Brief Description of Amazon

Seattle is home to the corporate headquarters of the e-commerce company Amazon which was established in 1994. It is widely recognized that Amazon invented e-commerce. Initially, the company began as an online bookstore before introducing other things such as apparel, gadgets, and music. The organization has been able to sustain its market share through the use of a customer-centric approach (Trevor, 2014). In addition, Amazon worked to maintain its competitive advantage by utilizing the opportunities presented by technology.



14 Principles of Amazon's Operations



In addition, 14 principles serve as a framework for Amazon's operations. Specifically, ownership, finest development, invention, simplification, and highest standards. Besides, customer obsession, focus on action, thinking big, building trust, frugality, learning and being curious, delivering results, believing leaders are right, disagreeing and committing (Stone, 2015) also form part of the principles. The above principles have helped to create a sense of ownership among the employees who are obliged to act regardless of whether the task falls within their department or not. Besides, the company has constantly been encouraging innovation from its employees, and it has always been innovating solutions to simplify the customer experience.



Amazon's Hiring Policy



Amazon also has a strict hiring policy that seeks to ensure that only the best are recruited into the company. This ensures that the recruited personnel can sustain the high-performance standards set out by the company (Amazon, 2017).



Strengths and Weaknesses of Amazon



Some of the great strengths of the Amazon Company are derived from its internal strategic approach to business. For instance, the company benefits from a strong brand that has been in existence since the mid-1990s. Besides, Amazon offers diversified products to its clients, and therefore it benefits from diversity and the fact that it can easily satisfy the varied demands of the customers. Additionally, Amazon has managed to record the highest revenues in the e-commerce industry. The high revenues have enabled the company to diversify its business operations and thus remain afloat in an increasingly competitive industry. The only company that seems to be seriously competing against Amazon is Alibaba (Greenspan, 2017).



However, despite its outstanding success, Amazon's approach to business has several disadvantages such as limited physical presence such as walk-in stores. Additionally, Amazon has not yet managed to gain market share in emerging and frontier economies that have a vast and untapped e-commerce markets. Lastly, the business model that is adopted by Amazon can be easily imitated by its competitors (Greenspan, 2017).



Competitive Advantage and Overall Strategy for Amazon



Market experts have varying opinions regarding what constitutes the competitive edge of Amazon. According to Forbes, Amazon's competitive advantage is mainly derived from the company's ability to provide convenient product delivery to its customers (Boss, 2017). However, according to Roth (2014), the company's CEO and investors constitute the primary competitive advantage for Amazon. This view is supported by the fact that Amazon's shareholders have enabled it to sustain a premium valuation since its IPO debut (Roth, 2014). The competitive advantages listed above were realized through the adoption of a generic strategy that encompassed cost leadership. The cost leadership approach that was spearheaded by Jeff Bezos involved eliminating all costs that were not providing value to the company using networking and computing technologies. Therefore, the success of Amazon Company in the e-commerce industry was attributed to its 14-point strategy, investors, cost leadership, and early entry into the industry.



References



Amazon. (2017). Our Leadership Principles. Retrieved September 18, 2017, from https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/p34qgjcv93n37yd



Boss, J. (2017, June). Amazon’s Competitive Advantage Isn’t Cost Or Convenience; It’s This. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffboss/2017/06/20/amazons-competitive-advantage-isnt-cost-or-convenience-its-this/#5516c4014958



Greenspan, R. (2017). Amazon.com Inc. SWOT Analysis & Recommendations. Retrieved from http://panmore.com/amazon-com-inc-swot-analysis-recommendations



Roth, C. (2014). Amazon’s No. 1 competitor-slaying advantage: Its investors. Retrieved September 19, 2017, from https://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/14/amazons-no-1-competitor-slaying-advantage-its-investorscommentary.html



Stone, M. (2015). Here are the 14 rules of Amazon’s brutal workplace. Retrieved September 19, 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-14-rules-behind-amazons-brutal-workplace-2015-8?IR=T



Trevor, W. (2014). Amazon & Leadership: The 14 Leadership Principles (Part 1). Retrieved September 18, 2017, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141111222354-23565607-amazon-s-14-leadership-principles-part-1

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