AMAZON.

COM SWOT
ANALYSIS 2018
ABOUT AMAZON
Name Amazon.com, Inc.

Logo

• Internet, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Video)

• Retail (Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Prime, Whole Foods)
Industries served
• Consumer Electronics (Amazon Kindle, Fire HD, Fire TV, Amazon
Echo)
Geographic areas served Worldwide

Headquarters Seattle, Washington U.S.

Current CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos

Revenue (US$) 177.866 billion (2017) 30.8% 135.987 billion (2016)

Profit (US$) 3.033 billion (2017) 30.9% 2.317 billion (2016)

Employees 566,000 (2018)

Alibaba Group, Apple Inc., eBay, Inc., Facebook Inc., Alphabet (Google
Inc.) Inc., International Business Machines Corporation, Microsoft
Main Competitors
Corporation, Netflix Inc., Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and many other Internet
and retail companies. SLIDE | 2
BUSINESS DESCRIPTION (1/4)
“”
Amazon.com business overview from the company’s financial report:

“Amazon.com opened its virtual doors on the World Wide Web in July 1995. We
seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company. We are guided by four
principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for
invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. In
each of our segments, we serve our primary customer sets, consisting of
consumers, sellers, developers, enterprises, and content creators.

We serve consumers through our retail websites and physical stores and focus
on selection, price, and convenience. We design our websites to enable
hundreds of millions of unique products to be sold by us and by third parties
across dozens of product categories. Customers access our offerings through
our websites, mobile apps, Alexa, and physically visiting our stores.

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BUSINESS DESCRIPTION (2/4)
“”
We also manufacture and sell electronic devices, including Kindle e-readers,
Fire tablets, Fire TVs, and Echo, and we develop and produce media content.

We strive to offer our customers the lowest prices possible through low
everyday product pricing and shipping offers, and to improve our operating
efficiencies so that we can continue to lower prices for our customers.

We also provide easy-to-use functionality, fast and reliable fulfillment, and timely
customer service.

In addition, we offer Amazon Prime, an annual membership program that

includes unlimited free shipping on millions of items, access to unlimited instant
streaming of thousands of movies and TV episodes, and other benefits.

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 “”
Our current
BUSINESS DESCRIPTION (3/4) and
potential
1. online, offline, and multichannel retailers, publishers, vendors, distributors, competitors
manufacturers, and producers of the products we offer and sell to consumers and
businesses; include
2. publishers, producers, and distributors of physical, digital, and interactive media of
all types and all distribution channels;
3. web search engines, comparison shopping websites, social networks, web portals,
and other online and app-based means of discovering, using, or acquiring goods
and services, either directly or in collaboration with other retailers;
4. companies that provide e-commerce services, including website development,
advertising, fulfillment, customer service, and payment processing;
5. companies that provide fulfillment and logistics services for themselves or for third
parties, whether online or offline;
6. companies that provide information technology services or products, including
onpremises or cloud-based infrastructure and other services; and
7. companies that design, manufacture, market, or sell consumer electronics,
telecommunication, and electronic devices.

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BUSINESS DESCRIPTION (4/4)
“”
We believe that the principal competitive factors in our retail businesses include:

• Selection
• Price
• Convenience
• Fast and reliable fulfillment

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S W
O T
STRENGTHS

1. Low cost structure, the largest merchandise selection and a huge number of third
party sellers
45%
40.5%
40% 38.5%

39.5%
35%
28.9%
30% 27.0% 27.1%
26.1%
In 2006-2017, 25% 27.9% 21.9% 20.2%
22.6%
19.5%
Amazon has grown 20% 24.0% 20.5% 17.2% 16.5% 16.0%
much faster than the 15%
16.6% 14.7%

15.6%
entire U.S. e- 10%
15.4% 15.0%

commerce market. 5% 2.6%

3.8%
0%
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Amazon Growth Rate U.S. E-commerce Growth Rate

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S W
O T
STRENGTHS

Amazon follows a cost leadership

What is the key to such success? According to
Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of
Amazon.com, the company’s success lies in its:
strategy, but so do many other online
and offline retailers. Why then does
Amazon outperform them?

• Low-cost structure

• Selection

• Third-party sellers

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S W
O T
WEAKNESSES

1. Increasing long-term obligations-to-assets ratio

Amazon’s debt-to-asset ratio has risen significantly over the past few years and it is now
one of the highest among its competitors.
Company 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Total long-term debt

Amazon 7.433 15.675 17.476 20.301 45.718

Wal-Mart 44.459 40.889 38.214 36.015 -

Long-term debt growth

Amazon 38.6% 110% 11.5% 16.2% 25.2%

Wal-Mart 7.3% (8%) (6.5%) (5.8%) -

Debt/asset ratio

Amazon 18.5% 28.7% 27% 24.3% 34.8%

Wal-Mart 21.8% 20.1% 19.1% 18.1% -

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S W
O T
OPPORTUNITIES

1. The e-commerce market is forecast to reach US$4.5 trillion by 2021

Total e-commerce sales worldwide (actual and forecast), 2015-2021

5 23.2 25

5 21.1
20.1
4 19.1 20

4 15.9 15.5
17.4
3 15

2 10

1 5

1
1.548 1.859 2.290 2.774 3.305 3.879 4.479
0 0
Total E-Commerce Sales (in trillions, US$) Change (%)

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S W
O T
THREATS

1. Wal-Mart’s efforts to establish itself as a leading online retailer

The retail sales of physical stores compared to e-commerce sales are declining. Many
retail companies, including Amazon’s key rival Wal-Mart, are making huge efforts to
establish themselves as electronic commerce retailers.

• In 2016, Wal-Mart’s e-commerce sales grew by 29%.[5]

• Wal-Mart now has e-commerce websites in 11 countries and competes with Amazon
in the U.S., U.K., Canada, China, India and Japan.

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PRESENTATION

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SWOT 2018 SLIDE | 12
SOURCES (1/4)
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SOURCES (3/4)
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