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Amazon.com marketing strategy 2023: E-commerce retail giant business case study

What goes into the Amazon marketing strategy secret sauce? Our business case study explores Amazon's revenue model and culture of customer metrics, history of Amazon.com and marketing objectives

In the final quarter of 2022, Amazon reported net sales of over $149.2 billion. This seasonal spike is typical of Amazon's quarterly reporting , but the growth is undeniable as this was the company's highest quarter ever.

There is no doubt that the e-commerce retail giant continues to lead the way in e-commerce growth. The Amazon marketing strategy we are familiar with today has evolved since it was founded in 1994.

I've highlighted the Amazon marketing strategy case study in my books for nearly 20 years now since I think all types of businesses can learn from their digital business strategy. Their response to the pandemic is impressive but not entirely surprising for a brand that is ' customer obsessed '.

From startups and small businesses to large international businesses, we can all learn from their focus on the customer, particularly at this time, testing market opportunities made available by digital technology, and their focus on testing and analysis to improve results.

Their focus on customer experience put Amazon in the role of a thought leader in e-commerce experience. However, whether due to diminished customer service, or increasing customer expectations, or a mixture of the two, fulled by a global pandemic - notably, 2020 was the first time Amazon's ACSI customer satisfaction rating dropped below 80 since launch, to 65%.

With customer satisfaction now measuring at 79% in 2022 , customer satisfaction in Amazon has risen again, but is still not as high as it once was.

Currently, Forbes gives a consensus recommendation to buy Amazon stock, giving a return on assets (TTM) of 1.73%. The stock performance is not as high as we saw in 2020 and 2021, but it did show some growth in late 2022 - early 2023.

I aim to keep this case study up-to-date for readers of the books and Smart Insights readers who may be interested. In it, we look at Amazon's background, revenue model, and sources for the latest business results.

We can also learn from their digital marketing strategy, since they use digital marketing efficiently across all customer communications touchpoints in our RACE Framework :

• Reach : Amazon's initial business growth based on a detailed approach to SEO and AdWords targeting millions of keywords.
• Act : Creating clear and simple experiences through testing and learning.
• Convert : Using personalization to make relevant recommendations and a clear checkout process that many now imitate.
• Engage : Amazon's customer-centric culture delights customers and keeps them coming back for more.

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Amazon's growth and business model evolution

Forbes credits Amazon's success to 3 rules which it breaks, but we 'probably shouldn't'!

• Strategy is about focus - although Amazon has an incredible number of strands to the business today.
• Don’t throw good money after bad - with criticism in particular of Amazon's investment in groceries.
• Your core competencies determine what you can and can’t do - developing the Kindle with no hardware manufacturing experience.

In this way, Forbes outlines a 'risky' approach to marketing strategy which, for Amazon, paid off in dividends. So, there is plenty to learn from studying this company, even if we decide not to replicate all tactics and strategies.

Amazon.com mission and vision

When it first launched, Amazon’s had a clear and ambitious mission. To offer:

Earth’s biggest selection and to be Earth’s most customer-centric company.

Today, with business users of its Amazon Web Service representing a new type of customer, Amazon says:

this goal continues today, but Amazon’s customers are worldwide now and have grown to include millions of Con-sumers, Sellers, Content Creators, Developers, and Enterprises. Each of these groups has different needs, and we always work to meet those needs, by innovating new solutions to make things easier, faster, better, and more cost-effective.

20 years later, Amazon are still customer-centric, in fact, in the latest Amazon Annual report , 2021, Jeff Bezos of Amazon explains customer obsession.

"We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company and believe that our guiding principle of customer obsession is one of our greatest strengths. We seek to offer our customers a comprehensive selection of products, low prices, fast and free delivery, easy-to-use functionality, and timely customer service. By focusing obsessively on customers, we are internally driven to improve our services, add benefits and features, invent new products, lower prices, increase product selection, and speed up shipping times—before we have to."

Amazon business and revenue model

I recommend anyone studying Amazon checks the latest annual reports, proxies, and shareholder letters. The annual filings give a great summary of eBay business and revenue models.

The 2020 report includes a great vision for Digital Agility (reprinted from 1997 in their latest annual report) showing testing of business models that many businesses don't yet have. Amazon explain:

"We will continue to measure our programs and the effectiveness of our investments analytically, to jettison those that do not provide acceptable returns, and to step up our investment in those that work best. We will continue to learn from both our successes and our failures".

They go on to explain that business models are tested from a long-term perspective, showing the mindset of CEO Jeff Bezos:

We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions.

