...amazon global fullfilment strategyAmazon.com Supply Chain This area of the paper focuses on Amazon.com's supply chain and how it supports their business in the internet retailing environment. First, we have discussed Amazon.com's different operating models and explained the different supply chains that support those business models. After the business and supply chain models are defined we have discussed Amazon.com's supply chain network, inventory segmentation strategies, order sourcing decisions, overall replenishment and fulfillment process flows, intra-warehouse process flows, and transportation policies. This report analyzes the overall Amazon.com supply chain for United States distribution with a specific emphasis on the Media product segment. Amazon.com US Retail Product Segment Books, CDs, and DVDs and magazine subscriptions comprise the media product line at Amazon.com (Amazon.com 2002 Annual Report). Amazon.com began as an online bookseller and its first product line expansions were music and movies. As a result, the Media segment comprises a large percentage of Amazon.com overall revenues. In 2004, Media accounts for 74% of all revenues. Within the US, the Media segment accounts for 67% of all revenues. In dollar terms, the Media segment in the US generated $2.6 billion in revenue in 2004, compared 115 to $3.8 billion generated across all segments in the US (Amazon.com 2004 10-K Report). The pie chart below shows the breakout of revenue percentages by product and...
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...Amazon.com: An E-Commerce Retailer A case report prepared for MG 495 Business Policy Fall ! 2014 Amanda Ransdell August 23, 2014 AMAZON.COM: AN E-COMMERCE RETAILER I. INTRODUCTION Amazon.com is one of the most prominent names in the e-commerce sector and has been for many years. In order to stay relevant in an ever-expanding market, Amazon.com has to continue to evolve. A. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Amazon.com wants to expand to keep up with the growing online marketplace. Their goal is to expand the product selection while controlling costs. They have two options to choose from to continue expanding their business one is to expand their business in online auctions. Because of the continued need for an intermediary in these types of transactions, Amazon.com would be able to market this additional service to both its current customer base, through the use of personalized emails, and to new customers through a general advertising campaign, including television and print ads. There second option was to develop and implement a business-to-business (B2B) exchange for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to use. Because the largest percentage of e-commerce sales resulted from transactions conducted on 13213 exchanges, this opened up a large potential market for Amazon.com to expand into. 2. My solution is to create the B2B exchanges, as it seems the most likely to provide the kind of expansion that Amazon.com is looking for while still...
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...Current State of Amazon.com’s digital engine based SCM Amazon.com sells almost all products you would buy online: beauty supplies, clothing, books, CDs, computers, TVs, and so on. The number of products that Amazon.com is currently selling on its website is countless via its large supply chain network. To handle this extensive range of products, Amazon.com not only uses the direct Amazon-to-buyer approach, but also employs the multi-leveled e-commerce strategy. This multi-leveled e-commerce strategy allows Amazon.com to have large supply chain network by letting almost anyone sell almost anything by using Amazon.com’s platform. Thus, individuals, small companies, and big retail companies can all be part of Amazon.com’s supply chain. It can be considered the “ultimate hub’ for selling merchandise on the web (“How Amazon Works”). Technical and Economic Aspects of Amazon.com SCM Amazon.com uses a digital engine to support the supply chain of unlimited inventory and categories, including digital goods, in worldwide market with real-time optimization. Therefore, it resolves any limitations that physical businesses might encounter. The digital engine processes every information and data at high speed (“Amazon.com: the Hidden Empire”). As soon as customers search products, it provides various options ranging from cheapest options to specific options that customers want. Once customers places orders, digital engine quickly processes order information and transfers information to its...
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...Envisioned by its company founder and CEO Jeff Bezos since 1994 as "Earth's most customer-centric company" Amazon.com today, with more than 17 million customers and over a billion and a half dollars in annual sales, stands as the world’s largest E-commerce E-tailer. Named after the Amazon River, one of the largest and most exotic rivers in the world, Amazon.com started as an online bookstore but quickly diversified its selling efforts to DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, and toys with the aim, as implied by its logo “A to Z with a smile,” to attain customer satisfaction and carry every product from A to Z. Although it was a slow starter, not showing a profit for the first five years, and enduring the dot-com burst, Amazon.com persevered and now profitable it is recognized as having popularized online shopping (Schneider, 2011). Without any experience in the business of selling books, Jeff Bezos realized that the books had a great potential shipping profile for online sales. Always believing in the economic network effects, he decided to setup his company in Seattle, WA, very close to the largest book distribution warehouse and talented computer programmers in the U.S. According to a quote that Bezos said in an article publicized in U.S. News, “While we're crossing the desert, may we be thirsty, but we sincerely believe there’s an oasis on the other side" (Jeff Bezos, 2008, "Living on the Edge, "para. 6), Bezos always...
