Evaluation Essay on Amazon: From Bookselling to Global Giant

Introduction

Amazon is now regarded as one of the most valuable companies in the world. The company has developed to be a multinational corporation. Through innovation, Amazon has achieved great success, which has enabled it to caters for the needs of a vast market. Its values and vision are among the attributes that have led to the great success of the company. Amazon began as a bookselling company online and evolved to become a significant technological company (FOER, 2014).

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The success that Amazon INC has achieved is due to its strategic priorities. One of its priorities is to focus on the long-term success of the company. It involves being patient and looking into what the future needs (Keller, n.d.). Additionally, Amazon has prioritized their focus on constant factors among customers. They include the needs of customers and how to serve the customers well instead of changing things such as competition and technology. The company focuses on the things that can make the lives of its customers more convenient. Another aspect that Amazon prioritizes is the well being of its employees, especially the Amazon's engineering team. The welfare of its employees has enabled the company to remain competitive and ahead of other companies. The company has introduced programs to ensure that all its employees are well trained to serve customers diligently. One way that Amazon takes care of its blue-collar employees is by ensuring that they receive the same health care benefits with the company's senior executives. All these priorities are established to ensure that the company continues to grow and at the same time, find better ways to operate efficiently. They are long term strategies.

The company has also focused a lot on the nonfinancial factors. One of the elements is market share which is focused on improving the living standards of as many people as possible (McCracken, 2019). The company established methods to ensure that as many people access its products and services as possible. It is regarded as a mass scale. Another nonfinancial factor Amazon has focused on is being more transparent on the pricing of its services to its customers. The company has become a progressive company by showing what others are offering for the same product in real-time. It has given customers more confidence when buying amazon products. Another nonfinancial factor that amazon has focused on is its reputation on how it treats its employees. The company has an excellent reputation for taking care of its employees (Mohammed, 2019). The company encourages its employees to come up with ideas on better ways to serve the customers and also encourages entrepreneurship. The company has also created a good reputation with its blue-collar employees. The company has introduced programs for its blue-collar employees, where they are allowed to engage with their families. The company has also introduced a leave share for its employees that will enable spouses to pool their vacation days, ramp back (Tabaka, 2019). This strategy allows new mothers to get back to work within a short period. In improving the working conditions of its employees, the company has retrofitted their warehouses for climate control to ensure that they do not work under scorching conditions. Through these nonfinancial factors, Amazon is now the world's largest e-commerce market and has revolutionized the way that customers buy and receive products.

The company also experiences some internal risks that may jeopardize its development. One of the main risks experienced by Amazon INC is the management strains to operation and management that are linked with the great need for expansion (Beers, 2019). The company is always looking for new markets to expand in different parts of the world. Its growth has created a lot of problems in the operations of the company as the growth is exponential. There are also problems in finances and management associated with the exponential expansion of the company (Kim, 2019). The company is reliable and has a lot of prospects for growth. Another internal risk that amazon is facing is how to protect its customers' information. Although the company developed its cloud service known as the amazon web service, the are risks of cyber-attacks, and identity theft as the cloud is not that safe. Amazon does also not provide a guard against malware that can read a customer's cookies. The company also faces the internal risk of data losses (Mac, 2017). The company is always concerned about the security of all the credit cards; it holds information on being compromised. Another risk is the ability of the company to regulate the shipping cost. So far, Amazon has been successful in optimizing its shipping cost. The company has a large market which makes the two-day shipping an internal risk that the company could experience. The company has to ensure that its inventory is well optimized to prevent the risk of increasing the shipping cost by partial shipments or wrong zone shipment. The company also has to negotiate favorable shipping cost with shipping companies to avoid the risk of negatively impacting customer experience and even the company's operations. The company's growth has also made it hard for it to impress investors with its growth rates.

References

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Mac, R. (2017, February 10). Amazon Identifies a New Business Risk: Trump's Trade Policies. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2017/02/10/amazon-identifies-a-new-business-risk-trumps-trade-policies/#70eca1312651

McCracken, H., & McCracken, H. (2019, April 12). These are Amazon's 38 rules for success. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/90334069/these-are-amazons-38-rules-for-success

Meyer, R. (2018). THE TRUSTBUSTER: Lina Khan has a novel theory for how monopolies work--and her sights are set squarely on Amazon. The Atlantic, (1), 17.

Mohammed, S. (2019, March 18). How Did Amazon Build Its 'Sustainable Competitive Advantage'? -The Key Success Factors. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@shahmm/how-did-amazon-build-its-sustainable-competitive-advantage-88cfee7fe2c8

Ramadan, Z. B., Farah, M. F., & Kassab, D. (2019). Amazon's approach to consumers' usage of the Dash button and its effect on purchase decision involved in the US market. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 47, 133-139./

Tabaka, M. (2019, April 15). Amazon's 4 Keys to Success, According to Jeff Bezos. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/marla-tabaka/jeff-bezos-says-these-4-principles-are-key-to-amazons-success-they-can-work-for-you-too.html

The Ultimate Amazon FBA Sales Spreadsheet v2. (2016). The Ultimate Amazon FBA Sales Spreadsheet v2. Retrieved September 10, 2019, from https://toolsforfba.com/index.php/product/the-ultimate-amazon-fba-sales-spreadsheet-v2