...Discuss the approach used by Zappos. Why is the approach not used very often? What are the challenges and the benefits? Zappos was acquired by Amazon in 2009. What organizational changes do you believe occurred due to the acquisition and would continue to occur over time? Discuss the concept of motivation and Zappos. Would Zappos be a motivating place to work? Why? Why not? Your analysis must include supporting evidence. Zappos has a very unique approach to motivating its employees, which is spearheaded by its CEO Tony Hsieh. This approach includes a study of happiness, respect, and the company is centered on the idea of “a corporate culture of caring a priority”. Zappos is able to accomplish this using David McClelland’s acquired-needs theory; they motivate employees by taking a strong interest in each employee. This allows each of their employees room to grow, and if they employees see and feel this way then it is reflected in their performance and in how they treat each of their customers. This approach is very difficult to emulate and not used very often because a company has to invest a lot of time training, and trust in each of their employees to make this successful. This approach is a product of a couple of things: First, the CEO cares about his employees. This is made possible, largely because the company only employs around 1,500 people, and they are all located in a central location. Second, it is extremely difficult to measure the value of happiness. Shareholders...
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...Case Zappos Developing a Supply Chain to Deliver WOW! Core Competencies Zappos is a prime example of a company’s end products (the goods sold) not corresponding to their core product (the delivery service). While in theory being a retailer, Zappos sees itself as a service provider. Their core competencies lie in their customer service system (i.e. free calls), their straightforward and useful web interface, their excellent supply chain structure and the extensive return policy. In the following I would like to further explain two of them. Customer Service Zappos prioritises customer service in their business model. A lot of effort is put into finding, hiring and training the right people for their free call centres. These employees then help create an emotional impact with their customers. In order to be able to cultivate the reputation of the brand Zappos they are equipped with a great amount of freedom and a wide array of measures to help their costumers resolve problems. The revolutionary aspect of Zappos call centre? Efficiency does not matter. The focus lies on creating an extraordinary, memorable experience by engaging with people. This powerful marketing tool drives sales and makes customers return. Warehouse System When Zappos started acquiring inventory and managing their own warehouse they were faced with additional costs and challenges. They overcame these by introducing an unconventional warehouse system. A robotic system with movable shelves was put into place...
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...changes might result from the acquisition by Amazon? I believe it has been beneficial for Amazon when they bought Zappos. First, Amazon can learn from Zappos. Zappos has a 365 day exchange and return policy, while Amazon’s return policy only lasts for 30 days. Amazon should gradually increase their policy to 45-60 days and so on. Zappos has free shipping. Amazon should lower the amount of money you need to spend in order to get free shipping. Zappos has created an innovative corporate culture that offers their employees full health-care coverage, a compressed workweek, they also make caring about the needs of their customers their number one priority. Amazon should make organizational changes that make them more similar to Zappos. 2. Why do you think Zappos’ approach is not utilized more often? In other words, what are the challenges to these techniques? I think Zappos approach is not utilized more in the workplace because their shipping is free. It is believed that is going to cost a company more money. But customers love free shipping, which is one reason that attracts new customers to Zappos. This is also why their loyal customers keep returning. Their dedication lies with Zappos. Another challenge to Zappos techniques are that Zappos has a 365 day exchange and return policy. This could be potentially dangerous for other companies because could return a product a year later and cost the company. The issue may be the product. Zappos sells clothing and shoes. These...
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...forward thinking. Originally Amazon was known as a book retailer. As the music world went digital he knew that books would be the next thing to move forward also. To create device to load digital books made sense. This enable Amazon to continue to be competitive grow in his bookseller market. The Kindle was released to the market three years before the IPad. 2) Would you describe Amazon’s position in the digital entertainment market as certain, risky or uncertain? Why? I think that Amazon’s position in the digital entertainment market would be certain. I believe this because they keep improving on their products and adding to their website. They are making it easy for the consumer to do all their shopping at one online site. When it comes to the technology industry for the retail market they have been able to provide the consumer what they want before others could. I for see them to be able to continue beating the competition. 3) Which decision errors and traps are the greatest threats to the success of Bezo’s decision making as Amazon’s CEF and why? I believe one of the biggest traps is that a company tries to rest on their past history. If they want to continue to be competitive they will have to remember how they achieve that status. I think by also selling their competitors’ products on their website is a smart move. This will encourage the competition consumers to come to Amazon to make other purchases. ...
