...A Management Comparison between Amazon.Com and Borders Books A Management Comparison between Amazon.Com and Boarders Books The Internet provides access to wide open growing market. There are millions of people shopping online in today’s world. Amazon.com and Borders books were among those online businesses. By selling on the Internet, it made it possible for Amazon.com and Borders to reach people in the United States and out of the United States. Both companies knew when they sell online; they are likely to attract other competitors. These two companies help shaped a home shopping network to give their customer easier access to purchase goods online. The services they provided helped the customers in many ways. It is convenient; customers can order products wherever an Internet is available. Customers don't have to deal with traffic, parking spaces, wasting gas and time by going to the store just to find out that the itemed they wanted is out of stock. In order to be successful, both companies needed a good management team and staff that know how to work in today’s market. The approached that Amazon.com and Borders books took to Internet marketing are very interesting. I will be discussing some of the different think that I learned about Amazon.com and Borders books. Description of the Businesses In a world where anyone can purchase just about anything online, it can be...
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...Instructor: J. Angles Describe the history and core business of each company. Jeff Bezos, vice-president of the Wall Street firm D.E. Shaw, left his job in 1994, moved to Seattle, and began to work on a business plan that would become Amazon.com. After reading a report that projected annual web growth at 2,300 percent, Bezos drew up a list of 20 products that could be sold on the internet. He then narrowed his list to what he felt were the five most promising: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. Bezos eventually decided his venture would sell books over the web, due to the large worldwide market for literature, the low price that could be offered for books, and the tremendous selection of titles available in print. A businessman by the name of Nick Hanauer believed in Bezos' idea and invested $40,000 in his venture. When Amazon first debuted online in 1995, its layout was not as flashy as it is today. In fact, the site looked very plain and unattractive to most visitors, causing the business to start on shaky ground. A man by the name of Tom Alburg decided to invest $100,000 in Amazon in 1995, which helped the company fund a better-looking website and hosting capabilities. If he wanted people to come back as customers, Bezos new he had to create more than just a bookstore. The option of buyers to write their own book reviews was added, which is a huge credit to Amazon's success. By 1997, Amazon.com had generated $15.7 million in revenue...
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...Benefit and Drivers OI/361 Benefit and Drivers Amazon.com, Inc. is a multicultural electronic commerce company founded in America by Jeffrey P. Bezos in 1994. It was originally named Cadabra Inc. They found that the name was often negatively mistaken as “Cadaver.” The name Amazon was adopted soon after because the Amazon River is the largest in the world, and the letter “A” would help the company to show up at the top of alphabetical lists. Amazon, since its release in 1995, has become one of the Fortune 500 e-commerce company (btmaushart.iweb, 2014). In the business world, Amazon is currently the largest online retailer in the world. It manufactures consumer electronics, most widely known is the Amazon Kindle e-book reader, and has an extensive cloud computing service. Amazon’s start-up was initially only an online bookstore, giving Amazon an advantage of having more and readily available books than any long-established brick-and-mortar book store. By the last 1990’s, Amazon’s success had enabled an expansion from an online bookstore to a wide variety of other products including, but not limited to: CDs, videos, DVDs, electronics, toys, tools, home furnishings, and more. In addition to those products from Amazon, Amazon also sells products from well-known retailers through intermediaries’ agreements. Among those retailers are Toysrus.com Inc., Target Corporation, and Circuit City Stores Inc (FundingUniverse.com, 2014). Amazon takes on a face of a company that came...
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...Crafting & Executing Strategy the Quest for Competitive Advantage The Amazon Company Table of Contents * Introduction……………………………………………P.3 * Background Information………………………………P.3 * Senior Management……………………………………P.8 * Competitors……………………………………………P.8 * Marketing Strategy……………………………………P.9 * Problems and Issues confronting the Company………P.10 * Recommendation……………………………………..P.10 * SWOT Analysis……………………………………….P.10 * Financial Ratios and Analysis………………………..P.11 Introduction Surviving the dot com boom was a significant accomplishment for Amazon, which helped them claim the title of being the one stop shopping retailer for all. Amazon was introduced to the public in 1995 from Seattle Washington. Some people may remember Amazon as an online bookstore. Over the years, they evolved into the most popular internet retailer in the world and Amazon quickly became the growing trend among consumers, because they are convenient, have a speedy service, low prices and quality. Using third party sources, Amazon has diversified their portfolios and continues to offer consumers new products (LexisNexis, Academic). Reinventing their strategy to adapt to consumers’ growing needs and the source of must have items; Amazon will continue to survive the world of internet retail. Background Information Amazon is the pioneer of online retailing. It started out as an online bookstore, offering a limited amount of selections. They expanded...