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...Comparing Two Similar Businesses: Amazon.com & Borders Books Strayer University Bus 302 – Management Concepts October 31, 2011 Envisioned by its company founder and CEO Jeff Bezos since 1994 as "Earth's most customer-centric company" Amazon.com today, with more than 17 million customers and over a billion and a half dollars in annual sales, stands as the world’s largest E-commerce E-tailer. Named after the Amazon River, one of the largest and most exotic rivers in the world, Amazon.com started as an online bookstore but quickly diversified its selling efforts to DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, and toys with the aim, as implied by its logo “A to Z with a smile,” to attain customer satisfaction and carry every product from A to Z. Although it was a slow starter, not showing a profit for the first five years, and enduring the dot-com burst, Amazon.com persevered and now profitable it is recognized as having popularized online shopping (Schneider, 2011). Without any experience in the business of selling books, Jeff Bezos realized that the books had a great potential shipping profile for online sales. Always believing in the economic network effects, he decided to setup his company in Seattle, WA, very close to the largest book distribution warehouse and talented computer programmers in the U.S. According to a quote that Bezos said in an article publicized in U.S. News, “While we're crossing...
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...Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations UC Irvine Title: Competing in Book Retailing: The Case of Amazon.com Author: Shrikhande, Aarti; Gurbaxani, Viijay Publication Date: 11-01-1999 Series: I.T. in Business Publication Info: I.T. in Business, Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations, UC Irvine Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/67p057vv Citation: Shrikhande, Aarti, & Gurbaxani, Viijay. (1999). Competing in Book Retailing: The Case of Amazon.com. UC Irvine: Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/67p057vv eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. COMPETING IN CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANIZATIONS University of California, Irvine 3200 Berkeley Place Irvine, California 92697-4650 and Graduate School of Management AUTHORS: Aarti Shrikhande and Vijay Gurbaxani BOOK RETAILING: THE CASE OF AMAZON.COM NOVEMBER 1999 Acknowledgement: This research has been supported by grants from the CISE/IIS/CSS Division of the U.S. National Science Foundation and the NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (CISE/EEC) to the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO) at the University of California, Irvine. Industry sponsors include: ATL Products, the Boeing Company, Bristol-Myers...
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...The Internet Business Review Issue 1 – October 2004 THE IMPACT OF E-COMMERCE INDUSTRY TURMOIL ON AMAZON.COM: A STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE Russell Casey - Clayton State University, USA William Carroll - University of Phoenix, USA Edited by Faith W. Smalls Abstract Internet retailers face intense competition in their quest to gain market share due to the large number of competitors, ease of entry, low switching costs and the strength of existing multi-channel retailers. To survive, it is critical that online retailers create a sustainable competitive advantage in their e-commerce strategy and plan for long-term strategic positioning. The article uses a case study analysis of Amazon.com's strategy to develop an understanding of the e-commerce competitive environment and the importance of building a sustainable competitive environment to create value for the firm, its customers, and its shareholders. © 2004 The Internet Business Review The Internet Business Review Issue 1 – October 2004 Introduction Is the Internet a leech that sucks a company’s assets dry? Many investors, entrepreneurs, and managers pondered this billion-dollar question as hundreds of dotcoms collapsed over the last two years. Companies, such as Boo.com, Etoys, Onsale, @home, and Webvan, are extinct and many more cling to existence. The dreams of consumers, shareholders and other stakeholders have been shattered. From their inception, these dotcoms were going to revolutionize the world and...
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...Barnes & Noble Vs. Amazon To attain a competitive advantage over Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble needs to develop a proper strategy and implement a successful marketing plan. SITUATION ANALYSIS Barnes & Noble first must consider the issues and problems facing their company, and then perform an opportunity analysis to determine their strengths and weaknesses in relation to their customers, competitors, and company capabilities. In regards to the main concerns of Barnes & Noble, the company needs to worry about the uncertainties associated with the expected rapid growth of the Internet, the changing profile of Internet users, increased competition and indeterminate future developments in electronic retailing from publishers, wholesalers, and retailers, and intense price competition. By 2000, more than 80 million users will be on the World Wide Web, with an increase in females and a broader spectrum of education levels and age, changing the market demographics. Additionally, some book publishers, namely Simon & Schuster and Bertelsmann, have expanded online, while the national leading wholesaler, Ingram, is developing a website where wholesalers could ship directly to consumers. In the meantime, small publishers and universities have started to publish directly on the Web, avoiding print versions completely and thereby challenging the posterity of conventional books. Within the Barnes & Noble Corporation, their smaller traditional bookstores such...
