High Level Customer Satisfation and Competitive Advantage - Essay Example

Amazon UK has been in the front line in ensuring that its market is diversified (Chaffey 2012). This paper is going to evaluate how Amazon has continued to achieve high-level customer satisfaction and competitive advantage. Service Operations Concept Amazon UK has been a key player in the electronic commerce. Its vast market has been as a result of application of high levels of management and customer satisfaction (Chaffey 2012). Generally, electronic business has evolved over time to include all aspects of interworked technologies.

The company’s stated strategy is to focus on customer experience by offering low prices, convenience and wide selection of merchandise (Chaffey 2012). First established as a pure online book retailer, Amazon decided to expand its products and services offering. As a result of new expansion strategies, new business models were introduced in 1999. When Amazon went online, the book industry was highly fragmented with the largest retailer Barnes & Noble only representing 11% of total book sales (Chaffey 2012).

Amazon redefined traditional books retailing through a radical different approach: online through the internet. This move can be termed as a strategic one with Amazon analysing traditional book retailing drawbacks and focusing on new approaches that would revolutionalise the market (Hunt 2000). With the traditional book retail market, it is impossible to provide a customerised store for every customer. One of the key issues Amazon considered before venturing into online book retailing was advantages accrued from this approach.

For example, internet retailers have advantages of centralized inventory management and low occupancy costs. On the other hand, a large number of global customers can be reached from a single central location (Chaffey 2012). Competitive Objectives Competitive objective is realised by a company that operates more efficiently or in a high quality way as compared to its competitors, which then results to the benefits that the company will realize (Barney and Clark 2007). It can also be defined as the benefit realized by a company and one which can provide the same value as that of its competitors but at a lower price, or setting a higher price and provide greater value by way of differentiation (Barney and Clark 2007).

It is a result of the match of core competencies of the organization to its opportunities. An organization can also be said to have competitive advantage over its competitors if it realizes greater profits as compared to the average profits realized in the industry it is in (Grant 2005). Most businesses have the goal of achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In order to achieve this, Amazon can be argued to have utilized the concept of competitive objectives in order to conquer the market (Chaffey 2012).

However, the underlying principle is quality and customer satisfaction. One of the most important concepts in achieving high levels of customer satisfaction is through track of customer purchasing patterns and need to evaluate their consumption behavior (Hunt 2000). This helps anticipate demand and to provide personalised services. All these can be achieved through online retailing approach. Amazon offers more than one million titles online, but only stores less in its warehouse. This was a big venture and success Amazon experienced unlike when it could have concentrated