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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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...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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...Sharhonda Dillard January 29 ,2012 MKT 506 Dr. C Assignment 2 Amazon 1 Amazon.com ABSTRACT What is Amazon.com, Inc.? Amazon is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company, which is the largest online retailer, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc., as of January 2010. I f I to say what I think of Amazon. I would say the following: * An online mall where it enables vendors to sell within the Amazon experience * A retailer where they sell goods they stock and ship * A brand in itself representing the bench mark for online shopping (from product research to purchase) * A destination site (start all your shopping here) * A technology provider of cloud computing? * A technology provider that can run your online store for you Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994 and launched it online in 1995 as Cadabra.com. It started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, CD, MP3 downloads, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, and toys. Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and China. It also provides international shipping to certain countries for some of its products. A 2009 survey found that Amazon was the UK's favorite music and video retailer, and third overall retailer.(oppapers.com) Amazon company began as an online bookstore; while the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores...
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...very important way to achieve this is by use of e-business; doing business via the internet. This report taps into the influencing factors of the e-business model and business plan that helped maintain Amazon.com’s competitive edge and propelled it to becoming the largest online bookseller and retailer. Keywords: Amazon.com, business plan, E-Business Model Amazon.com’s E-Business Model In determining whether or not Amazon.com has lost its identity, my approach will involve reviewing and comparing Amazon’s web site purpose with other competition websites, using Appendix Table 1. I will also be comparing site’s objectives with the general business plan outlined in the 2009 Amazon.com Annual Report which states:- “Amazon.com opened its virtual doors on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for three primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, and developers. In addition, we generate revenue through co-branded credit card agreements and other marketing and promotional services, such as online advertising” (p. 3). Functionality and Design From its inception, Amazon.com had a business model and intention to sell a vast array of goods and services. While its initial products were books, Amazon.com’s model had poised itself to quickly adjust and jump into other new, booming, and demanding markets. Table 1 shows the web site clearly follows this business model such that the list of goods...
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...Amazon versus Ebay Amazon versus Ebay Analyze each company’s history, product / services, major customers, major suppliers, and leadership and provide a synopsis of each company. Seattle based Amazon.com was founded in July, 1994, but it was introduced to the world in June, 1995 by its CEO Jeff Bezos. Bezos who was a hedge fund manager in New York left to head west after coming across a finding that the usage of the internet is growing 2300 percent a month. He came up with a plan to get his own retail business online, and headed to Seattle to begin his dream. He started with only 3 employees working out of a garage. Jeff Bezos was able to get Kleiner Perkins Caulfied & Byers to fund Amazon. Some of Amazon.com products include a variety from books, to CDs, videos, and video games. Amazon product line also includes groceries, supplies for pets, greeting cards, and has auctions. A major supplier for Amazon is Ingram, a book distributor, who is still the provider for 60 percent of the books. Amazon is also allied with sites such as Yahoo, Excite, GeoCities, and Netscape. Amazon.com also has links that can be used for household purchases such as groceries and prescriptions. Bezos leadership is demonstrated by observing his comfortableness when he is around the people he addresses on a regular basis from customers, to investors, and the employees. Other leadership qualities of Bezos include his understanding of e-commerce, being focused, having an entrepreneurial team to back...
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...Barnes & Noble Vs. Amazon To attain a competitive advantage over Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble needs to develop a proper strategy and implement a successful marketing plan. SITUATION ANALYSIS Barnes & Noble first must consider the issues and problems facing their company, and then perform an opportunity analysis to determine their strengths and weaknesses in relation to their customers, competitors, and company capabilities. In regards to the main concerns of Barnes & Noble, the company needs to worry about the uncertainties associated with the expected rapid growth of the Internet, the changing profile of Internet users, increased competition and indeterminate future developments in electronic retailing from publishers, wholesalers, and retailers, and intense price competition. By 2000, more than 80 million users will be on the World Wide Web, with an increase in females and a broader spectrum of education levels and age, changing the market demographics. Additionally, some book publishers, namely Simon & Schuster and Bertelsmann, have expanded online, while the national leading wholesaler, Ingram, is developing a website where wholesalers could ship directly to consumers. In the meantime, small publishers and universities have started to publish directly on the Web, avoiding print versions completely and thereby challenging the posterity of conventional books. Within the Barnes & Noble Corporation, their smaller traditional bookstores such...
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...Throughout the last decade many .com companies have tried to stake a claim in the online retail business platform. Amazon.com, a pioneer in online retail, has to adapt to keep up with the changing times and competitors. Shifting from a strictly retail based business strategy to a diverse resource as server host and data base management and middle man for many small businesses to sell product of all kinds online. Despite the additional avenues, Amazon remains steadfast they roots as they continue on as one of the largest internet retailers. Working in conjunction with many smaller businesses to keep overhead at a minimum and keep the availability of almost any product desired available for sale or purchase on their web site. Amazon.com came into existence by one man’s idea of being the world’s largest on-line retailer. With a structured business plan and sensible risk, Jeff Bezos did so with the sales of books in one year and three years later Amazon.com would be the first on-line retailer with over 1 million customers (fundinguniverse.com 2008). In 2006, Amazon.com formed Amazon Web Services, a web based service platform, offering a pay as you use computing infrastructure. This “cloud” service can rent computing power to small companies, provide servers for a media conglomeration and offer secured architecture for large corporation’s computer systems. Bezos and company may change the economics of business computing with AWS but with a user friendly web site, two day...