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...In 1994, a 29 yr old financial analyst and fund manager named Jeff Bezos became intrigued by the rapid growth of the internet. Looking for a way to capitalize on this hot new marketing tool, he made a list of 20 products that might sell well on the internet. After some intense analysis, he determined that books were at the top of that list. Although Bezos liked the name Abracadabra, he decided to call his online bookshop AMAZON.COM. Today, Amazon.com has more than 40 million customers and sells billions of dollars worth of all types of merchandises. When he started, Bezos had no experience in book selling business, but he realized that books had an ideal shipping profile for online sales. He believed that many customers would be willing to buy books without inspecting them in person and that books could be impulse purchase items if properly promoted on a website. By accepting orders on its website, Bezos believed that Amazon.com could reduce transaction cost in the sale to the customer. More than 4 million book titles are in print at any one time throughout the world, and more than one million of those are in English. However, the largest physical bookstore cannot stock more than 2, 00,000 books and carries even fewer titles because bookstores stock more than one copy of each title. Having a wide selection was important because Bezos believed it would help create a network economic effect. People would visit Amazon.com whenever they wanted to buy a book because it would be...
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...mission statement affirms that its organization will always strive to appeal to the needs of their consumers, while encouraging new ideas and reaching beyond what they already know. According to Cornell University’s HR Spectrum, Amazon’s mission statement states: “Our HR mission has been quite simple: to find, grow, and keep the Earth’s best talents. Rather than be bound by a set of organizational competencies--which might help an organization duplicate its current successes but can ultimately be self-limiting--at Amazon, we stay focused on customer need and develop the new competencies that we think are needed to adapt to changing needs, that has helped us stay innovative, reaching beyond what we already know” (Cornell University, 2012). Amazon.com’s CEO, Jeff Bezo wanted his employees to be invested in the company, that means being 100% committed to the company and wanting success for everyone, not just themselves. The President of Human Resources, Tony Galbato, along with Bezo has a lot of faith in the company and its employees stating, “We have lots of smart people with lots of positive energy, driven by the need to build and continually improve the customer experience” (Cornell University, 2012). That seems to be the trend with Amazon; taking care of its customers and offering the best possible quality without the additional cost. To promote innovation within the company, Bezo relies on a group of skilled HR professionals to find the right individuals for the job. They focus...
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...1. Review of Amazon’s strategy between 2007 and 2009 Strategic analysis Profiling the business: ➢ Mission: Amazon’s mission is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible price[1]. ➢ Product/service analysis: Since the establishment of Amazon, new products has been kept adding into the original book category and Amazon has moved further to provide service. There are three product categories in Amazon, media category, electronic and general merchandise category and other category like Amazon web service and Amazon Enterprise Solution. This means you can buy almost everything from Amazon. ➢ Sales and gross profit analysis: The net sales growth of Amazon in year 2007 and 2008 was in average 30% and the total sales in 2008 was $19166m. In the same time, the gross profit grew from $3353m in 2007 to $4270 in 2008. Actually, both the sales and profits grew quickly since 2001 and they seemed to grow at a quicker way. External environment analysis ➢ Opportunities and threats: • Opportunities: to further improve the speed of delivery; international expansion in emerging markets such as China and India; extension of brands into new areas; through acquisitions and partnership to consolidate Amazon’s technological capability. • Threats: unexpected changes in regulatory requirements both U.S. and abroad ( take taxes policies...
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...groceries. • Separate websites to serve Canada, UK, Germany, Austria, France, China and Japan. Gross sales have reached almost $ 50B at the end of 2011 with a net income after tax of $ 556M. Amazon.Com’s Competitive Advantage Capital Efficiency – It does not have retail stores and limits its capital investment to its headquarters and warehouses. It receives payments from its customers on an average of 17 days before it has to pay its suppliers. Inventory Velocity – Averages 16.5 times per year. Technology - Uses information technology to execute supply chain on a large scale to realize economies of scale making its gains in capital efficiency and inventory velocity possible. • Run its warehouses as efficiently as possible. It is so high tech that its ERP has complex algorithms that can analyze relationships among the items customers purchase to find groupings that can be located in the same warehouse, thus reducing shipping costs. Warehouse operating costs has dropped from 20% of revenue to less than 10%. • Optimizes delivery performance and enhances service reputation that minimizes distribution mistakes. • Offers its retailing and supply chain management services to more than 1.1M other retailers both large and small. Amazon.Com’s Competitive Advantage • The heart of Amazon.Com’s business model is information technology. It has been investing an average of 7% of its sales. • Some argue that Amazon has built “a stack of software on which thousands or millions of others...
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...Subject: E-logistics and International Supply Chain Management. Topic: How to use internet to support logistic activities? Abstract: Now a day’s, many companies are adopting the usage of internet technologies to improve the effectiveness of the logistic activities. This paper aims to investigate the use of internet technologies at Amazon and how it manages its logistic activities. Keywords: Internet, logistic activities, E-logistics, E-commerce. Introduction: Internet connects entities to global market place. It is a computer to computer communication. The use of internet affects the success of the companies and help in developing e-logistic activities. It has a major impact on information exchange of the companies has it acts as a communication channel with which business transactions are made fast. The growing application of Internet-based systems like Enterprise Resource Planning (e-ERP); Maintenance, Repair and Operations (e-MRO); Materials Requirements Planning (e-MRP); Electronic Data Interchange (e-EDI); e-procurement and e-auctions in various parts of the world has shown that the Internet can help to provide efficiency in supply chain activities to improve the competitiveness of the companies involved (Bendoly and Schoenherr (2005); Davila et al.,(2003); Hartley et al.,(2004); Kheng and Al-Hawamdeh (2002); Muffatto and Payaro (2004); Paterson (2005); Presutti (2003); Puschmann and Alt (2005); Singer (2003); and Yang et al.,(2007)). Amazon.com: Amazon was...
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...Assignment #2: Amazon.Com’s E-Business Model Je’neen A. Wilson, B.S. The Business Enterprise – BUS508 Strayer University – White Marsh Prof. A. Kobina Armoo Has Amazon Lost Its Identity? Amazon.com is a famous Internet retail company in E-commerce. Its business includes B2B and B2C. It opened its business in July 1996. Today, Amazon.com has expanded its business in more than two hundred and twenty countries and this company sells various products like electronics, books, music, DVD, House wares, PCs and cars (Amazon.com Announces 4th Quarter Profit 2002). It is the biggest retail store in E-commerce. Even though Amazon.com owns these accolades, this company is struggling to survive. Amazon.com had a $19 billion market value before its stock prices decreased from $75.25 to $9.25 (German, 2001). The problem is that Amazon still has not made real profits since it opened. How to help Amazon.com keep standing on the stage? If Amazon.com wants to survive in E-business and start making real profits, Amazon.com should merge with other retail companies, operate a new E-business strategy, and rebuild its financial structure. Business strategies and activities play a very crucial role in the future development of the organization. These strategies become more important, in case of e-business organization such as Amazon. Every organization uses different business strategies in order to remain in business. Some adopt customer- centric strategies; some uses strategies to maximize...
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...Unit Outline* | TRLO8506| Supply Chain Management| | | D4B-OFFShanghai| | Dr Min Qiu| Business School www.business.uwa.edu.au * This Unit Outline should be read in conjunction with the Business School Unit Outline Supplement available on the Current Students web site http://www.business.uwa.edu.au/students TRLO8506/Shanghai/MQ/15.04.11. | | All material reproduced herein has been copied in accordance with and pursuant to a statutory licence administered by Copyright Agency Limited (CAL), granted to the University of Western Australia pursuant to Part VB of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth).Copying of this material by students, except for fair dealing purposes under the Copyright Act, is prohibited. For the purposes of this fair dealing exception, students should be aware that the rule allowing copying, for fair dealing purposes, of 10% of the work, or one chapter/article, applies to the original work from which the excerpt in this course material was taken, and not to the course material itself.| © The University of Western Australia 2011| UNIT DESCRIPTION Introduction Welcome to the study of supply chain management. The unit and the instructional material have been developed to cover a wide range of issues in supply chain management, which lays a foundation to study specific topics or techniques of logistics and supply chain in depth. The objective of the unit is to enable students to achieve an understanding of the terms, concepts,...
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