Preview

Amazon.Com Situation Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
540 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Amazon.Com Situation Analysis
Amazon.com Situation Analysis

Jeffrey Bezos started Amazon.com in 1994, after recognizing that Internet usage was growing at a rate of 2,300 percent a year. Operating from a 400-square foot office in Seattle, Jeffrey launched Amazon.com on the Internet in July 1995. Amazon.com mission is to use the Internet to transform book buying into the fastest, easiest, and most enjoyable shopping experience possible. By the end of 1996, his firm was one of the most successful Web retailers, with revenues reaching $15.6 million. Almost overnight Amzon.com quickly became the world’s largest e-tail bookstore in the world. Amazon has continued to expand its customer base, and sales revenues have increased every year. The firm’s revenues increased from $15.7 million in 1996 to $2.76 billion in 2000 (Table 1). Today, Amazon.com is the place to find and discover anything you want to buy online. Amazon offers the Earth’s Biggest Selection of products to 29 million people in more than 160 countries across the world making them the leading online shopping site accessed via the World Wide Web.

Over past several years Amazon.com has grown and developed very rapidly. The key core processes that have lead to Amazon’s success are convenience, selection, service, and price. Convenience can best be described when Bill Gates stated that, “I buy all my books at Amazon.com because I’m busy and it’s convenient. They have a big selection, and they’ve been reliable.” With over 106 million adults purchasing books every quarter, Amazon has capitalized on the convenience of on-line ordering. The next key process for Amazon is selection. Amazon is able to offer the world’s largest selection because they are an e-tailer with virtual directories. Amazon only keeps recent publications in stock for quick order fill, but directly orders any other requested books from the publisher. This business practice allows Amazon to have low warehouse cost, and offer the largest selection of books at the same

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Amazon.com is a publicly traded worldwide online retail company founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1995 in Seattle, Washington. The company originally began as an online bookstore as Bezos felt there was a high demand for literature, and books had a low price point and a huge selection of titles available in print. Technological innovation drives the growth of Amazon.com to offer customers more types of products, more conveniently and at lower prices. Since 1995, Amazon has significantly expanded its product selection, international retail websites, and worldwide network of fulfillment and customer service centers. Today, Amazon retail websites offer everything from toys and video games to MP3 downloads and collectible items (amazon.com, 2014). Amazons business model is fairly simple; to sell various products and goods online at an affordable cost to consumers. Amazon has managed to not only achieve this business model but they have also managed to consistently expand and become the largest online retailer to date. To keep up with global demand, Amazon had to expand its products and services offered while continuing to forecast consumer’s needs. “In 2000, Amazon.com began to offer its best-of-breed e-commerce platform to other retailers and to individual sellers. Today, hundreds of thousands of world-class retail brands and individual sellers increase their sales and reach new customers by leveraging the power of the Amazon.com e-commerce platform. Partners 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 leverage Amazon.com as an incremental sales channel for their new merchandise. Over 2 million third-party sellers participate in Amazon where they offer new, used, and…

    • 891 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Bus 320 Final Paper

    • 1741 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com has become one of the largest known online stores in the world. In 1995, Amazon.com sold its first book online, which was shipped from Bezos’s garage in Bellevue, Washington (Amazon.com Mission Statement, 2012). Many may not know that Amazon.com had a slow start because their online layout was not appealing. Within a few years Bezos attracted a few investors who took interest in his venture and invested approximately $140,000. Bezos decided to use the money to create a more appealing website to attract more customers. The sales for the next three years surpassed Bezos’s expectations. After analyzing the sales data, he found that people were not only purchasing domestically, but also from around the world. Amazon.com has grown from a small company to a worldwide business in just a few short years. This rapid growth requires a company to reevaluate how it does business if it plans to expand or maintain its marketplace for the future.…

    • 1741 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Before Apple came out with the I pad, Amazon held the majority of the e-book customers. Amazon was responsible for about 90 percent of the sales of e-books. (New Zealand Herold, 2012) Because the barriers to entry into the market for an…