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...Amazon.com’s E-Business Model Amazon.com was founded in 1994 as an online book retailer. Now, the largest retailer of books has also become the largest online retailer with a customer base of over 30 million people. Amazon competes in a vast array of markets including: books, movies, digital readers, computers, consumer electronics, pet needs, groceries, health and beauty aids, toys, clothing, jewelry, shoes, sporting goods, tools, automotive, hardware, building supply, and more. Despite their large product offering, Amazon has maintained its strong brand. Imagine if Toys-R-Us, the largest toy retailer began selling books or if the NBA began selling hardware online. The threat of consumer confusion would rise, thus bringing into question the value of the Toys-R-Us and NBA brands. Some analysts question the wisdom of Amazon.com selling products that are typically sold in the business-to-business markets. For example, you can now purchase industrial, laboratory, and scientific supplies from Amazon.com. (See Appendix – comparison and contrast chart of Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and Borders.) Discuss the pros and cons of Amazon’s growth and diversification of business and specialization, and make recommendations about what Amazon could have done differently. The study comprises of Amazon.com which started its history by selling books and now one of the online market leaders globally not only for books but products from various categories. Company started with a mission to...
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...wide variety of products offered may help the company to continue exhibiting strong growth in the future. In 2009, Barnes & Noble introduced the Nook e-reader, a device that would allow the company to enter the quickly growing market of electronic books. The Nook was an instant success, with sales of the device and of electronic books skyrocketing for the first few years. Barnes & Noble responded to this success by pouring additional resources into the Nook product line, enhancing the device and partnering with other tech giants in order to ensure the Nook remained the best e-reader on the market. However, as other competitors entered the market with lower prices and different options, Nook sales began to fall. This paper examines the history of Barnes & Noble, the evolution of the Nook product line, and the current questionable profitability of the Nook line. Barnes & Noble is a large and successful business with humble origins. The company was originally established in the early 1900s by the son of an Illinois book-printer, and was acquired by Leonard Riggio in 1971. Riggio was an innovative bookseller and entrepreneur, who at the time owned and operated a highly successful chain of college bookstores. When he purchased the floundering Barnes & Noble name, Riggio instituted his tried and proven bookselling methods—as well as many new marketing and sales techniques—and built Barnes & Noble into the number one bookselling chain in the country. To this day, Len Riggio is...
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...INTRODUCTION Amazon.com is an e-commerce company based in Seattle, WA. It was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in 1995. The company started out as an online bookstore and quickly started adding other items, such as VHS tapes and DVDs, music CDs, software, video games, electronics, MP3s, clothing, furniture, toys and even food items. Currently they now own more than 345 trademarks. Amazon.com is known for its technical innovations. Its technology is said to be on the cutting edge. The company’s engineers tackle some of the most complex challenges in large-scale computing. Software development engineers, technical program managers, test engineers, and user-interface experts work in small teams company-wide to contribute to the e-commerce platform that's used by a great number of customers, sellers and merchants. The IT Department at Amazon.com oversees an enormous system that is extremely reliable. Amazon.com describes their IT group as “system, database, and networking experts (that) build and operate highly reliable, scalable distributed systems with terabyte-sized databases and infrastructure that can handle a massive number of transactions.” SCENARIO This assignment is focusing on the e-commerce service of Amazon. TOPIC 1: ETHICAL AND LEGAL ISSUES SIMILARITIES * Unauthorized use of networks The act of hacking an amazon account is not an easy thing to do. But there have been cases where Amazon accounts have been hacked. The first action that is taken...
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...Amazon.com Business Combinations and Financial Results Analysis 04/22/2015 A dream from a small business owner to one of the largest online businesses we have operating today can be echoed for Amazon.com. Through the tumultuous times from surviving through the dot com bubble to poor investment choices Amazon.com has weathered it all and seems to be preparing themselves for the long haul. Jeff Bezos has shown great a great amount of emphasis towards customer service “proactively delighting customers earns trust, which earns more business from those customers, even in new business arenas” (2010, April 12) and reinvesting in Amazon.com may finally start to payoff dividends. Many key factors had an instrumental role in the global and domestic market that may have influenced profitability of Amazon.com. In this paper I will only discuss three of the growth strategies I deemed to be impactful for Amazon.com. There were many growth strategies to choose from however the three that I will discuss are the innovation, diversification, and investment/expansion growth strategies of Amazon.com. The innovation growth strategy is where Amazon.com attempts to show their ability to create, anticipate, or revolutionize the needs of the customer and marketplace. They have always aimed to be one step of the competition by creating and implementing new ideas. Amazon Fresh, Amazon Prime Air, and Anticipatory Shipping are some of the innovative ideas that have shown good results. Amazon Fresh...
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