The latest example of innovation in their business model is the launch of Amazon Go, a new kind of store with no checkout required. Boasting a "Just Walk Out Shopping experience",the Amazon Go app users enter the store, take the products they want, and go with no lines and no checkout.

More recently, there have been a range of business model innovations focussed on hardware and new services: Kindle e-readers, Fire Tablet, smartphone and TV, Echo (using the Alexa Artificial Intelligence voice-assistant), grocery delivery, Amazon Fashion and expansion to the business-oriented Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon Prime, an annual membership program that includes unlimited free shipping and then involved diversification to a media service with access to unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV episodes.

AWS is less well-known outside of tech people, but Amazon is still pursuing this cloud service aggressively. They now have 10 AWS regions around the world, including the East Coast of the U.S., two on the West Coast, Europe, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Brazil, China, and a government-only region called GovCloud.

Amazon marketing strategy

In their 2008 SEC filing, Amazon describes the vision of their business as to:

“Relentlessly focus on customer experience by offering our customers low prices, convenience, and a wide selection of merchandise.”

The vision is still to consider how the core Amazon marketing strategy value proposition is communicated both on-site and through offline communications.

Of course, achieving customer loyalty and repeat purchases has been key to Amazon’s success. Many dot-coms failed because they succeeded in achieving awareness, but not loyalty. Amazon achieved both. In their SEC filing they stress how they seek to achieve this. They say:

" We work to earn repeat purchases by providing easy-to-use functionality, fast and reliable fulfillment, timely customer service, feature-rich content, and a trusted transaction environment.

Key features of Amazon include:

• editorial and customer reviews;
• manufacturer product information;
• web pages tailored to individual preferences, such as recommendations and notifications; 1-Click® technology;
• secure payment systems;
• image uploads;
• searching on our websites as well as the Internet;
• browsing; and the ability to view selected interior pages and citations, and search the entire contents of many of the books we offer with our “Look Inside the Book” and “Search Inside the Book” features.

The community of online customers also creates feature-rich content, including product reviews, online recommendation lists, wish lists, buying guides, and wedding and baby registries."

In practice, as is the practice for many online retailers, the lowest prices are for the most popular products, with less popular products commanding higher prices and a greater margin for Amazon.

Free shipping offers are used to encourage increase in basket size since customers have to spend over a certain amount to receive free shipping. The level at which free shipping is set is critical to profitability and Amazon has changed it as competition has changed and for promotional reasons.

Amazon communicates the fulfillment promise in several ways including the presentation of the latest inventory availability information, delivery date estimates, and options for expedited delivery, as well as delivery shipment notifications and update facilities.

This focus on customer has translated to excellence in service with the 2004 American Customer Satisfaction Index giving Amazon.com a score of 88 which was at the time, the highest customer satisfaction score ever recorded in any service industry, online or offline.

Round (2004) notes that Amazon focuses on customer satisfaction metrics. Each site is closely monitored with standard service availability monitoring (for example, using Keynote or Mercury Interactive) site availability and download speed. Interestingly it also monitors per minute site revenue upper/lower bounds – Round describes an alarm system rather like a power plant where if revenue on a site falls below $10,000 per minute, alarms go off! There are also internal performance service-level-agreements for web services where T% of the time, different pages must return in X seconds.

The importance of technology and an increased focus on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

According to founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, technology is very important to supporting this focus on the customer. In their 2010 Annual Report (Amazon, 2011) he said:

“Look inside a current textbook on software architecture, and you’ll find few patterns that we don’t apply at Amazon. We use high-performance transactions systems, complex rendering and object caching, workflow and queuing systems, business intelligence and data analytics, machine learning and pattern recognition, neural networks and probabilistic decision making, and a wide variety of other techniques." And while many of our systems are based on the latest in computer science research, this often hasn’t been sufficient: our architects and engineers have had to advance research in directions that no academic had yet taken. Many of the problems we face have no textbook solutions, and so we — happily — invent new approaches”… All the effort we put into technology might not matter that much if we kept technology off to the side in some sort of R&D department, but we don’t take that approach. Technology infuses all of our teams, all of our processes, our decision-making, and our approach to innovation in each of our businesses. It is deeply integrated into everything we do”.

The quote shows how applying new technologies is used to give Amazon a competitive edge. A good recent example of this is providing the infrastructure to deliver the Kindle “Whispersync” update to ebook readers. Amazon reported in 2011 that Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than paperback books. For every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the Company sold 115 Kindle books. Kindle apps are now available on Apple iOS, Android devices and on PCs as part of a “ Buy Once, Read Anywhere ” proposition which Amazon has developed.

Some of the more recent applications of AI at Amazon are highly visible, for example, the Amazon Echo assistant and technology in the Amazon Go convenience store that uses machine vision to eliminate checkout lines.

In their 2017 report, they describe the increased use of machine learning and AI ‘behind the scenes’ at Amazon:   "much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface. Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type – quietly but meaningfully improving core operations".

Amazon Customers

Amazon defines what it refers to as three consumer sets customers, seller customers and developer customers.

There are over 76 million customer accounts, but just 1.3 million active seller customers in it’s marketplaces and Amazon is seeking to increase this. Amazon is unusual for a retailer in that it identifies “developer customers” who use its Amazon Web Services, which provides access to technology infrastructure such as hosting that developers can use to develop their own web services.

Members are also encouraged to join a loyalty program, Amazon Prime, a fee-based membership program in which members receive free or discounted express shipping, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan.

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As we know, e-commerce marketing is all about the customers. Our RACE Growth System down your customer journeys into a simple 5-step structure of plan - reach - act - convert - engage. Create a winning retail e-commerce marketing strategy with Smart Insights, to acquire and retain more customers, and accelerate your ROI. Get started today.

Competition

In its 2017 SEC filing Amazon describes the environment for our products and services as ‘intensely competitive’. It views its main current and potential competitors as:

• 1) online, offline, and multichannel retailers, publishers, vendors, distributors, manufacturers, and producers of the products we offer and sell to consumers and businesses;
• (2) publishers, producers, and distributors of physical, digital, and interactive media of all types and all distribution channels;
• (3) web search engines, comparison shopping websites, social networks, web portals, and other online and app-based means of discovering, using, or acquiring goods and services, either directly or in collaboration with other retailers;
• (4) companies that provide e-commerce services, including website development, advertising, fulfillment, customer service, and payment processing;
• (5) companies that provide fulfillment and logistics services for themselves or for third parties, whether online or offline;
• (6) companies that provide information technology services or products, including on- premises or cloud-based infrastructure and other services; and
• (7) companies that design, manufacture, market, or sell consumer electronics, telecommunication, and electronic devices.

It believes the main competitive factors in its market segments include "selection, price, availability, convenience, information, discovery, brand recognition, personalized services, accessibility, customer service, reliability, speed of fulfillment, ease of use, and ability to adapt to changing conditions, as well as our customers’ overall experience and trust in transactions with us and facilitated by us on behalf of third-party sellers".

For services offered to business and individual sellers, additional competitive factors include the quality of our services and tools, their ability to generate sales for third parties we serve, and the speed of performance for our services.

From Auctions to marketplaces

Amazon auctions (known as zShops) were launched in March 1999, in large part as a response to the success of eBay. They were promoted heavily from the home page, category pages and individual product pages. Despite this, a year after its launch it had only achieved a 3.2% share of the online auction compared to 58% for eBay and it only declined from this point.

Today, competitive prices of products are available through third-party sellers in the ‘Amazon Marketplace’ which are integrated within the standard product listings. A winning component of the Amazon marketing strategy for marketplaces was the innovation to offer such an auction facility, initially driven by the need to compete with eBay. But now the strategy has been adjusted such that Amazon describe it as part of the approach of low-pricing.

Although it might be thought that Amazon would lose out on enabling its merchants to sell products at lower prices, in fact Amazon makes greater margin on these sales since merchants are charged a commission on each sale and it is the merchant who bears the cost of storing inventory and fulfilling the product to customers. As with eBay, Amazon is just facilitating the exchange of bits and bytes between buyers and sellers without the need to distribute physical products.

Amazon Media sales

You may have noticed that unlike some retailers, Amazon displays relevant Google text ads and banner ads from brands. This seems in conflict with the marketing strategy of focus on experience since it leads to a more cluttered store. However in 2011 Amazon revealed that worldwide media sales accounted for approximately 17% of revenue!

Whilst it does not reveal much about the Amazon marketing strategy approach in its annual reports, but there seems to be a focus on online marketing channels. Amazon (2011) states “we direct customers to our websites primarily through a number of targeted online marketing channels, such as our Associates program, sponsored search, portal advertising, email marketing campaigns, and other initiatives”.

These other initiatives may include outdoor and TV advertising, but they are not mentioned specifically. In this statement they also highlight the importance of customer loyalty tools. They say: “while costs associated with free shipping are not included in marketing expense, we view free shipping offers and Amazon Prime as effective worldwide marketing tools, and intend to continue offering them indefinitely”.

