted to communists, who similarly were the innocent citizens falsely accused of witchcraft in Salem. Although Miller does not specifically mention McCarthyism, he incorporates analogies to elements of McCarthyism. A direct connection to it is Danforth states "a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between.” This crucial quote loosely references the aspect of McCarthyism that loosely states a person is either with the government, or suspected of communism. Miller continues to reinforce this technique through the representation of his characters. Abigail reflects on the encouragement of accusations of innocent folk without providing solid evidence, such as claiming “I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil!” therefore encouraging the fellow girls of Salem to follow. This parallels to McCarthy’s allegations against anyone regardless of their social status. Proctor however, represents the injustice placed upon the honest citizens who attempted to clear their names. The hangings reflect on the citizens during the McCarthy era who were blacklisted and therefore excluded from society. Although there is no direct symbolism, this practice is clearly depicted in t...
Jeff Bezo’s began Amazon in his garage in July 1995 with three Sun workstations setting on wooden doors for tables and extension cords running from everywhere (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Right from the beginning he was a visionary leaving his well paying job as a senior vice president with D. E. Shaw to begin Amazon.com (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Being the visionary that he is he saw an opportunity prompted by the huge growth rate of internet use in a single year and ran with it never looking back. Jeff realized that the internet had “no real commerce to speak of” so he began researching possible businesses (Academy of Achievement, 2010). “After reviewing 20 mail order businesses and deciding which could be conducted more efficiently over the internet than by traditional means he decided on books” (Academy of Achievement, 2010). He thought books were perfect because attempting to send huge catalogs for all the available books would be expensive and cumbersome, but an online resource database that was easy to navigate would provide customers with easy access and a single point from which to shop. “In 30 days, with no press, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries, obviously by the success of Amazon he was right (Academy of Achievement, 2010). In a case study written by Javad Kargar called “Amazon.com in 2003” he stated that “Amazon's online store was a big hit, with about $5 million in the first year of operations” (2004). This huge success so quickly would have confirmed for Jeff that his idea was viable and drove him to continue to strive for more. Jeff Bezo’s charismatic-visionary leadership is the key to his and Amazon’s success.
Treanor, T. (2010). Amazon: Love them? hate them? let's follow the money. Publishing Research Quarterly, 26(2), 119-128. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12109-010-9162-7
Launched by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com website started in 1995 and is today considered as one of the most prominent retail website on the internet with a record turnover of US$ 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.com’s US operation business model is based on “sell all, carry few”. Amazon offers consumers a wide selection of products while keeping inventories at low levels. A major interest for Amazon in the US is optimization of netwo...
In addition, Amazon has also given the customer the opportunity to sell goods. The customers have a huge amount of power when researching and choosing products of the thousands of products at the tips of their fingers. Amazon has just about every department of a store you can imagine, from gardening and lawn accessories, to kitchen machinery, to shoes, and to the strongest departments in my opinion, which is the reading and electronics. The book was the very first product and vision behind Amazon as Bezos “narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising [products to be sold via Internet]: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books…”: then deciding to create the worldwide selection and platform to sell literature in print. Little did Bezos realize at the time, that his print literature idea would develop into the foundation of the electronic department. This transformed into varying products and services to be offered to the consumers: from actual devices to purchase, to the Amazon exclusive “Kindle” E-reader and accessories, developing growth into the “Kindle Fire” TV, and the exclusive purchase of “Audible”, which is now an Amazon company audio book
Bezos’ vision and mission statement for Amazon is “Our vision is to be earth 's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” For the most part, this vison has been achieved, Amazon is the “top revenue maker in online retail worldwide” and is geared towards giving consumers the ability to find what they want on their marketplace site. In 2014, Amazon’s mission statement was changed “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.” This was due to Amazon’s expansion of their range of consumers from only customers to customers,
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.
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.
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 operates in the Online Retail Industry. The sector is one of the fastest growing globally and is outperforming the ordinary retail marketplace. It was created after 1995 and it was only the Internet that made it possible for such an industry not only to be established but to become one of the most flourishing sectors in the business environment. What is interesting is that Amazon.com, together with eBay is the pioneer in the field. Both companies were launched in 1995 and are still extremely successful. The creation of e-mail in 1996 had a huge impact on the development of online retail by introducing a fast and easy way to communicate with customers. For this two-year period Internet usage doubled annually, thus, allowing for the expansion of the industry. Google is launched a year later, in 1998, only to become the most used search engine in the world and an essential partner for the online retailers by helping them tailor their websites to customer’s personal preferences and by advertising. After that, more and more people see the opportunity in the growing industry and enter it. By 2001 there are more than 513 million Internet users globally, which calls for action in terms of creating regulations and laws to protect the users and personal property. In 2003, Apple launches iTunes, and provides a platform for low-cost digital downloads. Another major change is the appearance of social media from 2004, which is one of the biggest influencer on the state of the industry. With the launch of iPhone in 2007, this trend strengthens as people get to enjoy the Internet anywhere they want to. From then on, technological advancements have made it extremely easy and fun to shop online, making it ...
Amazon is a growing and trending brand, giving consumers the unique shopping experience they have always wanted. The company that was started by 1999 man of the year, Jeff Bezos, has taken 44 percent market share in online sales and purchases. (http://bloomreach.com/2015/10/survey-amazon-is-burying-the-competiton-in-search/) That makes consumers more inclined to search for products through Amazon, before the well-known search engine powerhouse, Google. The Seattle, Washington based company was started in 1995. During the well-anticipated start-up, the company’s focus was on book sales online. Over time, Amazon has set many trends in Consumer Behavior, expanding products across every product pool imaginable. "Amazon.com puts the customer
Amazon has recorded a magnificent success in its business throughout the years that it has been in operation. It has attracted almost all people to use it when necessary. Amazon has built its success in business methodically and slowly. Amazon has made much success because of its ability to read market trends and diversify its operations. It started as an online book selling company. However, it changed its operations and started selling other products. Currently, many large retail shops use Amazon to host and power their websites, for instance, sears and virgin megastores. Amazon now attracts over fifty million visitors in a period of one month. Amazon has tried to make their services fit each individual user. It has based its services on the end user. It has shipping discounts, customer product reviews and a credit card with bonuses. It also has prime membership, product forums and 1-click ordering system among other services. The company has tried to make a remarkable experience for customers and visitors (Thomas, 2006).
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
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.