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...Nguyen Quoc Khanh BUS 103 Case 3: Amazon: One E- Store to Rule Them All. 1. In what way does Bezos’s decision to develop and deliver the Kindle show systematic and intuitive thinking? First, Bezos has shown his intuitive thinking in the decision of unveiling Amazon Kindle, a new device that is completely outside Apple’s catalog though Amazon still sold Apple’s iPod. Furthermore, he introduced to Medias his product, it seemed like a declaration to Apple. Because Apple is a giant of technological industry, so the situation would be complex to be its competitor. However, it was the only way to make a technological evolution by Kindle. As a result, this situation required Bezos to have a quick and broad evaluation for making the decision. Besides, the systematic thinking of Bezos was shown by introducing the free application “Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch” when he realized the benefit of allowing readers to read books on a variety of devices. After, in order to upgrade Kindle, Amazon acquired Touchco Company, which specialized in touch screen technology. These decisions are systematic because Bezos had to analyze the situation step- by- step, thoroughly and carefully with full of information towards an effective and logical decision. 2. How do you describe the competitive risk in Amazon.com’s environment as it leads the market for digital book downloads? Being the leader of digital book downloads market; Amazon.com is likely to face to the competitive risk from another...
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...Berggren 11/2/15 Zappos Case Study: Happiness and Company Culture To Zappos, service is not just a value held on the corporate plaque or something they like to talk about. At Zappos, delivering exceptional service is a way of life. Zappos is a large online clothing and shoe shop who has made service, not shoes, their business. In 2009 Zappos was acquired by Amazon for an all-stock deal, valued at $1.2 Billion. While many factors contributed to the success of Zappos, the biggest contributors were the leaders, Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin. Hsieh and Lin understood that the happiness of their employees, partners, and customers was key to Zappos business. Everyone inside Zappos, knew the link between the culture of happiness and the positive performance, attributed to the success of the company. Since the creation of Zappos in 1999, the Zappos brand has upheld its “wow” customer service positioning and a distinct corporate culture. At the time there was no other big online footwear retailers, so Nick Swinmurn, founder and CEO of Zappos, created an online footwear site, containing many varieties of shoes in different colors, styles and sizes. At the time there were not a lot of online shoe retailers, so they were primarily competing with brick and mortar shoe stores. Initially, Zappos received inventory through independent shoe stores but by 2000, they had secured relationships with the shoe manufacturers themselves and were able to offer over 100 brands. In a year, Zappos began offering...
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...Discuss the concept of motivation and Zappos You will use your Group Discussion Board to conduct your analysis of this case study. Discuss the approach used by Zappos. Why is the approach not used very often? What are the challenges and the benefits? Zappos was acquired by Amazon in 2009. What organizational changes do you believe occurred due to the acquisition and would continue to occur over time? Discuss the concept of motivation and Zappos. Would Zappos be a motivating place to work? Why? Why not? Your analysis must include supporting evidence. Motivation is defined as “the desire to achieve a goal or a certain performance level, leading to goal-directed behavior (Erdogan; Chapter 5, P.1 paragraph).” Motivation can mean a lot such as a company trying to accomplish a set goal, or a soldier trying to complete a physical fitness test, in some type of form a person is trying to reach an obtainable goal. Motivation and Zappos is another thing, they encourage employees to be, themselves, just be to be regular people. The concept of support goes further in at zappos than just in its core values, it goes into its Performance, such as no time table on customer service calls, the point of that is to make the customer feel very important and to build a relationship with the customer, and also other motivating effects could be a compressed workweek, and a nice benefits package, which offers full healthcare coverage. Motivation has a lot to do with this organization, in creating...
