...Machine: How Bezos Decodes the Customer Jeff Bezos is known for his customer-centric beliefs and his attention to business details. According to Anders (2013), he "is a notorious micromanager… an executive who wants to know about everything from contract details to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases”. Jeff Bezos' Amazon.com is the world's largest internet retailer of any kind reporting more than $61 billion in 2012 sales (Anders, 2013). Based on an article published by Forbes in April 2013, this work identifies some of Jeff Bezos’ leadership traits and style that have influenced him to build Amazon into one of most profitable and most admired companies in the world. The article by George Anders (2013), contributor writer for Forbes, highlights how Amazon was transformed from an online bookstore to a giant Internet retailer, Bezos’ customer-centric strategies to figure out what his 164-million customers want and not his 56,000 employees, and how Amazon manages its “culture of metrics” in order to track its performance through about 500 measurable goals. Through Jeff Bezos’ greatest accomplishment of transforming Amazon from an online bookstore to a giant Internet retailer, this author can identify Bezos’ leadership traits, such as intelligence, self-confidence, determination, and integrity, within the framework of Trait Approach. The Trait Approach suggests that organizations will work better if the people in the managerial positions have designated leadership profiles...
Words: 943 - Pages: 4
...LEADERSHIP ANALYSIS PROJECT Leadership Management Jeff Bezos PART 1: SELF-AWARENESS [pic] |Leadership Self-Assessment: Readiness (p. 12) | |Score | 81 | |Interpretation |I believe does not represent well my Leadership ability for one main reason: It does not grade | | |Humility. I believe that I could have gotten a much better score had I jotted all 5’s, and I could | | |have seem like the next Steve Jobs or Martin Luther King. However I believe that humility is one of | | |the most important attributes that cannot be measured by a simple survey. The closest way to measure | | |Leadership with humility is not to rank the 90-100 score as the highest. This should be the scoring | | |group that needs to reevaluate themselves and seek more humility. The one who would score in the 80-90| | |percentiles can understand that there is still improvement needed, but they are the closest in being a| | |better leader. A good leader always knows that there is always a way to improve, and that...
Words: 1999 - Pages: 8
...In order to spread news of Amazon's innovative experiments to not only his company, but the media and public, Jeff Bezos has taken on the spokesperson role. “...Managers in the spokesperson role share information with people outside their departments or companies.” (Williams, 12) Bezos has shared news about products such as the Kindle Fire, Amazon Fresh trucks, and more recently the possible use of airborne drones to make deliveries to Amazon Prime members. These drones are another example of how Amazon is at the forefront of technology; “Prime Air is a future delivery system from Amazon designed to safely get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial vehicles, also called drones.” (Amazon) Amazon is on the fast track...
Words: 358 - Pages: 2
...1 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Amazon and the Quest for Domination BUS 620 Managerial Marketing October 27, 2014 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Amazon !2 Amazon and the Quest for Domination With a name that has become synonymous with online-shopping, Amazon has become one of the most recognizable and influential brands in the world. Founded in 1995, Amazon has dramatically changed and expanded the options and opportunities for consumers as well as competitors. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, is not content with the status quo. “Amazon is a company that is anything but asleep. Amazon, in fact, is an eyes-wide-open army fighting--and winning--a battle that no one can map as well as its general (McCorvey, 2013).” Bezos realized that consumers desire low cost and fast delivery, and he took these consumer-driven concepts to never-before-seen heights through the implementation of fulfillment centers, Amazon Prime, and AmazonFresh. According to McCorvey, Bezos’ goal is for Amazon to create global, same-day delivery. This goal of same-day delivery is entirely possible, and Amazon is well on its way to realizing its plan. To make sense of how this plan will come to fruition, it is important to look at what brought the company to its current position, analyze Amazon’s competition, and understand how the company plans to reach the same-day delivery milestone. History Amazon’s CEO has been looking ahead from the beginning, wiring to understand the consumer...
