“short answer” questions: no more than a paragraph or two for each answer, please.
Case Study Questions 1. In the case, Marty Manley recognized that the used book market has changed significantly since Alibris started working on their pricing module and providing pricing services. Marty realizes that in order to help Alibris suppliers successfully weather this market change, he needs to help them understand what is going on and how it might affect the value of their businesses as well impact their revenues. How well do you think he achieved this informational/teaching goal for the business partners? (of understanding the market) (Katherine)
It is clear that Alibris did all that they could to share their knowledge with their business
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He shows that the company is not just looking to maximize profits, but also work for the industry’s benefit, such as creating a total universe database of books.
When large companies like Amazon Marketplace became a key player, Alibris also helped its partners realize that low cost books in high volumes was actually profitable. This led Alibris’s book prices to drop 4.8% but increase sales volume by 50% in 2003. This allowed Alibris to change its focus from rare books to welcoming volumes from different distributors and aided partners in realizing the value in much of the fragmented book market and develop unique pricing
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Also Alibris helped booksellers stay current with the market in 2002 by allowing distributors to send books directly to buyers instead of the distribution center thus cutting costs for both sides and lowering costs for customers. Alibris constantly worked with its partners by directly listing their books to the large sellers such as Amazon and Barn’s & Noble holding the market concept that they will “sell their book anywhere we remove it anywhere, and everyone benefits.” Alibris also worked with libraries that wanted to do business and worked to make sales between dealers and libraries in an automated and streamline process. Alibris also worked with book publishers and purchased their returned books which they then sold to Sparks, this allowed both publishers and Alibris to profit off of what was one unwanted unvaluable books. This increased the web availability of books to greatly increase and provide to both small book distributors and large distributors like Borders. Finally Alibris looked to teach its business partners about the benefits of automated pricing tools that can adjust to market conditions and the need to constantly evolve in the world of online
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
Basically, John’s company helps young children in poor communities develop strong learning habits, which include dedication and perseverance. This will help them succeed in later years of their schooling. The Better World Books company really admires John Wood and his philosophy while he continues to, “build libraries in rural villages of Nepal” (Better World Books). There are other organizations very similar to Room to Read, such as Books for Africa, Worldfund, National Center for Families Learning, and, “80 other literacy partners” (Better World Books), are companies which Better World Books generates fundings for in every book they sell. This “people” aspect of the triple bottom line for this book company shows how they work with other companies, donate their fundings to help people in poorer parts of the world, and help to improve education for less fortunate people.
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.
The focal article I chose is Dynamic Pricing: The Future of Ticket Pricing in Sports by Patrick Rishe published on January 6th, 2012 through Forbes. Pricing is an important component of the marketing mix because it is the element where managers have expectations of customers paying their money to the organization (Kopalle, 2009). Compared with other elements of the marketing mix, pricing has the advantage because there is a high level of flexibility. The flexibility is because prices change continually (Smith, 2008). The opportunity of quick price changes also has disadvantages. For much of the 20th century, the vast majority of sport managers employed one of two pricing strategies: the one-size-fits-all approach, where every ticket price
The book mainly talks about the protagonist, Alex, his superiors and his team along with his management Guru, Jonah, who changes the whole perspective of Alex’s life with his simple messages, opens Alex to brand new world of bottlenecks, variability, etc. and their effects in the working of any manufacturing firm.
Few other companies can compete with Amazon’s ability to use ecommerce to cut costs of manufacturing, selling, holding, and making its products as affordable as possible. This is an attribute that has become increasingly important to American’s as they try to recover the massive loss in average income that accrued during the recession of 2008 and 2009. In a scholarly article written by two University of Chicago economic students, Ethan Lieber and Chad Syverson, in 2011, “Online vs. Offline Competition” there is a comparison made by the competition for book sales with the traditional retail store Barnes & Noble and Amazon’s online book sales. In the article the two writers focus on Amazon’s ability to undercut Barnes & Noble’s costs due to their ability to hold less inventory, buy in bulk if needed, and have a lower employment cost per book sold. This was contributing to Amazon’s lead in book sales, becoming the “World’s Largest Bookseller” and current control of the book sales market. Another huge advantage that Amazon online sales has over retail stores is the absence in income tax due to having buyers adopt these costs while still keeping the price of the product lower. “Only when the online seller “has nexus” in the consumer’s state is the sales tax automatically added to the transaction price by the firm. (16, Lieber, Syverson)” This shows
Jeff Bezos started with an idea to sell books on-line by being able to hold more books than any other brick-and-mortar store. The first mover advantage that Amazon gained has not let up since. Amazon has created customer loyalty through the use of 360 degree customer profiles and product recommendation system. Furthermore, Amazon has allowed access to big data for a monthly fee and created a web store for businesses saving on huge investments in development for a commission on sales. Big data is constantly evolving and Amazon is ahead of the curve with the application and analytics of big
Sheffet, Mary Jane. "The Supreme Court And Predatory Pricing." Journal Of Public Policy & Marketing 13.1 (1994): 163-167. Business Source Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
In the first stage Amazon’s main objective was to create a virtual bookshop, where customers could have more choices than any physical bookshop in the world, but also, he did not want to spend time and money on building warehouses and deal with inventory b...
Keeping business and other organizations doors open for business is our function and we accomplish this with many tools. Research is our most deadly weapon against business and organizational failures. After our company takes a thorough and objective audit of the business, we then make recommendations for what should be done. Our company however also tries to be proactive and innovative with our recommendations in hopes to get a first mover’s advantage on the competition.
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.
... After gaining the needed education on the matter, they were able to concentrate on the benefits that effective communication holds. All companies should strive to understand the art of communication and continually improve their skills while adapting to an ever changing world.
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.
.... Amazon uses the internet to allow customers to make content searches, for instance inside books. In addition it has used e-commerce to enable customers to buy online access to certain books through its upgrade program (Webanalyticsbook.com, 2007).