How ‘The Culture of Metrics’ started

A common theme in Amazon’s development is the drive to use a measured approach to all aspects of the business, beyond the finance. Marcus (2004) describes an occasion at a corporate ‘boot-camp’ in January 1997 when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ‘saw the light’. ‘

At Amazon, we will have a Culture of Metrics’, he said while addressing his senior staff. He went on to explain how web-based business gave Amazon an ‘amazing window into human behaviour’.

Marcus says: ‘Gone were the fuzzy approximations of focus groups, the anecdotal fudging and smoke blowing from the marketing department' - the Amazon marketing strategy was reborn!

A company like Amazon could (and did) record every move a visitor made, every last click and twitch of the mouse. As the data piled up into virtual heaps, hummocks and mountain ranges, you could draw all sorts of conclusions about their chimerical nature, the consumer. In this sense, Amazon was not merely a store, but an immense repository of facts. All we needed were the right equations to plug into them’.

James Marcus then goes on to give a fascinating insight into a breakout group discussion of how Amazon could better use measures to improve its performance. Marcus was in the Bezos group, brainstorming customer-centric metrics. Marcus (2004) summarises the dialogue, led by Bezos:

"First, we figure out which things we’d like to measure on the site", he said.

"For example, let’s say we want a metric for customer enjoyment. How could we calculate that?"

"There was silence. Then somebody ventured: "How much time each customer spends on the site?"

"Not specific enough", Jeff said.

"How about the average number of minutes each customer spends on the site per session" someone else suggested. "If that goes up, they’re having a blast".

"But how do we factor in the purchase?" I [Marcus] said feeling proud of myself.

"Is that a measure of enjoyment"?

"I think we need to consider the frequency of visits, too", said a dark-haired woman I didn’t recognize.

“Lot of folks are still accessing the web with those creepy-crawly modems. Four short visits from them might be just as good as one visit from a guy with a T-1. Maybe better’.

"Good point", Jeff said. "And anyway, enjoyment is just the start. In the end, we should be measuring customer ecstasy"

It is interesting that Amazon was having this debate about the elements of RFM analysis (described in Chapter 6 of Internet Marketing), 1997, after already having achieved $16 million of revenue in the previous year. Of course, this is a minuscule amount compared with today’s billions of dollar turnover. The important point was that this was the start of a focus on metrics which can be seen through the description of Matt Pounds work later in this case study.

Amazon marketing strategy experiments!

Amazon have created their own internal experimentation platform called a “Weblab” that they use to evaluate improvements to our websites and products. In 2013, they ran 1,976 Weblabs worldwide, up from 1,092 in 2012, and 546 in 2011. Now many companies use AB testing, but this shows the scale of testing at Amazon.

One example of how these are applied is a new feature called “Ask an owner”.  From a product page, customers can ask any question related to the product, Amazon then route these questions to owners of the product who answer.

From human to software-based recommendations

Amazon marketing strategy has developed internal tools to support this ‘Culture of Metrics’. Marcus (2004) describes how the ‘Creator Metrics’ tool shows content creators how well their product listings and product copy are working. For each content editor such as Marcus, it retrieves all recently posted documents including articles, interviews, booklists and features. For each one it then gives a conversion rate to sale plus the number of page views, adds (added to basket) and repels (content requested, but the back button then used).

In time, the work of editorial reviewers such as Marcus was marginalised since Amazon found that the majority of visitors used the search tools rather than read editorial and they responded to the personalised recommendations as the matching technology improved (Marcus likens early recommendations techniques to ‘going shopping with the village idiot’).

Experimentation and testing at Amazon.com

The ‘Culture of Metrics’ also led to a test-driven approach to improving results at Amazon. Matt Round, speaking at E-metrics 2004 when he was director of personalisation at Amazon describes the philosophy as ‘Data Trumps Intuitions’. He explained how Amazon used to have a lot of arguments about which content and promotion should go on the all important home page or category pages. He described how every category VP wanted top-center and how the Friday meetings about placements for next week were getting ‘too long, too loud, and lacked performance data’.

But today ‘automation replaces intuitions’ and real-time experimentation tests are always run to answer these questions since actual consumer behaviour is the best way to decide upon tactics.

Marcus (2004) also notes that Amazon has a culture of experiments of which A/B tests are key components. Examples where A/B tests are used include new home page design, moving features around the page, different algorithms for recommendations, changing search relevance rankings. These involve testing a new treatment against a previous control for a limited time of a few days or a week. The system will randomly show one or more treatments to visitors and measure a range of parameters such as units sold and revenue by category (and total), session time, session length, etc. The new features will usually be launched if the desired metrics are statistically significantly better.

