Mission of Amazon - Case Study Example

Amazon.com: A Detailed Review Amazon.com: A Detailed Review Introduction Amazon is an American company which deals in wide rangeof products electronically. Its Headquarters are based in Seattle, Washington while it is the most significant electronic retailer in the world with respect to size. Amazon initiated its operations in the form of a bookstore and soon after that the company expanded its operations in order to add more genres of products to its array of offerings. The company added music downloading, online video streaming, software, computers, apparels, furniture, food, toys and even jewelry. Recently, the company worked so hard to become one of the leading cloud computing providers of the world. The featured organization remained engaged in selling DVDs, CDs, VHS cassettes and a lot of electronics before it can actually became capable of developing and commercializing Kindle Fire tablet. The introduction of Kindle acted like a lucky charm for the retailer and things initiated to look improved ever since the product was launched in the year of 2011 whereas, its predecessor Kindle e-book Reader was launched in 2007. The improved version of the formerly mentioned product was released in 2012 (History & Timeline, 2014). The company produces products by outsourcing their manufacturing to countries that can produce them cheaply. The apparels are made in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The technological products are either made in China or US. The products are distributed through chain of warehouses, fulfillment centers and third party distributors (Kucera, 2014). History and CEO of the Company Jeff Bezos had incorporated Amazon.com as an organization in July 1994 and the website was made available for customer use in 1995 after intensive tests and beta version releases. However, the concept worked and worked great indeed. The initial name of the company was Cadabra and it was replaced with Amazon after getting inspired with the title of Amazon River which is one of the most spacious water masses located on the face of the Earth. The Amazons is a term that was used to refer to great nation of female warriors known to exist in the traditional Greek mythology. Amazon managed to vend its subsidiary websites to England, America, France, Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India and last but not the least Mexico. In 2011, the company was in plans to launch its websites in Poland, Netherlands and Sweden. Jeff Bezos did not engage in internet business in the period of early development of the industry but he made up for his misgivings in this regard and introduced Amazon in 1994. Amazon as a company has its roots in garage of Bezos in Bellevue, Washington. Jeff had an earning of 81,840 USD last year. He had born in the locality of Albuquerque, New Mexico. His parents are Jacklyn and Ted. He was interested in studying Physics but found computers more interesting and therefore, graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He lately purchased Washington Post as well. Mission of Amazon.com and Summary of Business Plan The company wants to become most customer centric organization in the world and in order to do that it dreams of creating a place where people can find whatever they want to buy online (History & Timeline, 2014). The company tends to change in accordance to changing consumer preference of its clientele. The company plans and is currently eying to target every part of the globe and continually expanding in order to achieve the abovementioned goal. The arrow from A to Z in Amazon’s logo was added since 2000 in order to communicate to the customers that the company is carrying all the possible products which can be traded on the internet. The tide for Amazon turned as dot. com bubble kept on expanding as the world continues to move deeper into the 21st century. In October 1995, the company went public and remained that way ever since. Competitors The competitors of Amazon include the names of companies like eBay, Hutchison Whampoa, AutoZone, Bed Bath and Beyond, Metro and Best Buy with revenues of 16.5B, 31359M, 9.39B, 9.4B, 85,231 and 42.4B dollars respectively. All of the figures provided in the previous statement are adapted from recent financial data available of all the listed companies. Summary of Annual Report The recently published annual report of Amazon.com revealed the fact that company generated 74,452,000 USD in revenues for the financial year of 2013. However, the company sustained 54,181,000 as cost of goods sold. Gross Profit was 20,271,000 and Net Profit was only 745,000. All of the figures provided herein are in thousands. The cash at hand level of the company was 8,658,000 whereas, short term investments and net receivables were 3,789,000 and 4,767,000 respectively. Fixed assets were 10,949,000 in value. The goodwill of the company was at 2,655,000. Other assets were valued against 1,930,000. Accounts payable were 21,821,000 and long term debt was calculated to be 3,191,000. Common stocks stood by the figure of 5000 and retained earnings were at the level of 2,190,000. The figure of capital surplus remained at 9,573,000. Total equity level was at 9,746,000 (Amazon.Com Inc (AMZN:Consolidated Issue Listed On NASDAQ Global Select ), 2014). Human Resource Management and Marketing at Amazon There are no jobs available at the company and it plans to align its products and services with the needs and wants of the customers, consequently it is going to follow university approach towards managing human resource and therefore, new knowledge will be kept pouring in the organizational system of the company. The company hires innovative people with higher ability to work in teams and follows informal culture as well. The company conducts marketing activities through internet and use advanced methods of SEO to enhance visibility of its products. Social Corporate Responsibility at Amazon Amazon is not committed to the notion of CSR and therefore, Seattle has been forced to highlight detachment of the company from the modern of the business by calling it a “corporate scrooge” (Cook, 2014). References Amazon.Com Inc (AMZN:Consolidated Issue Listed On NASDAQ Global Select ). (2014, April 2). Retrieved from Bloomberg Businessweek: http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp?ticker=AMZN Cook, J. (2014, April 2). Amazon.com dubbed a corporate scrooge by hometown newspaper. Geekwire, pp. http://www.geekwire.com/2012/amazoncom-dubbed-corporate-scrooge-hometown-newspaper/. History & Timeline. (2014, April 2). Retrieved from Amazon.com: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?p=irol-corporateTimeline&c=176060 Kucera, D. (2014, April 2). Amazon Gains as It Improves Distribution Network. Bloomberg . Read More