Words: 1267 - Pages: 6
...Amazon.com Inc. CSR Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994. After hearing about the future of the Internet, he started to think of items he could sell online successfully. Bezos created a list of 20 items that he thought he could market online, and then decided his new company would sell books online. He picked books because of the worldwide demand of literature, the low price of book, and the huge number of titles available in print. Bezos’ company originated in his garage in Bellevue, Washington. After two months in business, Bezos had sold to all 50 states and over 45 countries, and sales were up to $20,000/week. When it came to naming his company, Bezos wanted something that started with an “A” so that it would one of the first companies in alphabetical order. After searching through the dictionary he settled on “Amazon” because it was a place that was “exotic and different” and that is what he wanted his store to be. He also liked Amazon because it was the biggest river in the world, and he planned to make his store the biggest in the world. In 1994, Amazon was incorporated. In July of 1995, the company sold its first book on Amazon.com. In October of 1995, the company announced itself to the public. Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, under the stock exchange symbol AMZN, at $18.00 per share. As of November 1, 2013, AMZN is up to $358.10 per stock and the highest stock was offered at $365.77. Amazon product lines now include: books...
Words: 1853 - Pages: 8
...Failure Analysis/Change Strategy Learning Team A LDR/531 Organizational Leadership October 21, 2014 Dr. Nancy Atkins Failure and Change Strategy for a Business Circuit City was one of the top selling electronic retailers in the United States. The company was based out of Richmond, Virginia started by Samuel S. Wurtzel in 1949. Some say bad real estate deals, lack of focus on being the low cost seller, mistakes with its sales force and straying from its core led to their demise in 2009. The success of Amazon has much to do with Jeff Bezos, the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). His unique combination of character traits and business strategy has driven Amazon to the top of the online retail world. In 2011, Amazon.com was posting revenues of nearly $50 billion per year (Price III, 2013). Part 1: Business Failure/Success Analysis Circuit City Objective (Carolyn Whitaker) Circuit City is dedicated to the highest quality of customer service which is done with the highest respect. With a highly praised customer service and satisfaction, it will improve our sales performance. For Circuit City to effectively sell products to customers, sales representatives will try to understand and fulfil the customers’ needs. With a highly trained team of associates, Circuit City will be successful in the long run. Circuit City Vision/Mission Statement (Carolyn Whitaker) Respect - “Our Associates are our greatest assets. We expect every Associate to demonstrate that they...
Words: 2215 - Pages: 9
...Jeffrey P.Bezos : An entrepreneur leader Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and from an early age he showed his mechanical attitude developing intense and varied scientific interests. Considering this fact, his parents sent him to a special program for gifted children, where Jeff could develop his love for gadgets (Byers, 2006). When his family moved to Florida, he discovered his ‘great passion’, computers, so he abandoned his studies in Physics and got a degree on Computer science and Electrical engineering (Sherman, 2001). After his studies, Jeff Bezos started working for Bankers Trust, and at the age of 26 he became the youngest Vice President of the company (Byers, 2006). When he noticed in 1994 that internet usage was increasing by 2300% a year (Hämäläinen & Saarinen, 2007), he started planning his next step, which was Amazon.com. Amazon made his appearance in 1995 with 3 micro stations in Bezos’ garage (Robinson, 2009) and its activity was to sell books. Today Amazon.com is one of the most preferable internet retail platform, where customers can find DVD’s, CD’s, MP3 downloads, books and toys. According to Economist (2000), Amazon.com is the most visited internet retail platform in USA and one of the top 3 in Germany, UK, France and Japan. The impact of Amazon.com Amazon.com is today the largest electronic retail worldwide (Anon., 2012). According to J. Bezos (Wired Magazine, December, 2011), Amazon is a cultural pioneer which lives to disrupt...
