...Amazon Evolution Amazon is an online retailer that users can find on the World Wide Web. Amazon will mainly target online shopper, by having low prices and a variety of different services. As time has passed Amazon has had to change its business model to target different consumers as times have changed. I don’t believe that Amazon is moving away from its core competence of being the leading online retailer because it is expanding and offering other services. Amazon not only sell’s books online they offered a variety of services. The services that Amazon has newly added to their business model are that they have decided to build infrastructures that will online storage. The company was only using 10 percent of its processing capacity so the Amazon decided to venture out to businesses and offer them the same infrastructures that they were using. These infrastructures will consist of three different types of services which will include Simple Storage Service (S3), The Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and the Mechanical Turk. The Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 allows companies to save data on Amazons server. Amazon offers this service to businesses to store data and applications of Amazons disk drive for only 15 cents per gigabyte. EC2 is another service that Amazon will offer to customers where they will rent out processing power that would start at 10 cents an hour which can be equivalent to one basic server. The Mechanical Turk is a service that combines processing power and networks...
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...Amazon Evolution Corina Benavides University of Phoenix 10/17/10 Dr. Veronica Sims In my reading of Amazon: “From Book Seller to Service Provider “Amazon has been able to diversify their business in such a way that will lead to an increase in both book sales and services offerings. I think Amazon is not moving away from its core competency of being a leading online retailer. I think because Amazon’s profits were falling and the business was suffering from inconsistent profit growth, Amazon had to strategies a way to sustain its business market positioning, and profit growth. The way Amazon strategized their positioning was by analyzing their current use of business offerings to the public. When analyzing what Amazon was using in terms of their business offerings, services, and processing capacity, inside company sources a.k.a. company executives evaluated the companies needs and assets. One major asset was Amazon’s two billion dollar infrastructure that was not used to its full capacity. According to the article Amazon: “From Book Seller to Service Provider” only 10% of Amazon’s processing capacity was being used at one time and that information begs the question, what is Amazon doing with the other 90%? With this information Amazon executives came up with a business strategy. Amazon developed three online business services that would use their existing processing system. The three services are S3, EC2, and The Mechanical Turk. The S3 offers costumers the storing...
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...Ⅰ. Introduction A. What is amazon? Amazon is an American electronic commerce company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the United States.[12] Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, VHSs, CDs, video and MP3 downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. The company also produces consumer electronics—notably, Amazon Kindle e-book readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV and Fire Phone — and is a major provider of cloud computing services. Amazon also sells certain low-end products like USB cables under its inhouse brand AmazonBasics. Amazon has separate retail websites for United States, United Kingdom &Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India and Mexico. B. History of Amazon The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called his "regret minimization framework", which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for not participating sooner in the Internet business boom during that time.[16] In 1994, Bezos left his employment as vice-president of D. E. Shaw &Co., a Wall Street firm, and moved to Seattle. He began to work on a business plan for what would eventually become Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company as "Cadabra" on July 5, 1994[11] and the site went online as Amazon.com in 1995.[17] Bezos changed the name cadabra.com to amazon.com because...
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...world’s largest online retailer. With a diverse set of services to support its online retailing, Amazon is in direct competition with two of the largest Internet and software companies, but by using its vast informational resources Amazon has continued its success in internet based business. Many analysts and consumers wonder if Amazon.com is moving away from its core competency of being an online retailer. When you first look at Amazon.com starting from a book seller and trying to become a service provider your initial answer would be yes however, according to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com his vision of the company was to create a place you could buy anything and everything. Bezos decided to start selling books because of the low cost, and he did it online because a computer allows you to sort, search and organize a wide selection. Between 1998 and 1999, Amazon.com went from books to music, DVDs/video, toys, electronics, home improvement, software, and games. As sales rise they continue to adventure out to a broader spectrum to bring more to their consumers. Amazon.com always focused on selling products to others and now was ready to launch other services. For instance auctions, search engines, simple storage services (S3), elastic compute clouds (EC2) are the areas Amazon has branched off into. By looking at Amazon online sales records and company statistics, it clearly shows that Amazon is not moving away from being an online retail company but improving what the...
