...S. 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...
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...Case Study 10. Learning from Amazon’s culture of metrics Questions 1.By referring to the case study, Amazon’s website for your country and yourexperience of Amazon offline communications, evaluate how well Amazon communicate their core proposition and promotional offers. Worldwide, the proposition is summarised by the well-known brand identity, which features ‘from A toZ’ suggesting the range of products and breadth within categories. Amazon used to refer to itself asthe world's largest bookstore.In the article, the following sentence gives an idea of the different aspects of the custom valueproposition to watch out for.‘It believes the main competitive factors in its market segments include ‘‘selection, price, availability,convenience, information, discovery, brand recognition, personalised services, accessibility, customer service, reliability, speed of fulfilment, ease of use and ability to adapt to changing conditions, as wellas our customers’’ overall experience and trust in transactions with us and facilitated by us on behalf of third-party sellers’.Googling Amazon will show the different propositions explained in your region.For Amazon US, the proposition is clearest – the listing in Google states: Amazon.com Books: New & used textbooks, biographies, children's Online shopping from the earth'sbiggest selection of books, magazines, music, DVDs, videos, electronics, computers, software,apparel & accessories, shoes and for books. Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics...
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...Question 1 According to Campling, Poole, Wiesner, Ang, Chan and Tan (2007), programmed decisions can be defined as decisions which “apply solutions from past experience to a routine problem”. Thus, programmed decisions can also be termed ‘routine decisions’ where managers can usually plan them in advance and implement them when needed. On the other hand, non-programmed decisions are decisions that “apply specific solutions crafted for a unique problem” (Campling et al., 2007). These decisions are made in response to situations that are unique, are poorly defined and largely unstructured. Campling and his colleagues (2007) also added that it is important for the manager to make effective non-programmed decisions especially when there is a crisis i.e. an unexpected problem that leads to disaster. Looking back at the given case study, the decision faced by Greyhound executives is obviously a non-programmed decision. Firstly, the situation faced by Greyhound Lines is present with ambiguous problems as well as insufficient and uncertain information. This fact had further assured that there must be creative and non-programmed decision. Secondly, the decision made is definitely not any routine, programmed decision which is familiar and straightforward. The reorganization plan does not base on past experience as the problems were unanticipated and are dealt with only after they occurred. In addition, it also influenced many parts of the Greyhound Lines’ structure and functions. Thus...
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...Inside Amazon’s Idea 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...
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...Summary 2- The Snooks family This story is about the family Snooks. Mr. and Mrs. Snooks are going to bed. Mrs. Snooks ask Mr. Snooks if he could blow the candle out. But he can only blow by putting his under lip over his upper lip. So his breath went up instead of blowing out the candle flame. So Mrs. Snooks get up from the bed to blow the candle out. But she can only blow by putting her upper lip over her under lip. So her breath went down to the floor. So Mrs. Snooks called her son John to come and blow out the candle. He came. John could only blow out of the right corner of his mouth. So his breath hit the wall of the room instead of the candle. So they all called for his sister, little Ann. She came. Little Ann could only blow out of the left side of her mouth. So her breath hit the wall instead of the candle. Suddenly they heard a heavy steady tread coming along the pavement. It was a policeman. Mrs. Snooks ask the policeman if he can blow out the candle. The policeman came. He came into the room were Mr. Snooks, Mrs. Snooks, John and little Ann were standing around the candle they wanted to blow out. And just with a little puff, the policeman blow out the candle at first time. All in the family thanked him. The policeman turned around and went down the stairs. “Just a moment, you musn`t go down the stairs in the dark” said Mr. Snooks. He lit the candle again. The policeman went out the door and Mr. Snooks went up to go to bed. “Would you blow out the candle?” said...
