...The Evolution of Amazon.com Between 1995 and 2006, Amazon.com sold its first book and branched out into serving seven countries with fulfillment centers totaling more than nine million square feet of warehouse space (Layton, 2006.) Amazon.com started out with the idea of revolutionizing retail shopping as the world knows it. However, over time, Amazon.com has begun to move away from their original strategy by implementing new programs and services. The people behind Amazon.com are hoping that these new programs and services will help them compete with the biggest names in the industry, such as Google and Microsoft. In this paper we will discuss why Amazon.com is moving away from its original strategy, discuss areas in which Amazon.com is competing with other top companies, address issues with the database, and describe how Amazon.com uses e-business and e-commerce for business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) transactions. Amazon.com is not moving away from its core competency of being a leading online retailer; they are simply competing with a business strategy to survive. Stretching their wings by evolving into bigger and better services for their consumers is one way to keep up and compete with Google and Microsoft. Amazon’s make-to-order strategy of producing customized products and services is a business strategy to keep them amongst the leaders in online retailing. Their goal is simple, “To be Earth's most customer-centric company where people can...
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...Amazon.com Evolution Amazon starts as a book distributor that is currently competing with a number of Internet companies throughout the world. CEO, Jeff Bezos, has a vision of Amazon.com being a place where anything, can be located on the website. Amazon is gaining significant ground in its ambition to take over the entire e-commerce e-tailing sector, according to the recent successes. Since 1996, the company has taken the lead, introducing venues for electronic shopping (Pearlson, Saunders 2005). Amazon.com is the largest online retailers in the world, Amazon develops it core competency by striving with the competition. In order for Amazon.com to remain the leading online retail, it is essential to expand the vision of the company. As the customers grow, the customer’s needs expand and the availability of product and services. To augment the number the number of shoppers that use its site, Amazon.com created a program, which awards other sites a percentage of a sale when customers are link to them from another site to make a suggested purchase. Competition is increasing with other websites becoming the favored first stop on the Web. Google has taken the place of such retail sites as Amazon, the resource used by a number of people to start their shopping. Amazon services thousands of companies. Whether Amazon services will contribute to the company’s bottom line is still unknown. Amazon is in direct competition with Google to create a Web-based, worldwide computing platform...
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...Amazon.com Evolution Team B October 2, 2010 BIS/219: BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS Instructor Mohamed Hassan Axia College of University of Phoenix Amazon.com Evolution Less than two decades ago a man named Jeff Bezos had a vision of selling books online, and that he did. Amazon.com was established and started selling books online quite well. Since then, Amazon has become the largest online retailer selling a wide variety of products and services. In the past few years, the e-commerce company has become more than just a leading retail giant; it has become a technological platform. Even though Amazon is the largest online retailer, it still has competition and has to produce innovative ideas and advanced technological strategies to compete with the other online giants. Amazon.com is no longer just a place to purchase books online; it is becoming a one-stop-shop for consumers and businesses alike. Amazon is a fortune 500 E-commerce retail company that includes business to business as well as business to customer relations. Amazon was founded by Jeffrey P. Bezos, previously a financial analyst for the New York hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Company, who in 1994 started a wild business plan to become the world’s biggest book store (NY Times, 2010). In July 1995 Amazon.com was born and people were able to purchase their books online. The website started out with the goal to be the Earth’s biggest bookstore offering books, music and movies. Since the...
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...BIS/219 | Evolution of Amazon.com | The 21st century has introduced many new forms of technology to the world. One that has captivated all of us at some point or another is the internet. The ease of research and shopping has drawn consumers to the computer in search of quick answers and next day shipping. Many companies have jumped on the band wagon, converting their products to an online format and making special deals available to consumers willing to use their online shopping centers. One such company that has all but surpassed the rest is Amazon. They have built an empire with online access to almost anything consumers’ request, primarily known for music and books. Their prices are some of the best and most competitive in the nation, and their customer service is rival to some of the number one customer service companies in the world. In this paper, we will discuss Amazon.com and the impact they have had on today’s retail cyber-highway. Leading Online Retailer In 1995 when Amazon.com opened for business on the World Wide Web, the company’s main focus was to offer the “Earth’s Largest Selection” of books, music and video’s according to Amazon.com’s website. The founder left his job on Wall Street and began writing his business plan that consisted of 20 items that could be sold on his site and set out to create the largest selection on earth of books, videos, music and more. In the company’s 15 year history, they have mastered the online retail market and have...
