Amazon's Business Model: A Case Study

In 1994, Jeff Bezos created Amazon with the idea of selling books online. Jeff Bezos was raised by his mother and stepfather, who was a Cuban immigrant that later adopted him. He quit his job on Wall Street with a New York hedge fund to work to fulfill his dream. In 1995, the dream became a reality. Bezos knew when he created Amazon, he knew what he wanted and that he wanted it to be an everything store.

Amazon.com was founded in 1994, it started by selling books online. As it grew, the company started offering various products and services. Some goods include: DVDs, videos, electronics, camera and photography, clothing apparels, shoes, and so forth. Other retailers have merged with Amazon.com to offer diverse quality of items based on different degrees of usage, such as new, refurbished, and used items. The company 's headquarter is in Seattle, Washington. It has six global websites that serves customers that are based in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, and Japan. Their website features: e-mail order verification, customer review on products, and one-click shopping.

Amazon’s fulfillment centers are valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and organized to captured value. Thus, they attribute to Amazon’s competitive advantage. Amazon Prime and 1-Click are also valuable to the organization. However, they can be replicated. Walmart launched a membership program to compete with Amazon’s Prime Service. With Walmart’s membership program customers receive free two-day shipping when they spend $35 or more on orders. Amazon Web Services is valuable, rare, costly to imitate and the organization has capture the value of it. Therefore, AWS has contributed to Amazon’s sustainable advantage. Amazon’s brand name and reputation have also given the company sustainable advantage. Amazon acquired enormous brand valuation in a short period of time. It is

Amazon.com Inc. was initiated by Jeff Bezos in 1994 after realizing the rapid rate at which the internet and websites were growing in popularity among business organizations and individuals. In 1995, the company started operating its website for selling books, videos, compact discs, computer software and computer hardware before being incorporated in1996 as an e-commerce company (Reuters, 2015). Apparently, the company offers may products and services for sale; these products include merchandise for resale products offered by third parties. In this regard the

Amazon.com is a customer centric company. They put more effort in improving their system to make the experience of customer more comfortable so that he keeps on returning to the website. Jeffery Bezos who is the founder of the Amazon.com started this company after seeing the use of internet increasing rapidly.

There are many internal and external factors that can affect how a business is developed and maintained. Amazon.com has been molded from many of these factors that exist within their business and their macroenvironment. Macroenvironment is defined as the most general elements in the external environment that potentially influence strategic decisions (Bateman & Snell, 2009). Internal business factors can include new entrants, buyers, suppliers, rivals, substitutes and complements, and the competitive environment Amazon is faced with. The macroenvironment introduces the economy, technology, laws and politics, demographics, and social values that may affect Amazon’s progress as a leading, online retail

One of America’s greatest start-up success stories is Amazon. Jeff Bezos launched the website in 1995 and he is now having revenues of $61 billion. At the start of e-commerce, Amazon was an innovator of delivering supreme customer service, which at that times was very rare. Amazon is an illustration of massive organising skills, the company sells an enormous range of products, all day, every day, for 365 days a year and is able to maintain over 80 warehousing and fulfilment centres.

Amazon established in 1994 by Jeffery P. Bezos is involved in the activities to provide online shopping services to consumers. The company operates from North America, International and Amazon Web Services. The company offers diversified products and services to customers that enable it to compete in the market. The case study focused on the key themes related to creating value and the competitive edge. For example, the key concept is that economies of scale through experience and learning curve enable the firm to achieve a competitive edge by implementing the functional level strategies. Functional level strategies refer to the techniques pointed at enhancing the adequacy of an organization's operation also, its capacity to achieve prevalent effectiveness, quality, development, and client responsiveness (Kotha & Orne, 1989; Browning, Chiappori, 2013). Economies of scale are linked to the experience and learning curve. Learning impacts are saving of costs that originate from learning by doing. Labor, for instance, learns by redundancy how to best do an errand (Argote & Epple, 1990). The experience curve alludes to the methodical bringing down of the cost structure, and subsequent unit cost diminishments that have been seen to happen over the life of an item (Nemet, 2006). Economies of scale are associated with the diversification of products and services, R&D, technology and marketing (Hill & Jones, 2015).

As discussed in the case study, the advertising and marketing strategy of Amazon have been focusing on how the products would gain interest from their target market and how they can be able to generate sales with their products. This is Amazon’s stronghold where it continues to yield strong sales revenue by leveraging off its excellent online shop in different locations, such as in UK and other country, strong brand name and excellent reputation among customers. Amazon has also been continuing to create affiliate websites to expand their business market among various consumers.

Amazon.com is one of the biggest companies worldwide due to its strengths (See Appendix A for the SWOT Analysis). First, as an e-commerce retailer, it has a low-cost structure. It lacks the infrastructure and labor costs associated with maintaining and opening new physical stores. Second, Amazon has high brand equity due to its variety of products and low prices. Third, Amazon has a rapid revenue growth rate. To illustrate, Wal-Mart has increased its revenues by 77% for the past ten years, whereas Amazon.com has jumped by more than 1,000% for the same duration (Shaw, 2014). Fourth, two competitive advantages of Amazon.com are its information technology (IT) and supply chain management systems that work together in both determining what customers

Amazon.com faces intense competition when it comes to their online market, as they have competition in many different industries. The goods and services that Amazon.com offers varies greatly and includes retail, e-commerce services, web computing services, and electronic devices, which increases their competition from solely internet based companies to physical retail markets as well. Some of their competition is more intense in that they have greater resources and brand recognition as well as more customers. Amazon.com’s competition may also intensify due to newer and more advanced technologies in both electronics and in web infrastructure, together with business alliances between their competitors. This intense competition will decrease their profits in the long run due to creating a more competitive market which will decrease demand for Amazon.com products and services, closer to a

Amazon’s core competencies are in its ability to effectively use and develop technology to drive site traffic and enhance the customer experience. Their distinctive use of website real estate coupled with their ability to leverage their brand and effectively use that leverage to deliver low prices and high quality products, makes them a leader in online retailing. Their partner brands and their ability to adapt and recognize deficiencies enable them to effectively cut out the middle man, or at the very least, partner with them.

The company has many strengths. First, Amazon is the world’s leading online retailer. According to the 2016 Annual Report, Amazon had total net sales of US $135, 987 million in 2016. These total net sales include three segments which are North America, International, and AWS. Second, in comparison to many companies, Amazon has a superior logistics and distribution system, which allows the company to actualize improved customer fulfillment. Third, with its prolonged strategic drive on low-cost, differentiation, and focus, Amazon offers a wide range of product at low prices to customers. Fourth, Amazon enjoys global recognition from its customers. As stated earlier, Amazon built a strong brand in very little time. Finally, the

The most likely scenario is that the IPO will happen seamlessly. As the IPO was

Amazon.com is a Fortune 500 company that has revolutionized the retail industry. In recent years, Amazon has faced increased competition in the highly competitive online retail space as competitors invested heavily in their online storefronts and infrastructure. Positioned in a highly fragmented industry, Amazon must find solutions that can sustain its long term profitability and maintain its market share. To that end, Amazon should grow the Amazon Prime membership base and expand on its media and mobile offerings.