Preview

Analyzing Strengths and Weaknesses of Amazon

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
317 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Analyzing Strengths and Weaknesses of Amazon
Strengths
Amazon has proven to be a successful and profitable organization in terms of growth, with a current net income in 2008 of 663 million dollars. The company uses Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Information Technology to record customer buying habits, investing a lot of time and money researching customer trends. Doing this they are able to locate and prepare for sales estimated from previous years. A high percentage of their customers buy during the holiday season; knowing this enables Amazon to offer different promotions and selling strategies tailored to meet the customers demand and needs.

Amazon has a huge global brand and is listed as 130 on the Fortune 500 list. Amazon was one of the first companies in e-commerce; which has allowed them to hold a huge percentage of the market share. Amazon recently bought JOYO, Chin’s largest online retailer, creating an even bigger market share in China, but still left with room to grow.

Amazon’s Inventory turnover rate is phenomenal, even in the current economy. They have been able to maintain a 34 day inventory to turn over, which equals out to over 10 times a year. This is beneficial, because it allows Amazon to adjust to seasonal products and different product trends, without large amounts of excess inventory.
Adding to that; Amazon’s total debt has been decreasing year over to a low of $.67 in 2008. This means that for every $1 Amazon has $.67 in debt. This has been declining signaling company growth.

Weaknesses
Amazon has continually added new products and services to customers; and is known for their great customer service and quality products. Something for them to consider is, when adding new products or categories of products, they could damage its brand. In order to be competitive with other companies Amazon has to broaden the range of products, but cannot become a swap meet

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Amazon's initial business proposal was different they it did not expect to make a profit for four to five years. This "slow" growth caused stockholders to complain about the company not reaching profitability fast enough to justify investing in, or to even survive in the long-term. When the dot-com era grew the start of the…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • 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

    Throughout the last decade, Amazon has become one of the most sustainable companies within its industry. One of the major reasons that Amazon has been able to achieve a long term competitive advantage is by offering superior pricing power, capitalizing on a large market share and creating a well-known brand name. Through these achievements Amazon has been able to produce long term advantages that have made it difficult for other companies to duplicate. Amazon has an elite status within itself, throughout out the past decade it has both surpassed bench marks and created new ones. Amazon has set the bar so high that it would be extremely difficult for a company to reproduce their success. Amazon was first developed when e-commerce was in an infancy stage. This gave Amazon the opportunity to create and expand on the platform that we know today. It would prove to be very difficult if a similar firm were to try and duplicate the same success as Amazon. A similar firm would need to develop the credibility and reputation that Amazon has taken years to develop. Then it would need to establish a large client base that can bring together both buyers and sellers.…

    • 1349 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Capstone Project Bus599

    • 2781 Words
    • 12 Pages

    Amazon.com is an organization that offers a broad range of services to consumers and is considered an online leader of pure-plays - pure online merchants. Amazon.com was founded in July of 1995 with a mission to fully utilize the Internet to make book buying fast, easy, and all in all, a very enjoyable experience. They currently have 29 million customers in 160 different countries, making Amazon.com one of the leading online merchants. It is rated third in business-to-consumer online revenue as of June 20, 2000. Amazon.com represents the ideal e-Commerce company. It was one of the first to demonstrate the potential for "virtual" upstarts and turned the market on end - even leading the "bricks and mortar" companies.…

    • 2781 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    1. Summary statement of the problem: Even though Amazon.com implemented a viable corporate strategy by increased market share, expanded product offering, and overall sales growth, yet still faces the pressure from the stock market to continue to produce steady profits. Coming from a combination of trimmed customer confidence level and a larger unemployment rate, these two areas make the retail future of Amazon.com to seem unclear.…

    • 3537 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The basic motive behind the company was to offer wide variety of goods conveniently to the customers at low cost. The company got success and fame in its initial phase with an average sale of 20,000 dollars per week in its first two months among the 45 countries (Josh, 2009). Amazon.com in 2003 had a record of business more than 5 billion dollars sales and 76 million active users in 200 different nations round the globe in 2008 with 17000 workers, working for the clients round the clock.…

    • 2067 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Amazon.com has had a clear focus and a solitary mission since it began. Founder Jeff Bezos has publicly referred to the Amazon.com mission statement as the guiding force behind his leadership decisions many times in the company 's 18-year history. It can be concluded that the success of Amazon.com as the top Internet retailing company in the world is due at least in part to their unwavering commitment to this mission and the daily execution of it. “Our vision is to be earth 's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” Says the founder of Amazon.com . The companies six core values are: customer obsession, ownership, bias for action, frugality, high hiring bar, and innovation. They seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for four primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators. Amazon.com has 3 customer service call centers in the United States and several others in several different countries to make sure they have phone support in all hours of the day and night. To reduce costs, they have what are called "door desks". They are called that because that is what they are. Desks made out of doors. The mission of Amazon.com is to…

