...Machine: How Bezos Decodes the Customer Jeff Bezos is known for his customer-centric beliefs and his attention to business details. According to Anders (2013), he "is a notorious micromanager… an executive who wants to know about everything from contract details to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases”. Jeff Bezos' Amazon.com is the world's largest internet retailer of any kind reporting more than $61 billion in 2012 sales (Anders, 2013). Based on an article published by Forbes in April 2013, this work identifies some of Jeff Bezos’ leadership traits and style that have influenced him to build Amazon into one of most profitable and most admired companies in the world. The article by George Anders (2013), contributor writer for Forbes, highlights how Amazon was transformed from an online bookstore to a giant Internet retailer, Bezos’ customer-centric strategies to figure out what his 164-million customers want and not his 56,000 employees, and how Amazon manages its “culture of metrics” in order to track its performance through about 500 measurable goals. Through Jeff Bezos’ greatest accomplishment of transforming Amazon from an online bookstore to a giant Internet retailer, this author can identify Bezos’ leadership traits, such as intelligence, self-confidence, determination, and integrity, within the framework of Trait Approach. The Trait Approach suggests that organizations will work better if the people in the managerial positions have designated leadership profiles...
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... since you can't set foot there unless you're directly involved with the product. Bezos, it seems, likes to deliver information — and create Amazon's narrative — in his own way, such as his carefully crafted shareholder letters. 3. Keep teams small enough that members can be fed with two pizzas. Bezos is famous among management nerds for his Two Pizza Rule: No team should be larger than can be fed with two large pizzas. That means that task forces are limited to just five to seven people, allowing teams to test their ideas without too many onlookers, which guards against groupthink — one of Bezos’s pet peeves. Those tiny teams have led to big innovations, like the Gold Box deals, a popular promotion that gave customers limited-time deals. 4. Stop talking so much. At an off-site retreat in the early 2000s, word was going around that groups needed to communicate more. Bezos got up and said, "No, communication is terrible!" How could talking too much be a problem? Cross-team communication limits team independence and leads to people agreeing too much, he estimated, which stands in opposition to the creative conflict that defines Amazon's culture. 5. Get adversarial. “The people who do well at Amazon are often those who thrive in an adversarial atmosphere with almost constant friction,” writes Brad Stone, author of "The Everything Store," which chronicles Amazon’s rapid growth. Why? Bezos can’t stand “social cohesion,” the cloying tendency of people who like to agree with...
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...Jeffrey P.Bezos : An entrepreneur leader Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and from an early age he showed his mechanical attitude developing intense and varied scientific interests. Considering this fact, his parents sent him to a special program for gifted children, where Jeff could develop his love for gadgets (Byers, 2006). When his family moved to Florida, he discovered his ‘great passion’, computers, so he abandoned his studies in Physics and got a degree on Computer science and Electrical engineering (Sherman, 2001). After his studies, Jeff Bezos started working for Bankers Trust, and at the age of 26 he became the youngest Vice President of the company (Byers, 2006). When he noticed in 1994 that internet usage was increasing by 2300% a year (Hämäläinen & Saarinen, 2007), he started planning his next step, which was Amazon.com. Amazon made his appearance in 1995 with 3 micro stations in Bezos’ garage (Robinson, 2009) and its activity was to sell books. Today Amazon.com is one of the most preferable internet retail platform, where customers can find DVD’s, CD’s, MP3 downloads, books and toys. According to Economist (2000), Amazon.com is the most visited internet retail platform in USA and one of the top 3 in Germany, UK, France and Japan. The impact of Amazon.com Amazon.com is today the largest electronic retail worldwide (Anon., 2012). According to J. Bezos (Wired Magazine, December, 2011), Amazon is a cultural pioneer which lives to disrupt...
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...businesses, both companies had different leadership styles, visions and goals. Out of the two businesses, only one remain successful and present today. In this paper, I will show how both businesses started, how the leaders differ in leadership styles and techniques, and how Amazon continues to be a great success today. Description of the Businesses I will describe each business and how each business started. I will also describe three main challenges each company faced while establishing or running the business. Amazon.com was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos as an online bookstore. As CEO he has built it into the largest retailer on the web, selling everything from groceries to electronics and shoes. Jeff Bezos was working in a quantitive analysis group at an investment firm, when he saw an opportunity to sell books on the internet. In 1994 he went on a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle to start Amazon. He typed his business plan as he went. And he picked up $300,000 dollars from his parents in Fort Worth, Texas. He set up his business in his garage and began selling books via the internet. His business became worth $4.4 billion according to Forbes' latest billionaire rankings in 2009. Since the start of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos came very close to failure. The company was on the brink of bankruptcy. Jeff Bezos lost a total of $550 million in startup cost by November 1999. But inspite of that, Time magazine named Jeff Bezos " Person of the year" a month later...
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...1 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Amazon and the Quest for Domination BUS 620 Managerial Marketing October 27, 2014 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Amazon !2 Amazon and the Quest for Domination With a name that has become synonymous with online-shopping, Amazon has become one of the most recognizable and influential brands in the world. Founded in 1995, Amazon has dramatically changed and expanded the options and opportunities for consumers as well as competitors. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, is not content with the status quo. “Amazon is a company that is anything but asleep. Amazon, in fact, is an eyes-wide-open army fighting--and winning--a battle that no one can map as well as its general (McCorvey, 2013).” Bezos realized that consumers desire low cost and fast delivery, and he took these consumer-driven concepts to never-before-seen heights through the implementation of fulfillment centers, Amazon Prime, and AmazonFresh. According to McCorvey, Bezos’ goal is for Amazon to create global, same-day delivery. This goal of same-day delivery is entirely possible, and Amazon is well on its way to realizing its plan. To make sense of how this plan will come to fruition, it is important to look at what brought the company to its current position, analyze Amazon’s competition, and understand how the company plans to reach the same-day delivery milestone. History Amazon’s CEO has been looking ahead from the beginning, wiring to understand the consumer...
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...1. Introduction Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) is an e-commerce company founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, a former vice-president of a Wall Street firm and also a graduate from Princeton University. The company is currently the largest online retailer in the US and also the world’s biggest retailer by market value. Under the leadership of Jeff Bezos, the company that started as a website that sold only books, Amazon.com would eventually grow to become a retailer that sells over 200 million products, categorised into 35 departments. The company is now seen as one of the most innovative and valuable brands in the world. (Forbes, 2015) 2. Measurement of Amazon.com Success For a business, the best way of measuring success would be to analyse the company’s financial status. Profitability might be the most important measurement of corporate success as it greatly affects the organisation’s competiveness and continuance of the organisation. But in this age of doing business, companies can no longer measure themselves based only on financial perspective. For this report, we will take a more qualitative view and also track the company’s non-financial measures such as brand image, market share, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction to better analyse the success of Amazon.com. 2.1 The Balanced Scorecard Balanced scorecard methodology is an analysis technique designed to translate an organization's mission statement and overall business strategy into specific, quantifiable goals...
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... 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 him, and branding...
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...management and leadership, it becomes hard to differentiate the two aspects since a good manager must exhibit good leadership skills. Furthermore, good leadership encompasses autocratism, democratism and Laissez-fairism applied concurrently by an individual depending on the situation. Management styles on the other hand are mainly two, autocratic and permissive. They are key in determining the leadership style to be applied. For instance, it is very hard for democratic leadership style to be applied in permissive management style. Therefore, the leadership style selected by an effective manager in most cases depends on the situation Jeff Bezos An exemplary and visionary leader who not only enforces his vision among his employees but also makes them feel important to the organization by directly involving them in development of important decisions in the organization. His success is basically founded on his ability to complement effective leadership, as well as management styles. His leadership approach is based on sustained pressure that comes from a hybrid style developed by combining the three main leadership styles. His is also unrelenting even after being recognized among the world’s richest persons, he still runs his company as if it is new. Steve Jobs He is one of the greatest and yet controversial managers and leaders in the business world. He successfully managed to revive a dying company into one of the most profitable organizations globally through his leadership and management...
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...focused on customer need and develop the new competencies that we think are needed to adapt to changing needs, that has helped us stay innovative, reaching beyond what we already know” (Cornell University, 2012). Amazon.com’s CEO, Jeff Bezo wanted his employees to be invested in the company, that means being 100% committed to the company and wanting success for everyone, not just themselves. The President of Human Resources, Tony Galbato, along with Bezo has a lot of faith in the company and its employees stating, “We have lots of smart people with lots of positive energy, driven by the need to build and continually improve the customer experience” (Cornell University, 2012). That seems to be the trend with Amazon; taking care of its customers and offering the best possible quality without the additional cost. To promote innovation within the company, Bezo relies on a group of skilled HR professionals to find the right individuals for the job. They focus on finding those who will take pride in their job and will want to continue to improve themselves as well as the company. Galbato affirms, “People grow on the job, through long-term career paths, through formalized leadership and technical skills training, and through informal mentoring.” Bezo has...
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...Understanding Leadership Styles resulted in massive reven&ues and sales for Amazon and a loyal customer ase. 9n spite of these recommendale efforts7 Bezos2 transactional leadership 8ualities may have argualy resulted in a stressful /or+ing environment /here employees do not feel /ell positioned to caution this e0tra ordinary leader aout his unrealistic usiness e0pansion plans. Mangalindan 4,-#6 attriutes Amazon2s huge losses regardless of revenue and sales gro/th to the company2s hunger for e0panding its already gargantuan portfolio. 9t is reasonale to assume that this is a direct result of Bezos2s /ill to e0pand y any means at a fast rate. #oncl(sion 'o sum upG Jeff Bezos is a tas+ oriented7 transactional and transformational leader.>is leadership style has resulted in Amazon eing a success story in terms of revenues7 sales and stoc+ price analysis yet lac+ing in eing a good /or+ing environment and recording a profit on the ottom line. (erhaps7 Bezos must slo/ do/n his transformational characteristics and allo/ Amazon to record profits efore e0panding it any further. Also7 it may e eneficial to the company that Bezos tones do/n his transactional leadership 8ualities in an effort to ma+e the environment friendlier and fle0ile. 6 Understanding Leadership Styles eferencesBessinger7 H. 4,-#7 July6. Amazon eports Loss espite Strong Sales Hro/th. The Wall Street Journal. etrieved online from http:II///./s=.comI*oo+7 J. 4,-##7 June6. @aceoo+7 Amazon...
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...Failure Analysis/Change Strategy Learning Team A LDR/531 Organizational Leadership October 21, 2014 Dr. Nancy Atkins Failure and Change Strategy for a Business Circuit City was one of the top selling electronic retailers in the United States. The company was based out of Richmond, Virginia started by Samuel S. Wurtzel in 1949. Some say bad real estate deals, lack of focus on being the low cost seller, mistakes with its sales force and straying from its core led to their demise in 2009. The success of Amazon has much to do with Jeff Bezos, the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). His unique combination of character traits and business strategy has driven Amazon to the top of the online retail world. In 2011, Amazon.com was posting revenues of nearly $50 billion per year (Price III, 2013). Part 1: Business Failure/Success Analysis Circuit City Objective (Carolyn Whitaker) Circuit City is dedicated to the highest quality of customer service which is done with the highest respect. With a highly praised customer service and satisfaction, it will improve our sales performance. For Circuit City to effectively sell products to customers, sales representatives will try to understand and fulfil the customers’ needs. With a highly trained team of associates, Circuit City will be successful in the long run. Circuit City Vision/Mission Statement (Carolyn Whitaker) Respect - “Our Associates are our greatest assets. We expect every Associate to demonstrate that they...
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...An e-Business Analysis of Amazon Timothy Harpe BUS 352 Ins. Victor Olufeso December 15, 2013 Becoming one of the most powerful E-tailers on the planet is Amazon.com; in a matter of 18 years becoming one of the most powerful E-tailers in the world, while not producing a product. Amazon.com is an American e-commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1994, by Jeff Bezos started a business out of his garage in Bellevue, Washington, which he incorporated under the name Cadabra.com. Then in 1995, Cadabra became Amazon.com, continuing as an online bookstore before diversifying its product lines by adding VHSs, DVDs, music CDs, MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and more to his portfolio of items to sell. “Amazon also issued guidance for the fourth quarter of 2013, saying that net sales are expected to be between $23.5 billion and $26.5 billion, representing growth of 10% to 25% over the fourth quarter of 2012,” (McGrath, 2013) with no end in sight. Amazon has a business model that is based on the buy, sale and transfer or shipment of goods to anywhere in the world, as of 2013 it is working well. With the explosion of the World Wide Web, or internet, Jeff Bezos capitalized on the book buying and reading industry, with aggressive ideas of improving the way to deliver this product. Although Amazon does not buy a lot of products, rather they allow the seller store their product in the Amazon warehouse hubs...
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...Introduction to Management Case Study 7 EMC1 Diego Estrada Marina Rillo Mia Taeza Vincent Zagala Introduction to Management Case Study 7: Zappos DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What traits of effective leadership does Tony Hsieh demonstrates at Zappos? What aspects of his leadership can you criticize, if any? Is his approach transferable to other leaders and other organizations, or is it person and situation specific? For Tony Hsieh, the Zappos brand is less about a particular type of product and more about providing a good customer service. This means that he largely cares about the welfare of his employees and customers. An evidence of him being such an altruist leader was when the blog search engine Land called him “the poster child for how to connect with customers online”. Hsieh exhibits a servant leadership style because he is committed to the empowerment of his employees. This was evident when Zappos was included in the 15 best top companies to work for in Fortune before. Employees at Zappos have no-call times nor scripts for customer service representatives, have regular costume parties, parades, and decorations in each department. Also, Hsieh is a democratic leader because he is committed to both task and his employees. As stated earlier, his main objective with Zappos is to always provide a good customer service to others. This is evident in the company’s goal to always deliver ordered packages fast and maybe before the due time. He is always after...
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...company that is most closely tied with the dot.com gold rush phenomenon. Since 1995 the Seattle based company has grown at a tremendous rate with revenues rising from about $150 million in 1997 to $3.1 billion in 2001. The company made its first quarterly profit of $5.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2001. However, this was dwarfed by massive cumulative operating losses. Amazon’s share price symbolizes the effects of the dot-com gold-rush: [pic] Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, a computer science and electrical engineering graduate from Princeton University. Bezos had moved to Seattle after resigning as the senior vice-president at D.E.Shaw, a Wall Street investment bank. He did not know much about the Internet. But, he came across a statistic that the Internet was growing at 2300%, which convinced him that this was a large growth opportunity. Not knowing much more, he plunged into the world of E-Commerce with no prior retailing experience. Despite this, during the early days of the Net, Jeff Bezos was one of the few people to understand the special nature of Internet Retailing and E-Commerce. Our goal is to be Earth's most customer-centric company, why? The answer is three things:The first is that customer-centric means figuring out what your customer want by asking them, then figuring out how to give it to them, and then giving it to them. That's the traditional meaning of customer-centric, and we're focused on it. The second is innovating on behalf of customers,...
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