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...Amazon Evolution Amazon has grown from an online bookstore to an online one stop superstore. You can buy anything from books to computer components and toys on their website. They were founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and have grown exponentially since then. Information technology has helped them immensely along the way as this paper will demonstrate. They do everything from shopping to web-based applications involved in cloud computing for other businesses while staying true to their core competency. Amazon has appropriately evolved as a company to be successful in a high-tech environment. This company was founded in 1994 for selling books at a reasonable price. They made sure they had a good customer service to retain customers. By 1999 Amazon.com was formed, now Amazon really could reach a lot of customers due to the internet. So now they book stores and able to sell books to people at their own home, this was very convenient for customers. They did not have to leave their comfort of their own home. In 2000 Amazon opened their customer service center, this way the company could handle their customers in one location, saves on management and hourly’s. Because you have all of your staff in one location. In 2001 Amazon announces an alliance with Borders; this alliance increases inventory and variety of books they can offer on their web site. In 2003 the company expanded to sports and outdoor stores, this way they can try to gather in a new customer base, so...
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...distinguish itself from other companies such as Blockbuster by providing consumers an easy way to select movies they wanted and have them mailed to their homes without having to wait in lines at the traditional brick and mortar stores. Netflix was able to create a niche in DVD rental market by competing based on Pricing Behavior, Netflix offered a flat rate per month for their movies compared to Blockbuster that was currently based on pay per title. Sales Promotion, Netflix advertises online as well as traditional media such as Television and magazines. As the growth of broadband throughout the United States Netflix was able to leverage this new infrastructure and offer instant streaming of movies to its subscribers. With the success of Netflix currently holding an estimated 61% of the online streaming market share other Competitors such as amazon have entered the market to compete. Netflix is able to benefit by creating the online streaming model as they extend a flat fee per month for subscribers to have access to their streaming library. Netflix has applications that allow a lot of networked devices such as smartphones, game consoles and tablets to be able to allow subscribers to access movies anytime they wish all they require is a stable internet connection. As Netflix progresses they have entered the markets been able to gain market share from many companies and become close a monopoly in their offerings of service, over time they have to adapt to competition from other companies...
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...Washington. It is considered to be the world’s largest online retailer. Amazon has separate retail websites for the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan and China. They also have international shipping of its products to other countries. Throughout the 1990s, the popularity of the Internet and World Wide Web swept across the world, and personal computers in most businesses and households got hooked up in some form or another to Internet providers and Web browser software. As use of the Internet became more prevalent in society, companies began looking to the Web as a new avenue for commerce. Selling products over the Internet offered a variety of choices and opportunities. One of the pioneers of e-commerce was Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. In 1994, Bezos left his job as vice-president of the Wall Street firm D.E. Shaw, moved to Seattle, and began to work out a business plan for what would become Amazon.com. After reading a report that projected annual Web growth at 2,300 percent, Bezos drew up a list of 20 products that could be sold on the Internet. He narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. Bezos eventually decided that his venture would sell books over the Web, due to the large worldwide market for literature, the low price that could be offered for books, and the tremendous selection of titles that were available in print. He...
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...Amazon Evolution Amazon is a Fortune 500 company and is the global leader in e-commerce. They have expanded significantly their product offerings, international sites, worldwide network of fulfillment and customer service centers. Amazon offers everything from books and electronics to tennis rackets and diamond jewelry. Technological innovation has driven the growth of Amazon, offering customers more types of products, the luxury of convenience, and even lower prices. Big-name retailers work with Amazon Services to power their e-commerce offerings from end-to-end, including technology services, merchandising, customer service, and order fulfillment. Other branded merchants also leverage Amazon as an incremental sales channel for their new merchandise; enabling to find products from top retailers across the Amazon site. Amazon has come along way from its humble beginning; their evolving with a mission to create new technologies, expand into more geographies and continue to improve the lives of shoppers and sellers around the world. With evolution within a company comes change; these changes generally stem from the company’s core platform, competition, and business in general. Amazon has been very successful in all of their accomplishments; with all of these accomplishments Amazon is trying to evolve. Amazon is expanding the possibilities in a variety of businesses ventures; Amazon is venturing toward a more a web-based search engine and service provider instead...