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...Amazon is a global leader in ecommerce. Since 1995, they have significantly expanded their product offering, international sites, and worldwide network of fulfillment and customer service. Their technological innovation drives the growth of Amazon, offering its customers more products at lower prices. Large name retailers work with Amazon Services to power their e-commerce offerings from end-to-end including: technology services; merchandising; customer service and order fulfillment. Its web service is called Elastic Compute Cloud. In addition, independent software developers also derive value from the platform, through Amazon Web Services by building profitable applications and services that cater to Amazon customers and sellers which puts it in direct competition with both Google and Microsoft. When you search the Google search engine or one of more than 150 other Google domains, you can find information in many different languages. Also, you can check quotes, maps, patents and much more. As a business, Google generates the majority of its revenue by offering advertiser, measurable, cost-effective and highly relevant advertising, so that the ads are useful to the people who see them as well as to the advertisers who run them. Its web service is called Google Apps Engine. The Microsoft’s Azure platform offer’s a flexible, familiar environment for developers to create cloud application and services. With Windows Azure, you can shorten you time to market and adapt as demand...
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...LT Amazon.com® Evolution Deborah Grant Damain Gross Jerome Riley Adrienne Simpson Katherine Crockett BIS/219 August 19, 2010 David Henry LT Amazon.com® Evolution Whereas Amazon.com is known as the world’s leading on-line retailer, it is competing with Google and Microsoft to create a global web-based computing platform. Over many years, Amazon.com gradually has situated the business as an aggressive technology company in the course of a sequence of services referred to as Amazon Web Services (AWS). These are services whereas Amazon rents parts of its back-end infrastructure to other IT groups and developers (New York Times, 2010) because 90% of it was not being used. Amazon.com offers a number of benefits such as cost-effectiveness, reliability, flexibility, and intellectual capacity. The aggressive AWS products in which Amazon highlights are Mechanical Turk, Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Mechanical Turk is a marketplace which provides an on-demand workforce which necessitates human astuteness since there are various tasks in which human beings can complete more efficiently than central processing units. Amazon S3 permits businesses to store information on Amazon’s PC and “gives any developer the right to use to the identical high scalable, dependable, fast, economical information storage space infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its global network of websites” (Amazon Web Services, 2010). The EC2 allows...
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...University of Phoenix BIS/219 Carl Hardeman January 27, 2010 Amazon.com Evolution Paper As the team researches this well-known company, we realize that their business changed over time. We have research if Amazon is moving away from its core competency, competition with other companies, the use of its database, and how Amazon uses e-business and e-commerce for B2B and B2C. Amazon is a world known online retailer company. Jeff Bezos discovered Amazon in 1994. He launched the online store a year later. WOW! What a well written business plan. “The company began operating as an online bookstore under the name Cadabra.com, from the word abracadabra. Bezos quickly changed the name because it sounds too similar to cadaver. He renamed the company "Amazon" after the world's most voluminous river (Amazon.com, N.D.).”Amazon has not driven away from its core competency. The online retail store has just broadened their horizon. In the beginning, the company started off with Amazon existing as an online bookstore, but Amazon is now selling more products. The consumer can purchase books, electronics, clothing, furniture, movies, food, toys, and much more. The company had meetings in a garage, to Barnes and Noble for future meetings. The owner wanted so much more than just an online bookstore. It seems like he wanted Amazon to be a one stop shop. Today that is exactly what it is. The online bookstore was able to put forth countless times...
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...Amazon.com Evolution Paper Shelton V. Irvin, Denise Kuzara, Latoya Gordon, Jean Christophe Haddad BIS/219 March 14, 2011 Marty Mueller University of Phoenix Amazon.com Evolution Paper It is said that Amazon.com may be moving away from its core competency of being a leading online retailer. With this paper we hope to discuss the probability of Amazon.com remaining the leading web based retailer. There was a statement made “That for the first time in its eight year history, Amazon.com posted a profitable quarter that wasn’t driven by holiday shopping (Williams, C. vice Pres. and Chief Technology Officer for Gap Inc., 2003).” When consumers are shopping for products they tend to shop over the internet, they feel it may be cheaper, easier and less time consuming than walking through shopping centers. Whether it happens for whatever reason, Amazon.com remains the largest online retailer. Amazon has invested many years and large sums of money developing their infrastructure, which it allows them to be the world’s top online retailer (Behr, M., 2003). Is Amazon.com moving away from its core competency of being a leading online retailer? They are expanding there operations by offering its own systems and servers, for use by other businesses that choose not to invest their money into their own infrastructure. Such services they provide are S3, Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, and various other services (Behr, M., 2003). For example S3 is a data base that companies...