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...Introduction This report conducts External Analysis for Amazon, which includes macro and micro factors, Strategic Analysis, consisting of Porter's 5-force model, SWOT analysis and Marketing Mix, which conclude 7Ps, in order to assist Amazon in extending into a new online service, a social platform named `Amazon Book Club`. Part A: External Analysis 1. The Macro environment 1.1 Economic In recent years after economics crisis, global economy has been gradually improved. GDP, as a measure of a countries’ economy, has been increased in a stable pace in America [1]. At the same time, according to the data from People’s Daily Online, China’s household disposable income reached 20167 yuan in 2014, 8.0 percent increase compared with 2013 [2]. Take China as an example, ‘shopping online’ becomes the hot words in recent years. As it indicates in the chart [3], the scale of the E-commerce market extends gradually. All these figures indicate that people are more capable to purchase and attach more importance to the quality of life. Amazon, in the last 18 months, undoubtedly benefited from this tendency. For example, in the first Chinese ‘shopping overseas festival’ beginning on 28th, November in 2014, the sale increased by 24 times compared with the week before it [4]. 1.2 Political a. Governments’ policies will influence market structure and behavior. For example...
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...Definitions Paper Stephanie Martinez OI/361 September 6, 2011 Dr. Baron Smith Definitions Innovation, design and creativity in businesses today are crucial in keeping our competitive edge. Utilizing creative people and their ideas allows us to move forward in any area of industry. I will define each concept in their business implications, and compare and contrast all three. Creativity is explained by the text Managing Innovation (2003) “creativity is not something where someone who has never worked in that field suddenly gets this marvelous idea. Creativity is relating a concept to a particular body of knowledge. The existing body of knowledge is as vital as the novel idea and really creative people spend years and years acquiring and refining their knowledge base-be it music mathematics, arts, sculpture or design” (pg1). Creative people have certain traits and personalities. Having a team of creative people is important because one person may not have all the needed traits. Creative Intelligence (2004) supported the idea that “personality is a major factor contributing to the success of productive creative people. Identified are the following key personality attributes that contribute to creativity; being imaginative, having insight or intuition, being open and perceptive, being willing to take risks, and having a high tolerance for ambiguity”. Innovation is defined in the textbook Managing Innovation (2003) as creativity and implementation combined. Creativity...
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...Applying Information Security and SDLC to Business Team Names Here BIS/320 Date Applying Information Security and SDLC to Business Amazon.com - Bookstore Amazon.com is known as one of the largest retail online stores in the world. Of course this online retail store was not always the largest and had a shaky slow start because the online layout was not eye-catching. In 1994, Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon.com started his business in his garage in Washington State selling books. However, in 1994, Nick Hanauer took an interest in Bezos business and invested $40,000, and in 1995 Tom Alburg invested $100,000 to join this venture. After receiving these investments Bezos decided to create a website that would be more appealing to customers and hoped to get his business to take off. Over the next three years Amazon increase in book sales, which amazed Bezos because after an analysis was completed he was shocked to find out outside of local customers who were purchasing books from Amazons but customers around the world. In 1997, Amazon reached revenue in the amount of $15.7 million. By 1998, Amazon was starting to show signs of success when Bezos started listing new products for the customers could purchase online (Amazon.com Mission Statement, 2012). Vision and Mission - The mission statement for Amazon.com success is centered on their customers and without their customers Amazon would not exist. Although customers...
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...Amazon.com 1. How would you define Amazon’s industry? What difficulties do you encounter identifying primary competitors and key lines of business? Amazons primary industry is electronic commerce. At its core Amazon is an electronic commerce retailer. But over the years the brand has developed into something grander. Originally the company started out as an online bookstore but now has diversified its inventory to include dvds, software, video games, electronics, furniture, apparel, food, toys, and jewelry. Amazon has also become a producer of their own brand of consumer electronics, most notably their line of Kindle e-book readers, Fire Tablets, Fire TV, Fire phone, and is now a leading provider of cloud computing services. Now Amazon is starting to introduce a new service called Amazon Fresh. Amazon Fresh will bring the grocery shopping experience into the comfort of your home. The customer will be able to order his or her groceries through Amazon and have them delivered the very same day. Fast and convenient, no longer will one have to make the tedious trek out to the supermarket in order to load up on food. The difficulty in identifying a primary competitor is the fact that no company comes close to doing everything that Amazon does. Sure there are plenty of companies that specialize in selling some of the items that are found on Amazon.com, but nowhere else will you be able to order a used copy of an algebra textbook your son needs for school, a diamond pendant for your...
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...Palm, Inc. Case Analysis (The title of your paper) Karen Smith (Your name) BUSN412 Business Policy (Course name and number) January 15, 2008 (Date of submission) CASE ANALYSIS PALM, INC. COMPANY NAME: Palm, Inc. INDUSTRY: Technology Palm, Inc. COMPANY WEBSITE: (www.palm.org) COMPANY BACKGROUND: Jeff Hawkins founded Palm Computing Inc, a hand-held computer business, in 1992 which has since changed names (Yoffie & Kwak, 2001). In 1999 it changed to Palm Inc (Yahoo Finance, 2006). The case study concentrated on Jeff Hawkins, the founder of Palm, and Donna Dubinsky the former CEO of the company. These two left Palm in 1998 and founded a company called Handspring, the only company as of 2001 to take a meaningful share of the market away from Palm (Yoffie, 2001). Currently the CEO at Palm, Inc is Edward T. Colligan. For the period ending May 31, 2006, Palm had sales of $1.578 billion and a net income in excess of $336 million (Yahoo Finance, 2006). This is a significant increase over the previous two years. SWOT ANALYSIS: Strengths: The biggest strength that the case study focused on was strategy. Palm employed a judo strategy starting with the “puppy-dog ploy” (Yoffie, 2001, p. 56). This strategy allowed Palm to stay in business and stay undetected as a threat to their competition, especially Microsoft, for quite some time. Yoffie (2001) stated that strength of Palm was their “tightly integrated software and hardware design” (p. 59). Because they were so integrated...
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...Victoria (Australia)-Socio-Cultural Impacts Tourism can have many socio-cultural impacts which can have both negative and positive contribution to the Victorian state community (Hall, 2004). Based on the 10 year plan strategy policy, those impacts will be analyzed below along with some recommendations for their future implementation. The history of Victoria is very important to the locals and this is why the government is preserving it by having numerous museums and heritage site buildings. It is one of the places where Aborigines live and a lot of tourists visit Victoria to find out how these people live (Melbourne Australia, 2013). As noted in the 10 year policy document, in the year 2005 in November, the Government of Victoria released its local financial strategy called: “Moving forward: Making Provincial Victoria the Best Place to Live, Work and Invest”, which consisted of $502 million of innovative development enterprises for the following four years (2006-2010). The strategy included numerous tourism-specific commitments and initiatives which are going to have a direct influence on the industry of tourism and events of Victoria state including $9.6 million for the following three years from the Aboriginal Land and Economic Development Program to develop the use of by the Aboriginal communities. The impacts to the region that will be implemented of the strategy will be evaluated and monitored over the time of the strategy in order to ensure the maximization of the...
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...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...
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...as developing the newer kindle fire from the original kindle idea. Question 2: How do you describe the competitive risk in Amazon's enviroment as other retailers, including Walmart, strengthen their online offerings? The competitive risk that other online stores have against amazon is that on amazon, you can find multiple versions of the exact same product from different places and for carrying prices. while online shopping at walmart, you only find one product for one price if the product is sole there. i would suggest to strengthen online offerings, having special online sales for products at a lower price found anywhere else such as amazon. Question 3: Amazon is continuously looking for new markets to exploit. As CEO jeff bezos addresses the strategic opportunity of streaming video, he calls on you to advice on gaining more customers from the younger generations. Amazon's presence and technology are well established, but Bezos sees a lot of untapped potential in this market. But what decision error and traps might cause him to make the wrong decisions regarding Amazon's future moves in this regard and why? What can he do to best avoid these mistakes?...
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...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...
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...CASE PREPARATION CHART |Student Name |MARILYN CHOO LIH CHEEN | |Student ID |1092701475 | |Submission date |5/5/2015 | |Case title |Amazon.Com | |Section |AC 03 | ASSESSMENT To be filled by facilitator |Components |Scores |Scores | | |1 mark |2 marks |3 marks |4 marks | | |Submission |On-time |N/A |N/A |N/A | | | |submission | | | | | |TOTAL | | ...
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