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...Amazon: Strategic Planning FIN/370 January 13, 2014 Christopher Hernandez Strategic Planning Initiative Amazon.com’s strategy is to service consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators through a website that provides conveniences, competitive pricing, and product selections (Amazon, 2013). This strategy has help to build Amazon into an online provider that services a domestic and international market. This paper will discuss the strategic planning initiative of Amazon.com, risks associated with the initiative, and how it affects the organization’s financial planning. Consumers and Sellers Amazon’s website allows consumers to purchase products from dozens of categories from Amazon.com and third party sellers. The consumer can make price comparisons from one location (online) instead of searching different big box and other department stores. Amazon strives to offer customers the lowest possible prices for products and low shipping costs through memberships with Amazon Prime. The company continues to improve operating efficiencies so prices can remain low for consumers. “The purchasing experience is easy-to-use, functional, fast and reliable fulfillment, and timely customer service” (Amazon, 2013). Sellers are able to sell products on the Amazon’s website along with their own branded websites while fulfilling the orders through Amazon. Amazon does not keep a record of the transactions, though the seller pays a fixed fee, revenue share fee, per-unit activity...
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...1. What does it means to have the mission, “the earth most customer-centric company”? How well is Amazon achieving this mission? The concept of customer-centric and its benefits has been discussed for more than 50 years. Drucker (1954) wrote in his book, The Practise of Management, that “it is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper.” Levitt (1960) proposed that firms should not focus on selling but rather on fulfilling customer needs. Gavan ( 2012) further elaborate that customer centricity doesn’t mean doing everything customers want. It means focusing on what they value most, in line with overall business strategy and brand promise. For example, the most important thing for a budget airline customer is price. While passengers might like extra leg room, they don’t want it at the expense of low airfares. Danish (2006) summarised the characteristic of an organisation with customer-centric as below:- Basic Philosophy | Serve customers; all decisions start with the customer and opportunities for advantage | Business Relationship | Relationship Oriented | Product Positioning | Serve customers; all decisions start with the customer and opportunities for advantage | Organizational Structure | Customer segment centers, customer relationship managers, customer segment sales team | Organizational Focus | Externally focused, customer relationship development, profitability through customer loyalty; employees are customer...
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...1. Amazon Evolution Ruth A Whaley XBIS/219 April 14, 2013 Caryl Rahn 2. A Princeton graduate’s idea, in July 1995, introducing the World Wide Web launched Amazon.com. Amazon.com was originally to offer a larger array of books over the Internet. As of today, Amazon is still one of the companies who offer online reading materials. After remaining near the top of online sales for so long, there now seems to be a question of whether or not Amazon is steering in a different direction from what its core competency was. Amazon has seen their operating cost margins to be less than that of Wal-Mart. Amazon has watched its profits dwindle away. With seeing the losses in revenue Amazon has started moving away from its core they are becoming an E-commerce titan by renting out their infrastructure. Amazon is going forth in a way to make more profit for the company by using only ten percent of its total capability at any one-time. Amazon has decided to offer a variety of services from computing and storage to other companies for a price. Providing these services will bring revenue into the company while helping other companies who do not have this type of capabilities. Amazon.com has three components which make up their database. Simple Storage Services (S3) Amazon set a price of fifteen cents per gig per month for companies to store their data and apps on the Amazon disk drives. The second component is the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and they rent processing...
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...Conclusion Amazon is a revolutionary e-marketplace that is both world-renowned and extremely efficient. Amazon has gone from a small company run out of a garage, to a Fortune 100 company run all over the world. Amazon fulfills their mission statement every day by being a customer-centric company that offers over 200 million products at the lowest prices possible. Amazon is a very Background image of page 3 innovative company that creates and manufactures many products. They are always expanding and trying to create new ways to make their company and the lives of their customers better. Amazon’s biggest competition as an e-marketplace is eBay. Amazon currently leads this market by having a more organized, effective, professional, and easy to use website. Furthermore, Amazon’s brand personality is that they are a fast, friendly, innovative company that can be trusted. All of these traits make Amazon the website where most customers choose to do their shopping. Also, Amazon makes their customers their top priority and successfully appeals to their values, knowledge, and interests. Amazon’s two loyalty programs of Amazon Prime and Amazon Visa Rewards Card provide many benefits to their members and make shopping on their website quick and easy. Overall, Amazon has developed into one of the most important and successful companies in the world today. Background image of page 4 Porter’s Five Forces analysis In order to get a broader picture of the competitive structure of Amazon...
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...Differentiation and Two Part Pricing Strategy of Amazon By: Sonal Uban Amazon.com is an American international e-commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest online retailer[1] that started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling furniture, food, toys, and jewelry among other things. [2] The company also produces the popular Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire tablet computer—and is a major provider of cloud computing services. [3] Amazon is considered the fourth most successful startup company of all time by market capitalization, revenue, growth and cultural impact.[4] Amazon’s e-commerce strategy is multi-level. In its annual summary, Amazon stresses that “It believes the main competitive factors in its market segments include selection, price, availability, convenience, information, discovery, brand recognition, personalized services, accessibility, customer service, reliability, speed of fulfillment, ease of use, and ability to adapt to changing conditions, as well as our customers’ overall experience and trust in transactions with us and facilitated by us on behalf of third-party sellers”. [5] The key to realizing and achieving all these factors lie in Amazons strategy. This paper will explore how Amazon is employing price discrimination and two- part pricing system as its strategy to realize its goals on profit. Background In order to maximize their revenue, Amazon has to first learn about the reservation...
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...Sharhonda Dillard January 29 ,2012 MKT 506 Dr. C Assignment 2 Amazon 1 Amazon.com ABSTRACT What is Amazon.com, Inc.? Amazon is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company, which is the largest online retailer, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc., as of January 2010. I f I to say what I think of Amazon. I would say the following: * An online mall where it enables vendors to sell within the Amazon experience * A retailer where they sell goods they stock and ship * A brand in itself representing the bench mark for online shopping (from product research to purchase) * A destination site (start all your shopping here) * A technology provider of cloud computing? * A technology provider that can run your online store for you Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994 and launched it online in 1995 as Cadabra.com. It started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, CD, MP3 downloads, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, and toys. Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and China. It also provides international shipping to certain countries for some of its products. A 2009 survey found that Amazon was the UK's favorite music and video retailer, and third overall retailer.(oppapers.com) Amazon company began as an online bookstore; while the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores...
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...customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as books, movies, music, games, digital downloads, electronic and computers. Amazon Web service provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. The company maintains a staff of programmers, editors, executive and all-around book lovers. (Amazon.com, 1995). Team A will address the core competency of Amazon.com, their competition; the uses of the Amazon.com database, and describe how Amazon.com uses e-business and e-commerce for B2B and B2C. Core Competency Based on the information and evidence Amazon.com is moving away from its core competency from Book Seller to Service Provider. The on-line retailer has decided to provide a series of computing, storage, and other services that make its infrastructure available to companies and individuals to help them run the technical and logistical parts of their business. The three services Amazon.com provides are: • Simple Storage Service (S3) - Charge 15 cents per gigabyte data and applications on Amazon disk drives. • Elastic (EC2) - Amazon rents out processing power, starting at 10 cents per hour for the equivalent of one basic server. • The Mechanical Turk Service- combine processing power with networks of real people who are...
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