MARKETING

Sources of Competitive Advantage - Amazon

Table of Contents

1.Company introduction1

iAbout Amazon1

iiMission and goals1

2.Amazon's Environment2

iExternal and competitor analysis2

iiInternal Analysis3

3.SWOT Analysis4

iStrengths5

iiWeaknesses5

iiiOpportunities5

ivThreats6

4.Conclusion6

Appendix7

Appendix 1: Porter's Five Forces analysis7

Appendix 2: PESTEL analysis8

Appendix 3: Porter's Value Chain analysis9

References14

Sources of Competitive Advantage - Amazon

Company introduction

About Amazon

Amazon.com is a world famous online retailer that is involved in the business of reselling content and merchandize obtained from third parties and manufacturers. The company is essentially a service organization that provides various web services to its valued customers. The company has signed various contracts for advertising and promotion such as co-branding credit cards and advertising over the internet.

There are two key market segments catered by Amazon. One is North America which focuses primary on the North American market for the sale of consumer products. These are sold through North American websites. The other one is the International wing. This includes the sale in international locations that give company considerable amount of business and are sold through international websites maintained by the company (Donici, 2012, p. 252). AWS consists of the North American market whereas the others cater to other parts of US, Canada and international destinations through over 23000 people. These include China, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Spain and United Kingdom.

Some of the top notch categories include electronics, computers, apparel and grocery, health and Beauty.

Mission and goals

The mission statement of the company is one of the top company mission statements for the year 2012. Amazon wants to be the number one company in the world which is most customer centric. This means that customer is at the center of whatever the company does. It wants to position itself as a company where anyone and everyone can come and find absolutely anything they want (Fernandes, 2010, p. 675). The company is very mission oriented. Mission oriented organizations are those organizations that design strategies aligned with the overall mission of the organization. This means that the each and every department has to contribute and facilitate the company in achieving its goals and objectives.

Innovation and creativity is embedded in the very culture of the organization. This means that the company is always on its toes. Some of the examples of creativity and outside the box thinking at Amazon are Frustration-Free Packaging, Environmentally Friendly Packaging, Kaizen Program, Sustainable Building Design. These innovations have been grouped under the Innovations for Our Planet umbrella and is aimed at convincing the internal and external stakeholders that Amazon is a responsible organization that believes in giving back to the society (Rao, 2006, p. 53).

Amazon understands that in today's competitive world no company can exist in isolation. Amazon is in direct competition with Penney (J.C.) Co., Inc. and Carmax Inc.

Amazon's Environment

External and competitor analysis

As far as the external environment of Amazon is concerned, the suppliers of Amazon have considerably low power. This is so because there are many suppliers out there that want to do business with Amazon. In the view of the customers, Amazon is a strategic key ...