    • 1143 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Amazon.com, from a strategic approach, is dominating the world-wide-web. They have become the world leader in online sales of books, music, videos, movies and other products and services. Amazon knew that the Internet could be used as a distribution channel, thus reducing their supply chain relations. By making these strategic advances, Amazon was able to achieve and sustain their competitive advantage.…

    • 1370 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Jeff Bezos started Amazon, a fortune 500 company based in Seattle Washington, in 1995. Amazon offers everything from books and electronics to tennis rackets and diamond jewelry. Big name retailers now work with Amazon services to power their E-commerce offerings including Tech services, merchandising, customer service, and order fulfillment. Incorporated in 1971 as Borders Books, Borders became the nation’s second largest retailer of books, music, and other educational, informational, and entertainment products. Borders was associated with superstores catering to book and music lovers, with a wide selection of hard to find titles and tapes, and varying electronic media.…

    • 1151 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Beginning in 1994, the widely popular Amazon was just a small, unknown online bookstore. Although you wouldn’t have known it back then, but Amazon soon became the business model for online retailing (Kroenke 29). But books weren’t…

    • 1735 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    Amazon.com is an American e-commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos. Launched in 1995, Amazon.com began as an online bookstore before diversifying its product lines by adding VHS, DVD, music CDs, MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and more. Amazon has since established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, China, and Japan. Since starting out in his garage in Bellevue, Washington, Jeff Bezos has gone on to form one of the greatest ecommerce sites the internet has ever seen. (Gleick, 2014)…

    • 3136 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Amazon is a website offering numerous product categories ranging from books, to videos, to music, to technology products, to health and beauty products, to sporting goods, to automotive and plumbing products (the list goes on and on). It is like stepping into a virtual Wal-Mart with an emphasis on books, entertainment media and entertainment products. Amazon has distinguished itself as a leader especially in these categories by delivering products quickly, cheaply, and with no hassle guarantees. The site is laid out in a very intuitive way that makes it easy to understand and follow. Features like browser history which tracks what you have already looked at, one-click check out, and Prime membership which offers reduced shipping to its members have proven to be extremely effective. Perhaps the weakness of Amazon, if there is one, is that it is a website is designed for “everyone.” The actual appearance of the…

    • 958 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Amazon.com: The Brink of Bankruptcy Jeffrey Bezos, formerly a senior vice president for D. E. Shaw & Company, founded Amazon.com in 1994. D. E. Shaw is a Wall Street-based investment bank, and Mr. Bezoswas assigned to find good Internet companies in which to invest. During the summer of 1994, he stumbled across a Web site that showed the number of Internet users was growing by 2,300 percent per month. He quickly realized the vast potential of the Internet, and began putting together a list of possible products that he could sell on the World Wide Web. He eventually narrowed his list to music products and books. Although music products and books both had enormous potential, he eventually selected books because he believed that he could compete more evenly in the book segment due to the lack of a very dominant player. In contrast, the music industry had only six major record companies. These companies controlled the distribution of records and CDs and, therefore, had the potential to lock out a new business threatening the traditional record-store format. To begin his new venture, Mr. Bezosleft New York and moved to Seattle. He decided to move to Seattle for two reasons: 1) Ingram Book Group's warehouse is located near Seattle; and 2) Because of the Seattle area's reputation for computer expertise. In 1995, Amazon began selling books entirely online, operating out of a rented facility and using doors laid across sawhorses for desks. He soon was able to generate several million dollars from venture capitalists, and sales were astounding. Sales for 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999 were $0.5, $16, $147, $610 and $1,640 million respectively. Amazon's customer base has increased dramatically from 180,000 in 100 countries in 1996 to 12 million in 160 countries by mid-1999. In 1998, Amazon began to expand into other product categories. The companybegan to sell music products and videos, and within two months of these additions, Amazon became the number-one seller of…

    • 2500 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Amazon.com has a bunch of growth strategies in place. Their number one strategy is the fact that they start with the customer and work their way backwards. To them as a company they live by what all companies should live by – customer satisfaction is their number one goal. Amazon.com themselves even said that even if that makes third-party sellers angry about low-priority placements (James). Another one of their strategies is instant gratification. The way they are pursuing this strategy is by keeping up with their Kindle device that they created. Through kindles, customers can instantly buy a book, instantly download music, and instantly watch a movie on demand. With customers being able to do all this instantly, it makes them want to come back when they need more books, music, and movies.…

