...ACE Challenge 2015 Amazon Confidential Preliminary Round: ACE Case Breakers Case Study: Operations Introduction It is a bright autumn morning in 2205 and Gaurav Maurya, SVP – Amazon Enceladus1, is gazing outside the window and reminiscing about how Blue Origin2 had transformed Enceladus into a bustling human colony in a short span of 50 years, much like some of the developing countries back on Earth. Also, continuing Amazon’s legacy, Amazon.en has become Enceladus’s most customer-centric company in a short span of one year and customers love to buy all sorts of products on it every day. Gaurav is scheduled to meet the Board of Directors back on Earth in 3 days to present the first year report. For this meeting, Gaurav has decided to focus on operations, and on how different verticals within operations are helping raise the bar on customer experience. Gaurav enlisted four of his team members to share their stories. As Gaurav prepares for the meeting, he has asked you to take a look at the reports that his team has put together and help him answer some open questions and come up with fresh ideas on how to solve the problems. Scenario 1: Like on Earth, Amazon’s goal is to offer Enceladus’ largest selection on Amazon.en. Deonn, who recently joined Amazon.en wants to accelerate the addition of new products in the catalogue. While Amazon already provides tools for vendors to submit their items in the catalogue, the error rate remains high. On an average, vendors...
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...all gadgets amongst themselves. E.g. here we wish to have a network pool registered with the Master Controller which enables connectivity and interaction of all the devices with each other. So a DSLR connected to a Smart TV through the master controller shall enable us to see the captured moments on the big screen. * The humanoid thinking of the Master Controller is what we intend to achieve in order to derive the maximum value of all the devices. The devices shall in this case act as per my thoughts. UNDERSTANDING THE APPROACH Here we see the Master Controller (MC) connected to all the devices through the Li-Fi ("light fidelity" technology, that can be a complement of RF communication or a replacement in contexts of data broadcasting. It is high speed and bidirectional which carries much more information and has been proposed as a solution to the RF-bandwidth limitations) and Bluetooth, the devices in turn are connected to this common pooled network established by the Master controller. CASE: Peter has been working on his DELL STUDIO for a long time now. The MC device interacts with the laptop to find out the programs Peter had been running in it, the laptop in turns sends the feedback of voluminous...
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...By referring to the case study, Amazon’s website for your county and your experience of Amazon offline communications, evaluate how well Amazon communicate their core proposition and promotional offer. Using the case study, characterize Amazon’s approach to marketing communications. With indication to the six classes of e-specialized apparatuses depicted in Figure 1.10, most likely the key procedures are web crawler showcasing, associate advertising and organizations with non-competitive transactional sites. In this regard, Amazon's methodology is precise, utilizing the procedures that are utmost savvy. The other feature is the utilization of mechanization to empower particular publicizing through the normal and paid postings of the internet searchers. Analysis of the best approach is critical to make these advertisements work. The communications policy which are portrayed in the essence towards the end of the case opening: 'Internet promoting strategies, include paid review advertising, instinctive ads on openings, email encounters and site design improvement'. The secondary and web crawler showcasing methodologies are portrayed before in the article. Explain what distinguishes Amazon in its uses of technology for competitive advantage. The accompanying are normal for Amazon's utilization of innovation: Utilization of in-house advances for personalization; Early adopter – Rapid selection of new systems, for instance, Jeff Bezos has discussed the merits of Web...
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...model I’ve used Amazon in my books for over 10 years now since many companies, from startups and small businesses to large international businesses, can learn from their focus on the customer and the approach of using technology and analysis to improve results. It consistently outperforms other companies in its ACSI customer satisfaction rating too. I aim to keep the case study up-to-date for readers of the books and Smart Insights readers who may be interested. In it we look at Amazon’s background, revenue model and sources for the latest business results. I recommend anyone studying Amazon checks the latest Amazon revenue and business strategies from their SEC filings / Investor relations. The annual filings to give a great summary of eBay business and revenue models. A good summary of the latest business model initiatives is available in this Amazon annual report summary for 2011. For Q4, 2010: * North America segment sales, representing the Company’s U.S. and Canadian sites, were $7.21 billion, up 45% from fourth quarter 2009. * International segment sales, representing the Company’s U.K., German, Japanese, French, Chinese and new Italian sites, were $5.74 billion, up 26% from fourth quarter 2009. Excluding the unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 29%. Amazon has come a long way since it launched in 1995: From: and it’s offices… to it’s current Seattle headquarters: Amazon performs exceptionally...
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...Amazon.com Case study: Mission- to be the earth’s most customer-centric company • Relentlessly improving the customer experience by expanding selection and convenience while lowering prices; • Demonstrating sustained operating progress; • Positioning for growth; • Making innovation the foundation of everything the company does; • Focusing on optimizing free cash flow per share. What does it mean to have the mission, “the earth’s most customer centric company”? How well is Amazon achieving this mission? In its 2005 presentations to financial analysts and its shareholders meeting, Amazon.com described itself as having a new mission- to be the earth’s most customer centric company, which the company defined as “starting with the customer and working backwards.” One of the main goals of Amazon at the time and still relevant today is to relentlessly improve the customer experience by expanding selection and convenience while lowering the prices. Amazon started with the customer centric motive of expanding consumer options by offering a wider selection of books online versus an ordinary bookstore. Amazon has made their mission possible through many partnerships such as Target, Baby’s R Us, Nordstrom, Office Depot, etc. With the convenience of having many categories in one place and excellent customer service, customers continuously gave a high customer satisfaction rating to the company. Achieving the mission through partnerships and convenience. Ex. Partnership...
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...Amazon case study 1. Analyze Amazon.com each year from 2004 to 2006. • 2004 = SUCCESS - Good net profit - Low price strategy - Use of commercial tools: discounts and free shipping - Launch of A9.com - Acquisition of Joyo.com - Largest database of book - Culture of “innovation” - Creation of “pizza teams”: improve innovation - Technological problems - Many litigations - “Gold box”: online design tools - Diversification of products and commercial tools. • 2005 = GROWTH - Growing revenue of 24% but decreasing of the profit margins - Strategic partnerships (Marks & Spencers) - Assortment of acquisitions (BookSurge) - High ranking in customer satisfaction survey (2nd) - Drugstore become a competitor - Hire product expert - Development of various facilities: Toxona... • 2006 = DECREASE - Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) - Alexa Internet (a subsidiary of Amazon) launched the Alexa Top Sites Service - Amazon Connect: allow authors to send messages to the readers - Start competition on the digital music market (Apple’s market) - Amazon “gold standard” in customer satisfaction for online shopping - Stay focus on global expansion (strategic plan) - Diminution of the turnover due to an unfavorable lawsuit against ToysRus.com - Negative impact on share price ($ 35 in 2006; highest value in 1999 $106,69,lowest $5.97 in 2001) -...
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...Amazon Case Study I definitely think Amazon is moving away from its core capability of being a leading online retailer. I shop on Amazon.com frequently because of their competitive prices. Amazon.com provides new and used top of the line products for very low prices, and their used products, such as DVDs and video games, are in top shape. I am very pleased with Amazon.com being an online retailer. I do not think it is a wise thing to do. It is understandable that Amazon’s operating margins are lower than Wal-Mart’s because Wal-Mart is an actual retail store instead of an online retailer. Many people do not shop online, therefore the operating margins and profits are going to be different. The components of the Amazon database are the Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and the Mechanical Turk. With the Simple Storage Service, Amazon charges 15 cents per gigabyte per month for businesses to store data and applications on Amazon disk drives. With the Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon rents out processing power, starting at 10 cents per hour for the equivalent of one basic server. The Mechanical Turk service combines processing power with networks of real people who are paid to do the kind of work machines cannot do as well as humans can, such as recognizing inappropriate content in images or transcribing audio. Companies post work onto the Mechanical Turk and pay people online. Amazon receives 10 percent commission for this work. The data management issues...
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...This case study analysis serves the purpose to evaluate Amazon’s unique approach to service marketing which creates satisfied and loyal customer base and to estimate its international expansion. Amazon is one of the most customer oriented companies in the world, which is essential for e-tailor business as the competitor is only one click away. With its main focus on customer experience, it offers wide variety of merchandise, lowest price and convenience. This three ‘customer experience pillars’ supported by a foundation of innovation build the center of Amazon main strategy (Figure 1). Innovation Figure1: Amazon’s Customer Experience Pillars [5] Let’s have a closer look at each item: 1) The variety and availability of items on site is one of the biggest advantages of e-bookstore in over a regular one. Since there is no limit for shelf space it can offer not only top-sellers but also very unique slow-moving items. shipment within 24 hours. 2) The fairness and competitiveness of overall price is achieved by offering the lowest prices for the most popular products, with less popular products commanding higher prices and a Most of the company products are available for Convenience Selection Price greater margin for Amazon. Free shipping is offered for all orders over a certain amount of money and is used to encourage increase in basket size. 3) Customer convenience could be subdivided into: a) web site functionality or the ease of use of the site itself, which was...
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...Julien Levesque May 19, 2010 MISM 2301 Hard Rock Café Case Study 1. What problems did the Rank Group find with the Hard Rock’s three main internal information systems (restaurant operations, merchandising, and financial)? Why was this a problem? Internal Information System | Problem(s)/Why | Restaurant Operations | -lack of a standard: differences in descriptions throughout what were planned to be restaurants with matching menus-no efficient way of tracking all transactions on a grand scale (i.e. all restaurants) | Merchandising | -no chain wide merchandising system: in certain instances, this led to shortages in merchandise. These aren’t affordable because of their importance to the total revenue | Financial | -there was too much recording taking place: 50 ledgers and 90 finance staff members were costly, inefficient time wise, and there was more room for error | 2. What’s the solution? * Operations * utilize a database with standardized descriptions of all food options available; arrange for some form of data movement (i.e. EDI, ETL, RSS); ensure there is efficient access of this database for each and every restaurant via an Internet connection * install machines or new software to record all point of sale transaction activity and send it to a database for processing * Merchandising * Install a merchandise system throughout all restaurants; coordinate with all computers to record changes in inventory after...
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...entrepreneur. He was the one who started of the business with his idea and made it successful. I feel he is the best by his different strategies in making profits. Not everyone are successful every time. But then he did not give up and took risks to make profits, where he ended up with success. He made the company public for more investment and always looked at expanding the business. I could rate him 10/10 as an entrepreneur. Coming to operating manager, I could rate him 8/10. He always tried to expand the customer base by merging with the other online store and getting equity partnerships from other online retailers. Nevertheless he hired the best people which helped him to get over the hard times of dot-com burst. 2. If you look at the case, there were many strategies taken by Bezos from time to time from its evolution. At first after amazon.com was launched, he has launched new categories and he expanded his business globally and entered Europe market. For more investment he made the company public. Then later, Auctions and commerce network was launched. In 2000, to expand his market place business, he took equity partnerships of online retails and at last, the step taken by him was merging with the “Toys R Us” to overcome the dot-com burst. The company met enormous stress from Wall Street and the company’s stake holders to accomplish profitability. As of 1997 to 2000, the Total verge raised from 29 million to 655 million. Nevertheless, the operational expenditures too grew...
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...BUSINESS MANAGEMENT Title of the subject: MALC Assessment: TOPIC: ‘Charismatic leadership, change and innovation in an R&D organisation’ Neil Paulsen, Diana Maldonado, Victor J Callan, Oluremi Ayoka Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 22, Issue 5, pp511-523 The charismatic /transformational leadership is very important for any change in the company. the values of charismatic leaders are highly significant ,they can create changes , transform and develop an entire company. because we need always managers that are motivated and committed to make changes and progress of their products in the term of research and development. (R§D). So the idea behind this article is to find a strategy that develops R§D performance through charismatic style of leadership, identity team, cooperation strategy and innovation. The charismatic leader often focus strongly on making the group very clear and distinct ,separating it from other groups ,he will then build the image of the group , especially in the minds of his followers ,as being superior to all others by encouraging group members in order to turn creative ideas into innovative products and services. The charismatic leadership positively predicts higher levels of perceived team innovation , that means that the leaders pay much attention to the followers making them feel like they are the most important in the world to encourage them and growth the level of their self confidence...
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...between Toys R Us and Amazon, TRU argued that Amazon fail to abide by the contract that the two parties had agreed upon. The contract stated that Amazon would sell toys online exclusively from TRU. Amazon breached the contract by allowing other distributors to sell their toys through Amazon. After TRU carefully reviewed the website they learned that Amazon was also selling more than 4000 products offered by competitors. Amazon argued that TRU failed to abide by the contract by not keeping products in stock. The judge’s decision was for the two parties to cut their ties with each other and allow TRU to establish an independent website. The judge also ruled that Amazon had breached the contract but did not award any punitive damages to TRU. I believe that the outcome should have been that the two parties cut their partnership and neither side would receive any monetary damages. In my opinion both parties breached the contract. Amazon breached because TRU was suppose to be exclusive to Amazon and Amazon was not suppose to let the competitors sell the products on their website. TRU breached because if they were not capable of keeping the product in stock, especially around the Christmas season, then Amazon needed to seek out the competitors to help fill orders that were being placed. 2. Amazon and TRU faced many advantages and disadvantages when they decided to enter in a contract together. Some of the advantages were the increase in sales that both Amazon and TRU would receive...
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...Amazon operates in online retailing industry. The industry has a high growth rate and is not concentrated. The products are not significantly differentiated and the switching costs are low. Overall the rivalry in the industry is relatively high. For same reasons bargaining power of customers is high. The threat of new entrants is high, as it is easy to establish an online company. Threat of substitutes is high, because the customers can choose regular brick and mortar companies over online retailers. Bargaining power of suppliers can be high, depending on what products the company specialises in. These factors indicate that the profitability of the industry in not high. The key strengths of Amazon that enable the company to achieve competitive advantage are strong brand and high-quality customer service. The company is perceived to be reliable by the customers, which is important for online retailers. Amazon.com started as a book retailer, but later it started expanding in other product markets. It provides online space for other retailers for a fee without owning them or managing their inventory. This strategy is viable in long term. Amazon does not incur any significant costs as it does not manage subscribers but simply rents out online space on the website. The subscribers will be interested in this model, because it allows them to reach more customers as well as take advantage of brand name of Amazon.com. The Amazon Commerce Network strategy allows the company to...
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...Amazon Kindle Case Study The case study under review in the McGraw Hill text International Business: competing in a global marketplace on page 533 deals with the Amazon Kindle e-reader. The e-reader market quickly became flooded with competition from many competitors who have found ways to design the products mainly in the United States but find cheap parts and labor by outsourcing manufacturing to other countries. This international competition is no surprise in an increasingly global market. When deciding where to manufacture the key components of the Amazon Kindle, the main driving factors considered were sleek design that is highly functional and reliable with relatively low price. In designing the display, Amazon utilized the design expertise of a leading company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. E Ink designed the microcapsule beads that make the Kindle’s display visible with miniscule amounts of battery. Despite the research and design coming from American firms, there are no American firms that have the ability to manufacture the “bistable electrophoretic display” that shows an image without utilizing battery power. Amazon landed on a Taiwanese based company to manufacture the display components; which are the single most expensive to manufacture, costing about $60 per unit. Next the wireless card is designed by Qualcomm in San Diego and allows the Kindle user to access the digital bookstore wirelessly. The component cost about $40 to manufacture and is produced by...
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...Amazon case study analysis ---- Jiachuang Sun 1. Review of Amazon’s strategy between 2007 and 2009 Strategic analysis Profiling the business: ➢ Mission: Amazon’s mission is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible price[1]. ➢ Product/service analysis: Since the establishment of Amazon, new products has been kept adding into the original book category and Amazon has moved further to provide service. There are three product categories in Amazon, media category, electronic and general merchandise category and other category like Amazon web service and Amazon Enterprise Solution. This means you can buy almost everything from Amazon. ➢ Sales and gross profit analysis: The net sales growth of Amazon in year 2007 and 2008 was in average 30% and the total sales in 2008 was $19166m. In the same time, the gross profit grew from $3353m in 2007 to $4270 in 2008. Actually, both the sales and profits grew quickly since 2001 and they seemed to grow at a quicker way. External environment analysis ➢ Opportunities and threats: • Opportunities: to further improve the speed of delivery; international expansion in emerging markets such as China and India; extension of brands into new areas; through acquisitions and partnership to consolidate Amazon’s technological capability...
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