    • 4286 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Case Study on Amazon

    • 2418 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Amazon.com was founded as an online bookstore in July, 1995 and went public in May 1997. In June, 1998 Amazon.com launched its music store. Since then Amazon.com has become the most prominent Internet retailer. Over time Amazon.com has added several products including electronics, health and beauty products, house wares, kitchenware’s, music, tools, toys, videos, and several services such as auctions, 1-Click ordering, and zShops. Amazon.com has expanded nationally and internationally and now operates several customer service and distribution centers in the United States and international web sites that serve customers around the world.…

    • 2418 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    Executive Summary of Amazon

    • 3297 Words
    • 14 Pages

    Amazon.com till date has gone through many ups and downs. It has been registered as the largest customer base with yearly sales of billions of dollars. Now Amazon.com offers very wide variety of products. Anyone can buy any products of almost any brand. Their company went through a tough time in between when they were trying to compete with competitors like Wal-Mart and eBay. But they were able to come out of it but improving their services according to customer experiences. They improved on their strengths and worked on weaknesses so as to make the customers experience more enjoyable and interesting.…

    • 3297 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Amazon.com is a leading e-retailer and is a globally recognized brand, but is facing increasing competition from bricks and mortar companies setting up an online presence and current e-retailers increasing their geographical and product scope. Amazon.com also faces strong rivalry in its Web Services Business where more specialized web services companies are able to offer more products and have a broader geographical presence.…

    • 5324 Words
    • 22 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Amazon was a company that started out selling books. Jeff Benzo saw a way to deliver books to customer. He wanted to “provided a way for customers to browse for, order and receive books” (Grundy). One core competencies of Amazon are the use of management. Amazon is able to build and maintain an effective customer relationship by having an effective management. This leads to customer satisfaction and brand loyalty due to their ever advancing strive to offer customers a way to purchase anything they want with a single click of a button. Furthermore, their supply chain management offers extraordinary benefits to Amazon and to its customers. Amazon became a price leader because of their powerful management strategies of supply and delivery. This allows Amazon to bring the cost of products down and that cost savings is reflected in the prices that consumers can see on Amazons website. Along with their supply management their logistics with product delivery is impressive. Having 140 warehouses built across the United States in specific areas to maximize delivery efficiencies. This all cannot be done without Amazons effective use of technology, as mention above Amazon use to sell books, but only using an online platform. Amazon invested in technology to further set them apart from their competitors. By making technological advances in online shopping Amazon has dominated the market when it comes to making any purchases. Amazon has created a consumer friendly website that allows Amazon to sell anything that customers need on the website. This is an enormous core competency for Amazon. They are able to sell anything that consumers want. With the help of logistics and technology Amazon is able to analyze what customers need and is able to provide the product. These core competences also play a part in Amazons competitive advantage. They are about to use technology to…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    AMAZON SWOT ANALYSIS

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Amazon purchases most of products from few vendors, especially Ingram with over 10% of inventory purchases (Amazon.com, 2002), without long-term contract and strict business terms. If these suppliers have problems, Amazon cannot supply products and services in an efficient way.…

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Business Strategy of Amazon

    • 2447 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Amazon has been considered as one of the largest bookstore and online store in the global market. The company has been able to thousands of customers in over 150 nations. Amazon’s main website offers millions of DVDs, music, books and videos not to mention their products from household, electronics, apparel and clothes, cosmetics, drugs and others. Thought the company has highs and lows, they are able to manage the companies and sustain their competitive advantage. The company has also used some strategies to ensure that they will outgrow their competitors like Ebay.…

    • 2447 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Amazon has been considered as one of the largest bookstore and online store in the global market. The company has been able to thousands of customers in over 150 nations. Amazon’s main website offers millions of DVDs, music, books and videos not to mention their products from household, electronics, apparel and clothes, cosmetics, drugs and others. Thought the company has highs and lows, they are able to manage the companies and sustain their competitive advantage. The company has also used some strategies to ensure that they will outgrow their competitors like Ebay.…

    • 12245 Words
    • 41 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Swot Analysis of Amazon

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages

    It has a diversified product portfolio. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore but soon diversified, selling DVDs, CVs, MP3 downloads, computer software, video games electronics, furniture and toys.…

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays