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Amazon Evolution ± Team B Outline (Week 2) Begin working on the Amazon.com® Evolution paper by reading Amazon: From Book Seller to Service Provider in Ch. 1 of Introduction to Information Systems. 1. Discuss whether the company is moving away from its core competency of being a leading online retailer. Evaluate the offerings of GoogleŒ and Microsoft®, identify in which areas Amazon.com® is competing, and discuss whether this is a wise strategy Although Amazon is the largest leading online retailer, according to the Amazon.com case study, they are utilizing only 10% of their processing capacity. Therefore, they have decided to enhance their profit margin by encompassing the utilization of the remaining infrastructure already put into place, to increase their profit margin. By offering services to smaller companies that they are already paying for, and using the unutilized infrastructure space to do so. Therefore, they are not moving away from their core competency they are enhancing it. As a matter of fact, it seems as though they are capitalizing on two things: The infrastructure they have that is already bought and paid for and their superior data management expertise. Although expanding your business always entails risk, I think they are moving in a direction in which they have considerable expertise. Google is in direct competition with Amazon but they are not an online retailer. They are a B2B operating as an online referral service. Microsoft, also is a services support business So, Amazon, the leading online retailer is only encroaching on Microsoft and Google service industries business. It will be difficult to change business venue, and it doesn't sound like that is their main reasoning. It sounds like they are just utilizing extra space. And they will capitalize if they can offer the same services at a cheaper price than their competitors. 2. Describe the

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