    • 1005 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Amazon.com has remained on top of the online retailing business despite the entrance of giants such as Barnes and Nobles and Borders. Their success is attributed to two factors; timing and continuing to…

    • 1290 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    Amazon.Com Case Study 3

    • 2696 Words
    • 11 Pages

    During 1994, a man, Jeffrey Bezos, who after completing graduation from Princeton University was hired by D.E. Shaw, a Wall Street firm. During his occupancy there he was astonished to learn an interesting statistic on the Internet. Bezos had learned that the Internet was growing at the rate of over 2300%! Bezos was no fool; he quickly decided to venture out of D.E. Shaw to create a new company. Bezos made a list of items that he could potentially sell on the Internet in which he narrowed down to books. Bezos then moved to Seattle, WA for its proximity to high tech work force as well as being in reach of large book distributors. Not only that but because of high sales tax in larger states like New York and California, Washington seemed perfect to conduct business. Initially, Bezos and his software engineers worked in a garage with desk built out of doors and held meetings at Barnes and Nobles. During this time period Bezos worked on developing funds and working with the engineers at that time website named Cadabra.com, but because of the similarities to the word cadaver Bezos renamed it to what is now named Amazon.com, after the world’s largest river. The website was officially launched in 1995 and did not take to long to became popular.…

    • 2696 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Best Essays

    Jeff Bezos is unarguably one of today’s most inspirational leaders. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1964 and attended school in Miami Palmetto. After graduating from Princeton University, with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, he worked in several jobs (Inc. 2009). In 1994, the internet was fresh in the market, and it did not incorporate commerce in its operations. As a result, he saw an opportunity for a new business network, and after doing research, he made a decision of creating a space in the internet where books could be viewed by the public. This led to the creation of Amazon in 1995. Today, Amazon is widely successful and has had a great impact on the organizational culture of internet business. Jeff Bezos is considered to be the founder of e-commerce, remains a pioneer in the industry (Inc, 2009). This paper will discuss how the culture of Amazon has changed as a result of Jeff Bezos presence; today, among many things, the public can view full book lists on Amazon, a mission that was impossible before the early 1990s.…

    • 1875 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    AmazonCaseFinal

    • 1382 Words
    • 5 Pages

    We believe that books was the optimal selection from Mr. Bezos’ original list of 20 retail categories in which he outlineds the types of products consumers will most likely want to purchase online. The sheer number of titles in existence is staggering. While even the largest superstores could stock only a few hundred thousand books, a “virtual” bookstore could offer millions of titles without carrying the extremely large number of fixed assets. This presents a clear advantage over other bookstores currently in the market. Books also lend themselves to online sales because a given published book is standard all over the world, meaning that there is little advantage to physically being in the presence of the book when making a purchase. When Amazon started doing business, there were only two main book distributors (Baker and Taylor and Ingram) in the entire U.S. making procurement a relatively easy process.…

    • 1382 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Barnes And Noble Vs Amazon

    • 2196 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Amazons’ chief business model is Internet commerce, but Barnes & Noble is moving towards this realm of commerce with the creation of the Nook. Both companies see business via handheld tablets becoming more prevalent, evident in the ever-increasing capabilities of the Nook (B&N) and Kindle Fire (Amazon). Barnes & Noble has beefed up their online presence while reducing their number of stores as well. Amazon’s vision of the future has more to do with distribution than anything else. Amazon is doing everything in their power to create a shopping experience similar to going to an actual store; including the instant gratification of receiving your purchased goods right as your purchase them. Amazon is moving towards an incredibly automated distribution channel that will reduce time to consumer through revolutionary technology. One of these technologies is drones that will fly purchased goods to a consumer’s home and drops them on the front step. Both companies understand the profit potential of the industry and are taking steps to capitalize on profit…

    • 2196 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays