AMAZON Case Study

Resource analysis Tangible o Financial: Strong cash flow, low long-term debt. High working capital resulting from credit term advantage between supplier and customer. o Physical: Fulfilment centres across North America (10), Europe (8) and Asia (4). o Human: Strategic approach to recruiting: acquiring/choosing locations that offer a large supply of computer software talent, such as the case of Seattle in the past). Richard Dalzell (CIO) brought expertise and knowledge in many other areas, such as merchandising, logistics systems, supply chain management, etc. Strong management team and senior managers are recruited from various well-known companies Intangible o Reputation: Image of a truly global company. Good reputation among suppliers easy acquisitions of suppliers and partners for new business expansion, e.g. easy and fast acquisition of major music labels (Sony Music, EMI, etc.) when the company entered the digital music industry. o Technology: Continuous investments in developing new technology and innovations. Wide product range of Amazon Web Services o Culture: CEO Bezos ensured that his company (and its employees) was never satisfied with the status quo and never too comfortable continuous looking for possible improvement of the customer experience (customer are the folks who have the money!)

Value chain analysis: Inbound logistics Acquisition of suppliers and partners who want to sell their products through the Outbound Marketing/Sales Service logistics Continuous Distribution Behavioural One-on-one development via Targeting technical of new fulfilment assistance for Online shopping technological centres AWS behaviour innovations Introduction Recommendations, Enhancing (= new / usage of existing products reviews, feedback Operations

Amazon website (e.g. music labels for digital music store, books publisher for book store, etc.)

product development) Enhancing features of existing products

Frustration -Free Packaging

feature to support and simplify customers purchase decision making Idea of personalisation Conveying the best customer experience.

with new features that enable developers to build even more powerful and fault resilient applications Currency converter makes the purchasing process easier Bill-me-later payment credit term advantage for customer

Resources Competences analysis Same as competitor Resources Better than competitor Strong financial position enables the company to invest in innovation and technology development / R&D Good reputation among suppliers

Competences SWOT / TOWS analysis Strengths: Strong financial position Good reputation among suppliers Massive size of customer data base Opportunities: Continuing growth of the World Wide Web (Social Media, Cloud Computing, etc.) Threats Strategy 1 Weaknesses Challenges in reconciling its vision of being customercentric which customers group should be given priority? Strategy 2

Strategy 3

Strategy 4