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...6/1/2015 Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy In January 2003, Tom Taylor, Amazon.com’s Director of European Supply Chain Operations, sat in his office in Slough, United Kingdom, and pondered what changes Amazon needed to make to sustain its growth in Europe. Established in the fall of 1998 through the acquisitions of two on-line Logistics Planning & Modelling Techniques booksellers, Bookpages.co.uk in Britain and Telebuch.de in Germany, Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy International, comprising Amazon Europe and Amazon Japan, now Amazon Europe had developed into three strong, independently run, country-based organizations in the UK, Germany, and France. Amazon represented 35% of Amazon revenues and was the fastest growing segment of the company (see Exhibit 1). Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy To sustain its growth, Amazon Europe faced multiple expansion Taylor felt that a lot had been accomplished since his arrival six months options: it could replicate the broad array of product lines Amazon earlier. His team had managed to standardize and improve supply offered in the US, launch new Marketplacea activities, or expand into chain processes across Europe in the areas of vendor management, other European countries. In addition, Amazon Europe had to decide ...
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...Amazon Evolution Rhonda Johnson BIS/219 Due February28, 2011 Professor Stuart McCubbrey Describe How Amazon.com uses e-business and e-commerce for B2B and B2C. E-Commerce describes the process of buying, selling, transferring, or exchanging products, services or information via computer networks, including internet. E-Business is a somewhat broader concept. In addition to the buying and selling of goods and services e-business also refers to servicing customers, collaborating with business partners, and performing electronic transactions within an organization. (Rainer and Turban 2008 chapter 6) Amazon.com uses only 10 percent of its processing capacity at any one time. The company has decided to provide a series of computing, storage and other services that make its infrastructure available to companies and individuals to help them run the technical and logistical parts of their businesses. (Rainer and Turban2008). These are examples of how amazon.com uses e-business and e-commerce for B2B and B2C. Three of the services are the services are the Simple storage service (S3) The Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and The Mechanical Turk. Amazon.com charges Businesses to store data and applications, which gives amazon.com profit for doing so, but also saves other businesses money by working with amazon.com. Amazon.com uses e-businesses and e-commerce for B2C as well. By using the businesses storage business those individual businesses offer jobs to regular people...
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...The Evolution of Amazon The Evolution of Amazon Learning Team A BIS/219 April 14. 2011 David Avery Jr. The Evolution of Amazon The online company Amazon.com is revered for its creation of the first online bookstore. However, Amazon is also a pioneer in the implementation of information technology platforms that have helped it become a billion dollar global sales generator. When Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, shipped the first online book order from his garage in Seattle, Washington in 1996, the concept of shopping from home via the internet was in its infancy. By 1999, Time magazine honored Jeff Bezos with the coveted Person of the Year award for making online shopping a part of mainstream society. Amazon.com employs 14,000 employees worldwide, operates out of seven different countries, possesses four IT patents and is still at the forefront of creating and utilizing IT platforms to improve, expand and revamp the data management and e-commerce processes. Amazon .com practically invented online shopping and e- business in much the same way that Wal-Mart did in the creation of the superstore. Although brick and mortar stores like Wal-Mart and Target generated huge profits from selling consumer goods, Amazon.com introduced to the retail giants a new venue to increase those profits. When sales appeared to slip. Amazon quickly regrouped and reinvented itself as an innovator in data storage, multi level e-commerce and a leader in information technology development. Competition...
