Amazon Company Analysis : Business Analysis

Jeff Bezo’s began Amazon in his garage in July 1995 with three Sun workstations setting on wooden doors for tables and extension cords running from everywhere (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Right from the beginning he was a visionary leaving his well paying job as a senior vice president with D. E. Shaw to begin Amazon.com (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Being the visionary that he is he saw an opportunity prompted by the huge growth rate of internet use in a single year and ran with it never looking back. Jeff realized that the internet had “no real commerce to speak of” so he began researching possible businesses (Academy of Achievement, 2010). “After reviewing 20 mail order businesses and deciding which

Amazon understood firsthand that the competitive advantage of a company originates immediately from how distinctive the organization's resources and competencies are. Amazon is able to both engage in production at a lower cost and generate a superior product at a standard cost. This is accomplished mostly via Amazon's strategy of having a wide variety of goods and competitive pricing. Customers know they can find basic products at slashed prices or high quality goods at standard prices and this is all achieved via the enormous range of products and product brands and types available on their massive marketplace. For example, the depiction displayed in the case study which shows how growth was related directly to: lower cost structure- lower prices customer experience traffic sellers -selection and convenience. While this is a grave oversimplification of the Amazon business model, it demonstrates how many aspects of the strategy reinforced one another.

It can be served as a competitive advantage, which attracts more customers shifting from Amazon’s online retailer competitors into buying their products, thus increasing the market share.

As of January 2010, Amazon.com has three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples. By offering a large amount of varied categories through its website and other international ones (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.fr, and so on), it has managed to grow to a customer based company with over 30 million people. In addition, the online retail format enables the company to reduce costs of managing inventory (Amazon.com; online bookstore, 2008).

Amazon.com, Inc., on May 28, 1996, started offering a range of products and services through on-line webpages. This new company began to offer products including merchandise and content that was purchased for resale from multiple vendors and sellers ranging from lots of third-party ways. The Amazon.com business has three different segments within its operating environment: Amazon Web Services, North America, and International make up the operating areas. The North American area for Amazon has segments that focus on the sales from retailers of consumer items or product from sellers through its website Amazon.com.

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer that was launched in 1995 (Rouse, 2014). Amazon was mainly a book selling company that has enlarged its’ business by selling a variety of goods. The company sells all types of technology devices such as cell phones, games, televisions, movies, cameras, computers,

The company I have chosen to write about is Amazon. Amazon, was launched on July 16, 1995 by founder Jeff Bezos in his two-car garage in Bellevne, Washington. When Amazon first launched as a website that only sold books, but Jeff Bezos wanted Amazon to be much more than a bookstore, he wanted it to be an everything store. This paper will answer the required questions listed below:

Amazon.com is the biggest online retailer in the US, with about three times the Internet deals income. Amazon.com was established by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and he propelled it online in 1995. In spite of the fact that they for the most part are a retail location, the organization dispatched Amazon.com Auctions, a web closeout administration, in March 1999. Amazon.com has two distinctive value focuses for offering things on their site. One is called selling Individual, which is for individual merchants who wish to sell under 40 things a month, which cost $0.99 per deal in addition to a referral charge and a variable shutting expense for every item sold. The other alternative is called selling Professionally, which is for expert dealers who hope to offer more the 40 things a month, and has a month to month expense of $39.99 in addition to referral charges and shutting expenses for every media item sold.

Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, the company went online on the World Wide Web in July 1995.Amazon focuses on increasing its market share and revenues in the long term and maintaining competitive costs of profit margins and dividends paid to its shareholders in the short term. Amazon’s sound business fundamentals include its core business and essential revenue sector of e-commerce, a new focus on media independent of Kindle, improved profit margins from Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) as well as the management of a negative cash conversion cycle (Samonas, 2015).

Amazon’s competitors include Apple Inc., Barnes & Noble, Inc. and Wal-Mart.com USA, LLC (Hoovers, 2014). For the purpose of this financial analysis we will be comparing Amazon to the SIC Code: 5961, CATALOG AND MAIL-ORDER HOUSES, industry average. The financial analysis will take into consideration the balance sheet, income statement and ratios for the past 5 years, 2009 to 2013.

From its inception in 1994, Amazon has grown from an online bookstore to operating retail websites offering a variety of products and services which includes merchandise

Amazon.com Inc. maintains a corporate structure like any other corporation, with a board of directors, management and stockholders. The board of directors consists of 10 directors and is chaired by the company’s CEO Jeffery Bezos. Amazon’s corporate governance guidelines (2016) state the responsibility of the board of directors is to control and direct the company while maintaining accountability to the shareholders and building long-term shareowner value. In addition to Amazon proper, the company has established two key subsidiaries, Amazon Web Service and Worldwide Consumer Services (International) to further its reach. Both subsidiaries maintain a respective CEO who are part of the management team along with the CFO, Worldwide Controller, Business Development Officer, and General Counsel Officer (Amazon.com Inc., 2016).

Jeff Benzo founded Amazon.com, Inc., simply known as Amazon in 1994 in Bellevue, Washington. Benzo started the company with the name of “Cadabra” on July 5, 1994 and a year later in 1995 changed the name of the company to what it is now, Amazon. The reason Benzo picked the word Amazon to name his company after was because he knew the Amazon river was special and unique just like he wanted his company to be, not only that but he knew the Amazon river was the biggest in the world which is what he strove for when making his company. What started off as a website to purchase books grew into what is now known as the largest online retailer worldwide. Take note that the Amazon logo has an arrow going from “a to z” to show that Amazon carries everything from A to Z. As Amazon grew not only did they sell books but also they grew to their goal of selling all retail good from “A to Z”.

The industry averages used in the section are based on 3 of the top companies in the retailers industries such as Amazon, Wal-Mart and Alibaba.

Originally, Amazon.com Inc. started as a website for buying and renting books, founded by Jeff Bezos in 1997, Amazon.com then grew to selling electronic books, and now has every household item, CD 's, DVDS, Kindles, and food products. Amazon 's ethics with the consumers/customers and adapting to "the customer is always right" model has made this company a model for exceptional customer service management. In addition, it is quoted that Amazon does not sell products, however, bring the products customers need and the future goal is predicted that "85% of the world 's products will be available on Amazon" (Simpson, 2016). For this to happen, and to fully captured the e-commerce market,