History and Business of Amazon - Case Study Example

Amazon.com Inc is the largest online retailer of the world which provides online retail good, consumers electronics, digital content along with the computing services to the consumers. Ione of the most renowned services offered by Amazon is the electronic book reading services of Kindle with the help of which the consumers can have multiple electronic books at their disposal with just one click (Amazon.com Profile - History of Amazon.com and information about Amazon.com). Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos who initially started the company in his garage after leaving a well paid job in the New York City at hedge fund firm. Jeff Bezos was not a born entrepreneur, he graduated from Princeton University and began to work in the field of computer science on Wall Street moving on to become the vice president at Bankers Trust (Byers). Due to his interest in the rapid use and growth of Internet technology, he devised the idea of Amazon.com. Thanks to the idea generated by Jeff Bezos, he quickly gained the identity of being the prominent entrepreneur who devised the dot-com idea and made him a billionaire soon. It started off as the bookstore initially and has now transformed in to the largest online retailer of the world as well. It has expanded its operations in a variety of ways and offers millions of online books, movies, songs, merchandise and just about anything. It can be safely concluded that Amazon has converted into an ‘everything store’ where merchandise of every kind is traded online. Shoppers are offered convenience that have the facility of shopping for almost anything online and can easily download books, games and films to even their portable devices such as tablets or smart phones. Other products such as the self publishing and online advertising are also offered on Amazon.com. Amazon Inc stated its mission statement as the following: “We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for three primary customer sets: consumer customers, seller customers and developer customers” (Colin et al., 2005). Therefore, the customers’ Amazon Inc serves have been stated in the mission statement itself, which are consumer customers, seller customers and the developer customers. Therefore, Amazon Inc is a platform which does not only let the customers to download and buy the merchandise, but at the same time gives them a platform to sell their merchandise online as well to the interested customers. The marketing strategy that has been introduced by Amazon rests on six facets: it not only offers products and services to be purchased by the customers but at the same time, interface is user friendly which can be easily and conveniently used by the customers. The services and products offered at Amazon vary from small scale to the large and use the advanced existing communication and technological systems with the help of which the customers can do their businesses easily. Moreover, proper utilization of the behaviors and the mentalities is the underlining strategy that has been used by Amazon Inc. It uses subliminal or, perhaps, indirect methods of marketing, relying on the partner relations and the online ploys so that it can depict its quality to the consumer’s masses. Since the time of its inception, Amazon has been the victim of the number of criticisms and controversies and one of the important ethical controversies it was subjected to be the customers were rewarded for keeping an eye on the competitors of Amazon. Its anticompetitive practices have attracted a lot of attention along with the differential pricing. There were some who even raised questions on the improper working conditions that its workers had to work in. In an interview with the Pennsylvania Morning Call, the employees at the warehouse of Amazon complained and criticized that the entity provided with the improper working conditions and that the employment practices were unethical as well. Once the article was published by Morning Call, Amazon Inc took actions within five days of the article publish and spent $2.4 million in the installation of the air-conditioning systems at four difference warehouses. Amazon is in direct competition with E-bay, Apple Inc, Barnes and Noble Inc, along with the number of other small scale retailers. Amazon’s online retail business is not only restricted to the United States of America but is extended to a number of other countries as well such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany , France , Italy , Spain, Japan , China with each country having its own retail website of Amazon.com . At the same time, it offers shipping to many other international countries for some of its products which makes it apparent that it is present in the global marketplace, competing at a global level. Moreover, Amazon will soon be launching websites for the customers located in Poland, Netherlands, and Sweden so that its operations can be extended to other foreign countries as well. Amazon, therefore, due to its global presence in the marketplace competes with a number of small and large online retailers which are located