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...1.0 Introduction Zappos, founded in 1999, is an online shoe, apparel and electronics retailer, specializing foremost in customer service. In 2008, Zappos reached $1billion in annual sales, the following year Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued over $1.2 billion (Hsieh, 2010). Despite the qualms from consumers about the effect the acquisition would have on the intimacy of Zappos’ customer service, it is still Zappos’ customer service model and attention to relationship management that sets Zappos aside from its competitors today. 2.0 Zappos’ Value proposition: 2.1 Target Market Zappos’ primary target market is online shoppers in the United States of America, in particular, educated women between the ages of 25 and 49 years of age who are most likely married with children seeking a convenient shopping experience with a trustworthy and reliable company (Dilworth, 2010). 2.2 Sources of Value Creation Figure 1. Sources of benefits (McLeod, 2014, lecture 1:pg. 31) Value is created at Zappos through increased benefits and reduced costs, see figure 1. The first benefit provided by Zappos is the multiple product lines available for purchase. Further to this, Zappos offers specialty brands and sizes that cater for more specialized individual needs, such as ‘women’s size 15 and men’s sextuple-E widths’ (Jacobs, 2009, p.70). Additionally, if Zappos does not have a requested product in stock, it is custom for the customer service team to direct customers to...
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...In what ways does Zappos’ culture help and/or hinder the company’s performance? * As an organization grows, it is imperative to have quality talent. Zappos strength was in its hiring practices that focused on organization-fit apart from skill-fit. With a strong people oriented culture already in place, they were adept in judging the fit based on the criteria they created for the culture which in turn led to long term success for the employees. This vision reflected in their extensive hiring practices. * Their strong culture paved the way to become a marketable brand on its own in the industry resulting in talent pool augmentation. * The biggest advantage posed by their strong culture was the ease of buy-in among the new and current employees which resulted in better assimilation and integration of their core principles and vision. The culture was pervasive at all levels of the organization that buy-in was evident in a short span of time. * The culture at Zappos made it possible for the management to delegate and share responsibilities among the peers. This was evident in the vision created by the CEO of a boundary-less organization. * Their egalitarian culture and empowerment aided them in being innovative and helped the management in tapping and maximizing the creative potential of their employees. This was evident in their strong emphasis on cross-training of employees as part of the new hire process and at making it available for various career enhancing...
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...But you have to narrow it down, and determine which ones on the Fortune 100 list. The two industries that I have decided to compare and contrast is Google and Zappos. One of the best things about working for Google is that the employees are proud to work on projects that change our world like Google maps and Android. The best thing about working for Zappos, is that they are known for its unique culture of celebration and benefits like free pet adoption and a nap room. Human Resource Strategy While researching two industries that are considered to be the best place to work. The two companies that I have selected came off the Fortune 100 list. Throughout this paper I am going to compare and contrast is Google and Zappos. When you talk about comparing and contrasting two different industries. You have to think about the following: the size, products, services, and customers, economic and regulatory environment. When looking at the size of Google they have more than thirty locations in the United States. They have more than 52069 employees worldwide. I can’t compare the size of Zappos with Google. Zappos is located in three major cities in the United States, but has four sites. They have more than 1440 employees in the company. Google offers a list of products from google shopping, news, video and the list goes on. Zappos offers the following: shoes, handbags, clothing and everything in between. When it comes to customer service Google lacks in that department. They do not offer...
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...In what ways does Zappos’ culture help and/or hinder the company’s performance? * As an organization grows, it is imperative to have quality talent. Zappos strength was in its hiring practices that focused on organization-fit apart from skill-fit. With a strong people oriented culture already in place, they were adept in judging the fit based on the criteria they created for the culture which in turn led to long term success for the employees. This vision reflected in their extensive hiring practices. * Their strong culture paved the way to become a marketable brand on its own in the industry resulting in talent pool augmentation. * The biggest advantage posed by their strong culture was the ease of buy-in among the new and current employees which resulted in better assimilation and integration of their core principles and vision. The culture was pervasive at all levels of the organization that buy-in was evident in a short span of time. * The culture at Zappos made it possible for the management to delegate and share responsibilities among the peers. This was evident in the vision created by the CEO of a boundary-less organization. * Their egalitarian culture and empowerment aided them in being innovative and helped the management in tapping and maximizing the creative potential of their employees. This was evident in their strong emphasis on cross-training of employees as part of the new hire process and at making it available for various career enhancing...
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...Zappos Insight Paper 1 Culture is a number one priority to Zappos’, Tony Hsieh. Currently the company is in the middle of transitioning from their old structure, a decently centralized structure, to a holacracy, and putting all employees including himself on an equal playing field. Zappos has a very unique and family like company culture that inspires growth, creativity, and openness aimed at having the best customer service. Zappos culture was created and implemented by Hsieh, who wanted to create a space of work life integration instead of work life balance. He wanted people to feel at home in their office and with the people they worked with. This culture is maintained through each person living out the 10 core values of the company that include focusing on the strategy, being weird, and ultimately being humble. This is continued on through various systems the company has in place to encourage company bonding. For example the IT department is right in the middle of the Zappos café so the people there don’t feel banished, and can be a contributing member to the culture. Another system in place to maintain this culture is the $50 co-worker bonus that encourages staff to collaborate. Superordinate goals at Zappos help keep this culture effective through the Insights department that aids other companies in creating strong company culture. Community involvement is another superordinate goal that was demonstrated on Thanksgiving Day in 2014. Zappos feed over 1000 families in...
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...SWOT ANALYSIS ON Zappos.com - November 25th, 2010 Zappos.com is an online shoe and clothing shop. Currently based in Henderson, Nevada, United States, the company warehouse is located in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, along with an outlet store. Since its founding in 1999, Zappos has grown to be the largest online shoe store.Zappos did "almost nothing" in sales for 1999, but grossed over USD$800 million in merchandise sales in 2007 and grossed over $1 billion in 2009. In July 2009, under pressure to deliver a return to Sequoia Capital and its other investors, the company announced it would be acquired by Amazon.com in an all-stock deal; by the time the deal closed in early November, the deal was worth about $1.2 billion. The name Zappos is derived from the Spanish word zapatos, meaning shoes. Strengths * Effective communication * Innovation * Online growth * Loyal customers * Pricing * Unique products Strengths [list] [*]Effective communication [*]Innovation [*]Online growth [*]Loyal customers [*]Pricing [*]Unique products [*]Customer Service [/Great shipping Low fixed cost Strong brand unique company culture] Dummy Weaknesses * Weak real estate * Not too many Locations, throughout the US Weaknesses Weak real estate - what real estate? this is an internet co right? Not too many Locations, throughout the US Pricing: does not offer price comparison woow Opportunities * Innovation * Online * Takeovers Opportunities...
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...Note: The company I cofounded, Hunch, was acquired by eBay in November 2011. I am now an eBay employee. But all the opinions expressed below are my own, and were developed prior to the Hunch acquisition, through my own research on e-commerce. Amazon and eBay are the two largest e-commerce companies. As of this writing, Amazon has a market cap of about $87B, trading at a trailing twelve-month P/E of about 139. eBay has a market cap of about $42B, trading at a trailing P/E of about 13. Each company competes with many other companies in many different areas. For example, Amazon competes with Apple on tablets (Kindle vs iPad) and digital media (Amazon’s media store vs iTunes). Ebay’s Paypal unit competes with multiple payment companies, and its marketplaces division competes with other “peer-to-peer” e-commerce sites like Craigslist. But given the potential size of the e-commerce market (not to mention the online-to-offline commerce market), Amazon and eBay’s main competitors are each other. And to understand their large strategic moves (e.g. large acquisitions like GSI and Zappos), it is important to understand their fundamentally opposing strategic outlooks: eBay wants commerce to be more decentralized (around its GSI/Magento partners and eBay marketplaces sellers) and Amazon wants it to be more centralized (around itself). First, some background. During the dot-com boom, many largest offline brands debated how to best move their businesses online. Some tried to build their...
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...Amazon: The Three Elements Yesenia Becerra BUS620: Managerial Marketing Dr. Richard Leventhal 5/30/16 Amazon: The Three Elements Amazon has revolutionized the way the everyday consumer shops. Jeff Bezzos business strategy is by far one of the most innovative business strategies of our time. Amazon is an American electronic company based out of Seattle, Washington. Amazon’s first sale was made out of a garage in Seattle. Amazon originally started as an online bookstore but quickly diversified into different markets. On Amazon.com you can now purchase everything from Books, Videos, audiobooks, to jewelry electronics, software, furniture, and even groceries. It is currently the largest Internet retailer. Amazon has crossed international waters and provides its vast selection of products to United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India and Mexico. Amazon is the United States biggest Retailer, surpassing Walmart! Most recently Amazon has expanded its business into three different markets: fulfillment centers, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Fresh. They currently have fulfilment centers strategically located throughout the United States that assist in keeping shipping cost minimal. Currently amazon has over eighty nine fulfillment centers located throughout the United States. In turn lowering shipping cost and making their products...
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