What is Amazoncom?

What is Amazon.com? Amazon.com can be known as multinational technology company that offers services of both electronic commerce as well as an online retailer that offers customers the ability to make purchases via Internet. Amazon.com name was derived from the Amazon River. Jeff Bezos, who was the creator and CEO, saw the potential of the Internet and online shopping. He decided to pursue his vision to “strive to be Earth’s most customer-centric company where people can find and discover virtually anything they want to buy online.

” Amazon.com was incorporated in July 1994 but did not actually begin operation of business until July 1995. When Bezos initially began his business, it was operated out of a garage in Seattle. In the first 30 days of business, Amazon.com filled orders from customers in 50 states and 45 countries. The first book sold was “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought”. According to media link under history same top

Bezos had an unusual business plan for making his company be successful.

He did not expect to make a profit until four to five years after being in operation. His plan was to sit back and let other Internet companies grow at a much faster rate than his company. He allowed them to have reign in the markets so that he could learn what not to do with his business. This strategy caused complaints from stockholders because they felt that Amazon.com was not reaching profitability fast enough.

Get quality help now

WriterBelle

Verified

Proficient in: Shopping

4.7 (657)

“ Really polite, and a great writer! Task done as described and better, responded to all my questions promptly too! ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

Many of the other e-companies went out of business during the dot come bubble burst of 2001 and this permitted Amazon.com to have control of the market and earn over $1 million in revenues per fiscal quarter. Amazon has been profitable since that time. By 2003, Amazon.com had earned $5.265 billion of which $35.3 million were in revenues. In 2005, sales had increased to $8.49 billions and are expected to be at least $9.85 billion in 2006. For his outstanding achievement, Bezos was named Man of the Year in Time Magazine in 1999 for his company’s success in popularizing online shopping.

Organizational Structure

Amazon’s organizational management structure can be classified as hierarchical. Having such a structure allows them to be more flexible and easily adapt to repeated changes in the external marketplace. Although they are currently classified as hierarchical this soon may be changing after the 13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods. Amazon’s organizational structure consist of two CEO positions. These two CEO positions consist of a Worldwide consumer CEO and Web Service CEO. Also found in the organizational chart there are three Senior Vice Presidents which work in the capacity of Chief Financial Officer, General Counsel & Secretary, and Business Development. There is also one Worldwide Controller Principal Accounting Officer. Although all of these positions listed are responsible for various vital aspects of the business they report directly to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. There are also seven segments which consist of software development, retail product management, information technology, operational and customer service, administration and finance, human resources and legal operations. All heads of these seven segments also report to Jeff Bezos, CEO.

As of 2018 Amazon employs more about 560,000 people worldwide while serving about 300 million global customers.

Products and Services Offered

Amazon.com offers consumer a wide variety of products and shopping services such as:

1. One service that Amazon.com online service offers the ability to search for book, music, and videos in an instance.

2. Amazon.com also gives customers instant personalized recommendations based on their prior purchases.

3. It gives customers an opportunity to become an Amazon.com Associate so that they can earn money by selling books, CDs, DVD and many other products on their Web site.

4. They offer an Internet movie database. This allows customers to retrieve details about movies such as who was in it, who made it, the filming location and reviews.

Amazon.com technology is so advance that their items can be sold through six global websites which are: US, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and Canada. Amazon’s host approximately 20 fulfillment centers which embodies greater than 10 million square feet.

Marketing Strategy

Jeff Bezos’s perspective on marketing strategy is to “be earth’s most customer-centric company.” He says, Amazon’s main objective is to make purchases on the web be easy, gratifying and seamless for customers. The four marketing strategies Amazon uses is email marketing, ratings and reviews, customer loyalty and video. Amazon’s email marketing the foremost vital marketing strategy. Their approach is to promote their business inside each transactional email that is generated. According to the article by Grace Miller, “there are nine different kinds of transactional and marketing emails, which take users through the onboarding process, transactional purchase emails, different kinds of upsells, and review solicitation”. This will allow users to become familiar with the sites and make them more apt to continue purchasing. Secondly, Amazon sends out ratings and reviews for each product separately this gives the company’s email marketers the ability to create messages with subject lines that are specific. This process helps customer quickly recognize their purchases when sorting through many emails. Thirdly, the prime customer loyalty gives customers a feeling of prestige and extra worth. Through this marketing technique customers are offered benefits that last a year, incentives for future purchases, and fast delivery time. These perks help ensure customer return to make purchases. Lastly, videos have been used to give customers a view of featured products. These strategies of low pricing, variety of selection and convenience links underneath products for easy ordering gives the customer instantaneous gratification all at once.

Ethical Issues

There has been many reports of unethical behavior to employees under the direction of Amazon managers. The demands placed on employees caused them to sacrifice their personal lives in order to help Amazon reach their goals. For example, in the article High Tech Cruelty, a case was reported when an employee needed to be off to take care of a sick family member they were punished for their inability to come to work. The employee stated, “when you’re not able to give your absolute all, 80 hours a week, they see it as a major weakness. Another unethical issue reported was an employee with breast cancer was in jeopardy of losing her job because they indicated that “difficulties in her personal life had interfered with her achieving her work goals. This showed they cared more about the business than the employee’s well-being. Another example of unethical behavior is when a mother wanted to reduce the amount of hours she worked so she could properly care for her children she was notified that her job was in at risk. They said this is an indication she was not entirely committed to the company.

Conclusion

Although Amazon is a great place to work and known to be one of the greatest and prosperous success stories in business history; there are still improvement that must be made regarding the mistreatment of their employees. If Amazon could come up with a plan to create a more humane balance between employee’s work and life their company would be a force to be reckoned with for all companies.