worldwide. Amazon has acquired a large number of small and large scale entities over a period of time which has all been incorporated into the operations of Amazon.com. Some of the recent acquisitions of the entity include Zappos, Lexcycle, SnapTell, Touchco, Woot, Lovefilm Kiva Systems etc. Apart from the aforementioned acquisitions, Amazon has also strived hard to maintain relationships with a number of entities as well. The retail websites of famous retailers such as Target and Benefit Cosmetics were also maintained by Amazon.com making it a merchant partner. Entities such as Sear Canada, Mothercare, Mark & Spencer , Lacoste all awarded Amazon their online retail websites for the maintenance and the everyday operations. The AOL’s Shops@AOL is also operated by Amazon Web Services. Recently, it joined hands with the DC Comics forming a partnership giving Amazon the rights of the digital editions of the famous comics such as Batman, Superman and Watchmen. Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos who initially started the company in his garage after leaving a well paid job in the New York City at hedge fund firm. Due to his interest in the rapid use and growth of Internet technology, he devised the idea of Amazon.com. Thanks to the idea generated by Jeff Bezos, he quickly gained the identity of being the prominent entrepreneur who devised the dot-com idea and made him a billionaire soon. When we revert our attention to the Human Resources philosophy adopted at Amazon.com, it is exposed to the challenge of hiring and recruiting only those employees who are highly qualified and can quickly adapt to the growth and changing needs at Amazon. Hence, the entity looks for the individuals who accept challenges and can quench the entity’s thirst for insatiable talent. However, the strategy used by Human Resources head, Tony Galbato, is to recruit and retain those individuals who can contribute finely to the entity and at the same time can learn from the organization as well, adjusting to the norms and values of Amazon.com. “We want people who are aligned to our growth strategy,” says Galbato. “We want people who think big and want to build, who are biased for action, and who are obsessed with the customer experience.” “Our HR mission has been quite simple: to find, grow, and keep the Earth’s best talents. Rather than be bound by set of organizational competencies--which might help an organization duplicate its current successes but can ultimately be self-limiting--at Amazon, we stay focused on customer need and develop the new competencies that we think are needed to adapt to changing needs,” says Galbato. “That has helped us stay innovative, reaching beyond what we already know” (HR Profile Amazon0. The corporate culture of Amazon.com revolves around the customers and, hence, it can be considered as a very customer centric entity which gives preference to the customers. This can be stated in the values statement of the entity: Customer Obsession: We start with the customer and work backwards. Innovation: If you don’t listen to your customers you will fail. But if you only listen to your customers you will also fail. Amazon employees count over a 20,000 employees all over the world, and, therefore, the employees are tried very hard due to the growing competitive needs. Amazon Inc compensates them and motivates them by providing non monetary and monetary rewards. The non monetary rewards include the medical, dental and vision insurance along with Company-paid basic life and accident, Company-paid short- and long-term disability plan, employee assistance programs, saving and retirement benefits, time off benefits for the salaries employees etc (HR Profile Amazon). Amazon has come a long way and though it started as an online book store, it kept its pace with the growing needs of the competitive world and today it has become the world’s largest online retailer. It has many awards and recognitions awarded to it and one of them includes the award presented by the Digital Entertainment Group (along with Best Buy and Nebraska Furniture Mart) in 2011 for the Retailer of the Year Award. The award was given at the 14th annual International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) reception and the category won by Amazon was Retailer of the Year for Software. ‘As of Q1 2011, Amazon has approximately 137 million active customers worldwide. It was also reported that there are 2 million merchants selling on Amazon equaling a third of the total listings. North America currently represents 55.4% of sales with the other 44.6% in the International market.’ (Amazon | CrunchBase Profile, CrunchBase, The Free Tech Company Database). Works Cited Amazon | CrunchBase Profile , CrunchBase, The Free Tech Company Database. Amazon.com Profile - History of Amazon.com and information about Amazon.com. Byers, A. (2006). Jeff Bezos: the founder of Amazon.com. The Rosen Publishing Group. HR Profile Amazon – http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cahrs/hrSpectrum/HR-Profile-Amazon.html Colin, B.,Barrow, P., and Brown, R. (2005). The Business Plan Workbook. London: Kogan Page. Read More