Words: 1967 - Pages: 8
...Introduction Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos is an American business magnate and investor. He is a technology entrepreneur who has played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and a top model for Internet sales. In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post newspaper. Background Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a teenage mother, Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen. Bezos's parents were married less than a year, and when Bezos was four years old his mother married his step-father Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant. As a child, Jeff Bezos showed an early interest in how things work, turning his parents' garage into a laboratory and rigging electrical contraptions around his house. As a teenager, his family moved to Miami where he developed a love for computers and excelled in school, becoming the valedictorian of his class. While in high school, he attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida, receiving a Silver Knight Award in 1982. In high school, he also started his first business, the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. Bezos pursued his interest in computers at Princeton University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science...
Words: 2627 - Pages: 11
...Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. For Isabella and Calista Stone When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. —Jeff Bezos, commencement speech at Princeton University, May 30, 2010 Prologue In the early 1970s, an industrious advertising executive named Julie Ray became fascinated with an unconventional public-school program for gifted children in Houston, Texas. Her son was among the first students enrolled in what would later be called the Vanguard program, which stoked creativity and independence in its students and nurtured expansive, outside-the-box thinking. Ray grew so enamored with the curriculum and the community of enthusiastic teachers and parents that she set out to research similar schools around the state with an eye toward writing a book about Texas’s fledgling gifted-education movement. A few years later, after her son had moved on to...
Words: 120163 - Pages: 481
...other less popular e-readers. Amazon changed the way consumers read books, magazines, newspapers, and even watched movies and television all on one device (Amazon, 2013a). Another subsidiary is Amazon Cloud, which is a way for consumers to store books, movies, television shows, and even music in one place without having to take up the storage on one’s personal computer or laptop (Amazon, 2013a). When this was developed and marketed by Amazon many companies jumped on the chance to go to this type of storage for their document needs instead of spending lots of money having warehouses full of documents taking up space. Now all the same documents can be saved but in a much more convenient way. Historical Perspective In 1995 a man named Jeff...
Words: 2111 - Pages: 9
...Understanding Leadership Styles resulted in massive reven&ues and sales for Amazon and a loyal customer ase. 9n spite of these recommendale efforts7 Bezos2 transactional leadership 8ualities may have argualy resulted in a stressful /or+ing environment /here employees do not feel /ell positioned to caution this e0tra ordinary leader aout his unrealistic usiness e0pansion plans. Mangalindan 4,-#6 attriutes Amazon2s huge losses regardless of revenue and sales gro/th to the company2s hunger for e0panding its already gargantuan portfolio. 9t is reasonale to assume that this is a direct result of Bezos2s /ill to e0pand y any means at a fast rate. #oncl(sion 'o sum upG Jeff Bezos is a tas+ oriented7 transactional and transformational leader.>is leadership style has resulted in Amazon eing a success story in terms of revenues7 sales and stoc+ price analysis yet lac+ing in eing a good /or+ing environment and recording a profit on the ottom line. (erhaps7 Bezos must slo/ do/n his transformational characteristics and allo/ Amazon to record profits efore e0panding it any further. Also7 it may e eneficial to the company that Bezos tones do/n his transactional leadership 8ualities in an effort to ma+e the environment friendlier and fle0ile. 6 Understanding Leadership Styles eferencesBessinger7 H. 4,-#7 July6. Amazon eports Loss espite Strong Sales Hro/th. The Wall Street Journal. etrieved online from http:II///./s=.comI*oo+7 J. 4,-##7 June6. @aceoo+7 Amazon...
Words: 461 - Pages: 2
...Lessons learned From Jeff Bezos Jeff Bezos is an excellent leader who is responsible for the rise and growth of Amazon in the world of e-commerce. One of the important lessons to learn from his leadership is that knowledge and intelligence are fundamental to become a good leader. Jeff Bezos focuses mainly on customer needs and continuously tries to enhance the customer experience, hence it took almost an year to develop the customer friendly Amazon website and another three months to test it. He is widely respected in the company for his knowledge and technical expertise. For instance, he pointed out all the key problems in a report presented to him by a supply chain manager in a matter of few minutes which surprised everyone present. One of the most important thing to have as a leader is to possess the ability and knowledge that matches your position. A leader should have the vision, courage and ability to lead the company successfully and moreover should command the respect of his employees. The key lesson to learn from Jeff Bezos is that knowledge and intelligence define a leader and before one becomes a leader he should work hard to acquire the necessary knowledge and possess the ability required to lead others. Besides a numbers of merits, there are also several areas where Jeff Bezos was an ineffective leader. Bezos not giving importance to his employees and being tough on them are some of his mistakes as a leader. It can learnt that it is very important for a leader...
Words: 407 - Pages: 2
...company that is most closely tied with the dot.com gold rush phenomenon. Since 1995 the Seattle based company has grown at a tremendous rate with revenues rising from about $150 million in 1997 to $3.1 billion in 2001. The company made its first quarterly profit of $5.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2001. However, this was dwarfed by massive cumulative operating losses. Amazon’s share price symbolizes the effects of the dot-com gold-rush: [pic] Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, a computer science and electrical engineering graduate from Princeton University. Bezos had moved to Seattle after resigning as the senior vice-president at D.E.Shaw, a Wall Street investment bank. He did not know much about the Internet. But, he came across a statistic that the Internet was growing at 2300%, which convinced him that this was a large growth opportunity. Not knowing much more, he plunged into the world of E-Commerce with no prior retailing experience. Despite this, during the early days of the Net, Jeff Bezos was one of the few people to understand the special nature of Internet Retailing and E-Commerce. Our goal is to be Earth's most customer-centric company, why? The answer is three things:The first is that customer-centric means figuring out what your customer want by asking them, then figuring out how to give it to them, and then giving it to them. That's the traditional meaning of customer-centric, and we're focused on it. The second is innovating on behalf of customers,...
Words: 1742 - Pages: 7
...largest organizations on the internet. By employing thousands of employees the organization has gained outstanding success. Customers from all over the world can purchase books, movies, and thousands of other products with just a click of a computer mouse. Amazon.com was introduced to the world in 1994 by Jeff Bezos who resided in Bellevue, Washington. “With a small investment and only one investor Mr. Bezos was able to secure a user friendly website and ship orders to 50 states and over 48 countries. During this time books were the only products that were available”. (The History of Amazon.com, 2011) “By creating a powerful community based website, customers were able to add their book reviews for all customers”. (The History of Amazon.com, 2011) In May of 1997 Amazon.com went public and by public demand the share price went from an expected $18 to $24 a share with total earnings of $54 million dollars. Within the last decade through expansion and popularity, Amazon.com opened international sites in Germany and the United Kingdom. Music and movies were added to the services and order fulfillment centers were opened in Nevada, Kansas, and Kentucky. Jeff Bezos was named the “king of cybercommerce” (The History of Amazon.com, 2011) In 2001 and 2003 respectively, one of the most popular added services was a tool that customers could use to actually look at the book and inside the book. This feature also incorporated...
Words: 1888 - Pages: 8
...movies, video games, to, clothing, and even automotive parts. Founder Jeff Bezos started selling only books on Amazon.com in 1995. Bezos shipped his goods to consumers from his garage. In 2007, Amazon made it big when it came out with the Amazon Kindle. There are over more than a million books, newspapers and magazines available for purchase on the Kindle, Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire. Bezos believes that everything takes time. Bezos makes a statement on Forbes, “Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue. At Amazon we like things to work in five to seven years. We’re willing to plant seeds, let them grow—and we’re very stubborn. We say we’re stubborn on vision and flexible on details”. The goal of Amazon is to move quickly to solidify and extend our current position while we begin to pursue the online commerce opportunities in other areas. Amazon sees substantial opportunity in the large markets they are targeting. Amazon always seeks long term and never rushes situations. They look for Market leadership because it can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital. Amazon is also successful because they believe that long-term market share is more important than short-term profits because without long-term market share there will be no long-term profits. Bezos...
Words: 597 - Pages: 3
