Amazon

Q 1

Over the years, Amazon continues to thrive in business amidst its competitors. The founder and the company’s management focused on growth and development over making profits. Amazon’s growth since its inception as a book retailing e-commerce company is attributed to various factors. Firstly, the company focused on improving e-commerce. Amazon focuses on making e-commerce desirable, secure, and accessible for first-time online buyers. To access the site and complete purchases for books, customers only needed their email address, credit cards, and password, unlike other book suppliers where the purchase process had to go through other third parties like wholesalers and publishers.

Additionally, Amazon aimed at customer satisfaction. Amazon offers unique products and services to their customers, which they cannot acquire from their incumbent players. Their products are well differentiated, offering them a competitive advantage over their competitors. For example, Amazon books are easy to search on the website, which operates twenty-four hours every day. The prices are also customer’s friendly.

The incorporation of technology and innovation has also built the competitive advantage of the company. For instance, Amazon has incorporated design in the fashion industry by using Echo Look, a full-length camera, which makes a recommendation for customers depending on their fashion tastes. Consequently, Amazon has invested in the digital and physical infrastructure platform. This platform allowed the company to launch e-commerce businesses faster at a low cost and high success rate, thus offering high-quality customer services.

Furthermore, Amazon has concentrated on business diversification. Amazon uses associates to market its products and services to its potential customers. Amazon’s associates can access order purchases at no cost, sell Amazon books, and get a commission from the sale. Additionally, the company uses Z-shops to rent spaces to new merchants who sell their items and get paid on commission on the final sale price. This market penetration strategy has enabled Amazon to thrive in the markets by generating high sales than competitors.

Q2

Amazon’s growth in e-commerce and retail has enabled the company to open its retail platforms to third parties. This move has exposed the company to advantages and risks. Creating links with third parties allowed the company to gain hefty profit margins. The company recorded that its profit margins from third-party retails were higher than its annual report sales. On the other hand, partnership with retail platforms exposed the company to risks. Amazon lost an immense amount of money through its partnership with the Greenlight Company. Additionally, third parties relations exposed Amazon to competitions. Companies could copy their marketing strategies, thus exposing the company to pressures for more innovation to out-way them.

Q3

Over the years, Amazon has concentrated on product development than service development. The company has continuously introduced new devices such as Amazon’s kindle fire, fire phones, and Echo. Concentration on product development has helped the company to obtain increased market share. For example, Amazon’s entry into the fair jewelry market helped the company get high market shares. The company noted a gap in the jewelry’s space, thus focused on the shipping of jewelry to acquire the jewelry in bulk and sell to their customers at a lower price than other retailers. Moreover, product development helps the company obtain a competitive advantage as its differentiated products attract customers. The company gets access to new markets and sells to more customers.

Q4

The Amazon Company has contributed significantly to society. Since its inception, the company has created economic impacts in the U.S. Firstly; Amazon has created more job opportunities increasing the workforce percentage. Amazon offers full-time and part-time job opportunities to workers.  To absorb their workers on long-term engagement, the company provides a training forum where Amazon pays their tuition fees to acquire skills in high demanded fields. Additionally, the company has impacted society positively by investing heavily in infrastructure services, software services, and other development investments. These investments program contributes significantly to the U.S gross domestic product boosting the economy.

Despite the company’s positive impacts, it has also negatively impacted the community. The company provides poor working conditions to its employees. Employees are subjected to extreme pressures and fail to pay them a living wage.  Additionally, Amazon has resulted in the devastation of small online businesses. Amazon sells books at a relatively lower price because it does not have to make all the sales returns. Customers prefer to buy from their stores as their prices are friendly. Other distributors feel demotivated to compete with the company due to its dominance in the online market and customer’s preferences.

Despite the negative impacts of Amazon Company, I think it is a good company.  Amazon Company is committed to enhancing customer’s experience.  The company’s every aim and strategy purposes on fulfilling customers’ satisfaction. Customers can access Amazon books easily every day at an affordable price. Additionally, the company offers freedom of work to their workers by paying them  “pay to quit” fees to encourage dissatisfied employees to leave.