Amazon's success



Amazon's success

Executive Summary

Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, initially operating purely as an online book retailer. Amazon is involved in selling products directly or providing a platform for selling a wide range of products. Amazon widely believes in the approach called Bacwards working. In November 2010, Amazon launched its first new country specific web site in www.amazon.it, thereby increasing its presence in this market. Amazon.com was immediately successful and has a robust business model. In 2007, the online retailer Amazon.com began selling its e-book reader, the Kindle. Amazon set the price for all Kindle books uniformly at $9.99. According to information in Amazon.com discussion forums, 40% of sales by affiliates, which they call "Associate". Thousands of world-class retail brands and individual sellers use the Amazon.com e-commerce platform as a sales and distribution channel. Independent software developers also work on Amazon.com's applications ('Amazon Web Services'). Amazon.com has identified a target audience and created an innovative product at your service.

Introduction

Amazon is an online shopping website with one of the largest product supplies online. Amazon is involved in selling products directly or providing a platform for selling a wide range of products. The company is named after the Amazon River, which is one of the largest rivers in the world. It started as an online book store, but soon diversified and started selling CDs, DVDs, videos, computer software etc. Amazon has established itself in a number of countries such as Italy, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan and United Kingdom. It also provides shipping facilities in many countries and charges for it (Saunders, 1999).

Discussion

Management Approach

Amazon widely believes in the approach called Bacwards working. They work backwards from the customer to the idea of the product instead of moving from an idea of the product towards the customer. With this approach, they can apply specific product decisions during the development of new features or products. Amazon has managed to continue to grow in the US retail market due to its adaptability and changing online offering, which continues to attract more and more consumers. Amazon.com also achieves a great deal of its growth through the acquisition of smaller retailers. This saw the company join forces with audio book provider audible.com, the creator of the iPod Touch Lexcycle and iPhone application Stanza, which allows consumers to download e-books to read on their phones.

In 2009, Amazon acquired Zappos.com, strengthening its clothing and footwear offering. 2010 saw Amazon once again achieving growth through acquisition, with the purchase of online “deal-a-day” site woot.com. Amazon plans to let Woot continue to operate independently. Woot has a specific operating model, in that it offers a deal each day, selling an item for a specified reduced price for just 24 hours, or until the item sells out. Woot is also a wholesale distributor which sells to Amazon and other retailers. January 2011 also saw Amazon buying outright the British DVD rental company, LoveFilm, in which it had previously owned a 42% share.

Reasons for Amazon's Success

The Amazon brand has established ...