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...Amazon.com Evolution Business Information Systems/219 October 25, 2010 Amazon.com Evolution With an untold amount of online retailers fighting for a piece of the consumer dollar, only one has risen to the top to become the world’s largest online retailer. With a diverse set of services to support its online retailing, Amazon is in direct competition with two of the largest Internet and software companies, but by using its vast informational resources Amazon has continued its success in internet based business. Many analysts and consumers wonder if Amazon.com is moving away from its core competency of being an online retailer. When you first look at Amazon.com starting from a book seller and trying to become a service provider your initial answer would be yes however, according to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com his vision of the company was to create a place you could buy anything and everything. Bezos decided to start selling books because of the low cost, and he did it online because a computer allows you to sort, search and organize a wide selection. Between 1998 and 1999, Amazon.com went from books to music, DVDs/video, toys, electronics, home improvement, software, and games. As sales rise they continue to adventure out to a broader spectrum to bring more to their consumers. Amazon.com always focused on selling products to others and now was ready to launch other services. For instance auctions, search engines, simple storage...
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...Amazon Evolution Amazon Evolution Amazon.com, Inc. first debuted on the web in 1995, but the company did not go public until 1997 when it became the first Internet retailer to secure one million customers ("Amazon.com, Inc.," 2004). Amazon’s original mission statement states: “We seek to offer the Earth’s Biggest Selection and to be the Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they may want to buy online.” ("Amazon.com, Inc.," 2004). Unfortunately, Amazon.com is struggling to reach that goal; competition is increasing in the online retail sector and Amazons profits are falling under such companies as Wal-Mart. Amazons infrastructure is among the biggest and most reliable in the world. However, the company only uses 10% of its processing capacity (O'Brien & Marakas, 2009). Amazon has decided to branch out to utilize more of its infrastructure by offering three services that will make the infrastructure available to companies and individuals to help with running the technical and logistical parts of their business. The first service being offered is called, Simple Storage Service (S3). The S3 service will charge a customer 15 cents per gigabyte per month to store a company’s data and applications on Amazon disk drives. This service is in a competitors market just like online retailers; companies like Dell, Trend Micro, and many more offer companies or individuals to purchase storage space online. The second service that...
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...Assignment #2: Amazon.Com’s E-Business Model Je’neen A. Wilson, B.S. The Business Enterprise – BUS508 Strayer University – White Marsh Prof. A. Kobina Armoo Has Amazon Lost Its Identity? Amazon.com is a famous Internet retail company in E-commerce. Its business includes B2B and B2C. It opened its business in July 1996. Today, Amazon.com has expanded its business in more than two hundred and twenty countries and this company sells various products like electronics, books, music, DVD, House wares, PCs and cars (Amazon.com Announces 4th Quarter Profit 2002). It is the biggest retail store in E-commerce. Even though Amazon.com owns these accolades, this company is struggling to survive. Amazon.com had a $19 billion market value before its stock prices decreased from $75.25 to $9.25 (German, 2001). The problem is that Amazon still has not made real profits since it opened. How to help Amazon.com keep standing on the stage? If Amazon.com wants to survive in E-business and start making real profits, Amazon.com should merge with other retail companies, operate a new E-business strategy, and rebuild its financial structure. Business strategies and activities play a very crucial role in the future development of the organization. These strategies become more important, in case of e-business organization such as Amazon. Every organization uses different business strategies in order to remain in business. Some adopt customer- centric strategies; some uses strategies to maximize...
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...Amazon.com Team B Assignment University of Phoenix The evolution of Amazon.com has increased the Internet giant’s footing in the e-commerce world, taking the book retailer from the beginnings of providing a shopping experience above the walk in bookstores of the past. Today, Amazon offers services to thousands of businesses as well as the continued service for both sellers and buyers of many products of music, apparel, movies, toys, pet supplies, and more. Amazon’s strategy has moved the Internet business from retail to competing with Google and Microsoft to offer data and information storage retrievable by uncomplicated software. Amazon’s use of e-business and e-commerce in the B2B and B2C realm continues to add services for businesses to reduce operating costs and increase the subscriber’s efficiency that places Amazon in a position unimaginable 10 years ago. Amazon.com is a business whose sole transactions involve the Internet to some extent. Unlike many traditional department stores, Amazon has no storefront from which to conduct business. Its entire operation operates via e-commerce or e-business. E-commerce is the sale, purchase, or exchange of items, including products and services, over a computer network. E-commerce is similar to e-business, but includes all aspects of a business, including developing customer relationships and collaborative efforts between companies. Amazon uses both e-business and e-commerce in its business dealings to achieve...
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