Since its creation in 1995, Amazon has become an international brand. The company is actually one of the most recognized brands in the world and was the number one global online service in 2003. It was first a online seller of books then it progressively diversified to selling music, movies, electronic goods etc. Thanks to its creator, Jeff Bezos, Amazon was an early exploiter of online technologies for e-commerce which made it one of the first online retailers in the world. Indeed, he was a precursor and came up with "the statistics of the electronic world, known as the World Wide Web, that it would grow at the incredible rate of 2,300 per cent monthly". Obviously, Bezos was totally right.
Amazon's success was built on one main strategy in use since 1995, a strategy centered on customers by constantly improving innovations on its website. Amazon's customers can find anything they want online due to the biggest collection of goods and services and the lower prices of the market. Amazon is also well known as being "the Wal-Mart of the internet", it wants to provide all things to all people.
The "one click order" processing made Amazon the favorite customer website (awarded in 2002 for receiving the higher score ever recorded in customer satisfaction from the American Customer Satisfaction Index). The company is famous all around the world, thanks to different websites in several countries. With the advantages it has to be number one in the market and with the high level of innovations it provides, Amazon is now benefiting from a very important amount of repeat purchasing online; customers, once they use the website, they usually use it again and again which gives Amazon a very good position in the market. This customer loyalty and the capacity to reach a huge worldwide audience has made Amazon one of the main actors of online businesses.
[...] One of the strategies of Amazon is to offer the “world's biggest collection of goods and services where customers can find and buy anything they want online” 648). Amazon is also providing “hard-to-find” books and music. • Low prices : Until 1995, Amazon was offering low prices to its customers. In 1997, “Amazon.com lowered prices even further [ Hardcovers had at least 30 per cent off, paperbacks at least 20 per cent off, while specially featured books were up to 40 per cent off” 650). [...]
[...] Even if Amazon.com is a well known brand and has a really large catalogue of products it really has to keep an eye on the price competition which could pose main difficulties in front of other internet retailers. ➢ International competitors could also be a threat for Amazon. In fact, those who could not compete with Amazon on the domestic market may try to compete overseas on the foreign market. Some other company could then create strategic alliances and mergers to compete with Amazon.com and make it lose its position in some market. ➢ Also physical-world retailers, catalogue retailers, publishers, distributors and manufacturers of same products can be competitors. [...]
[...] Throughout the years 1996 to 2004, Amazon has added new product categories, so a customer can almost buy anything via Amazon, not just books. In 2004, the wide range of products resulted in a nickname “Wal-Mart of the Internet”. [...]
[...] They have invented many new features to help consumers to buy items online. These innovations can be regarded as rare advantages in VRIN model. These innovations have also elements of causal ambiguity, meaning that competitors have been unable to detect how Amazon has used its competencies for competitive advance. These innovations have been possible to implement with help of Amazon's strong partnership network and technical knowhow of employees. Amazon was the one which invented many things we now think as being commonplace with online vendors. [...]
[...] This customer loyalty and the capacity to reach a huge worldwide audience made Amazon one of the main actors of this online business. However, the online commerce industry has grown nowadays. Now, Amazon cannot benefit anymore from its pioneering role online. Competitors appeared and gained power on the online retail market. Furthermore, Amazon also has to deal with direct and indirect competitors and with substitute products and services. As Amazon has been successful for years now, its business model has been used by a number of competing companies. [...]
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