Statistical tests are a challenge though as distributions are not normal (they have a large mass at zero for example of no purchase) There are other challenges since multiple A/B tests are running every day and A/B tests may overlap and so conflict. There are also longer-term effects where some features are ‘cool’ for the first two weeks and the opposite effect where changing navigation may degrade performance temporarily. Amazon also finds that as its users evolve in their online experience the way they act online has changed. This means that Amazon has to constantly test and evolve its features.

With the latest announcement from Google to sunset their Google Optimize A/B testing , digital marketers will do well to look out for new technology to assist in their testing efforts. We'll keep our members updated with announcements

Amazon.com technology marketing strategy

It follows that the Amazon technology infrastructure must readily support this culture of experimentation and this can be difficult to achieved with standardised content management. Amazon has achieved its competitive advantage through developing its technology internally and with a significant investment in this which may not be available to other organisations without the right focus on the online channels.

As Amazon explains in SEC (2005) ‘using primarily our own proprietary technologies, as well as technology licensed from third parties, we have implemented numerous features and functionality that simplify and improve the customer shopping experience, enable third parties to sell on our platform, and facilitate our fulfillment and customer service operations. Our current strategy is to focus our development efforts on continuous innovation by creating and enhancing the specialized, proprietary software that is unique to our business, and to license or acquire commercially-developed technology for other applications where available and appropriate. We continually invest in several areas of technology, including our seller platform; A9.com, our wholly-owned subsidiary focused on search technology on www.A9.com and other Amazon sites; web services; and digital initiatives.’

Round (2004) describes the technology approach as ‘distributed development and deployment’. Pages such as the home page have a number of content ‘pods’ or ‘slots’ which call web services for features. This makes it relatively easy to change the content in these pods and even change the location of the pods on-screen. Amazon uses a flowable or fluid page design unlike many sites which enables it to make the most of real-estate on-screen.

Technology also supports more standard e-retail facilities. SEC (2005) states: ‘We use a set of applications for accepting and validating customer orders, placing and tracking orders with suppliers, managing and assigning inventory to customer orders, and ensuring proper shipment of products to customers. Our transaction-processing systems handle millions of items, a number of different status inquiries, multiple shipping addresses, gift-wrapping requests, and multiple shipment methods. These systems allow the customer to choose whether to receive single or several shipments based on availability and to track the progress of each order. These applications also manage the process of accepting, authorizing, and charging customer credit cards.’

Data-driven Automation

Round (2004) said that ‘Data is king at Amazon’. He gave many examples of data driven automation including customer channel preferences; managing the way content is displayed to different user types such as new releases and top-sellers, merchandising and recommendation (showing related products and promotions) and also advertising through paid search (automatic ad generation and bidding).

The automated search advertising and bidding system for paid search has had a big impact at Amazon. Sponsored links initially done by humans, but this was unsustainable due to range of products at Amazon. The automated programme generates keywords, writes ad creative, determines best landing page, manages bids, measure conversion rates, profit per converted visitor and updates bids. Again the problem of volume is there, Matt Round described how the book ‘How to Make Love Like a Porn Star’ by Jenna Jameson received tens of thousands of clicks from pornography-related searches, but few actually purchased the book. So the update cycle must be quick to avoid large losses.

There is also an automated email measurement and optimization system. The campaign calendar used to be manually managed with relatively weak measurement and it was costly to schedule and use. A new system:

• Automatically optimizes content to improve customer experience
• Avoids sending an e-mail campaign that has low clickthrough or high unsubscribe rate
• Includes inbox management (avoid sending multiple emails/week)
• Has growing library of automated email programs covering new releases and recommendations

But there are challenges if promotions are too successful if inventory isn’t available.

Your Recommendations

Customers Who Bought X…, also bought Y is Amazon’s signature feature. Round (2004) describes how Amazon relies on acquiring and then crunching a massive amount of data. Every purchase, every page viewed and every search is recorded. So there are now to new version, customers who shopped for X also shopped for… and Customers who searched for X also bought… They also have a system codenamed ‘Goldbox’ which is a cross-sell and awareness raising tool. Items are discounted to encourage purchases in new categories!

See the original more detailed PDF article on Amazon personalization / recommendation collaborative filtering system .

He also describes the challenge of techniques for sifting patterns from noise (sensitivity filtering) and clothing and toy catalogues change frequently so recommendations become out of date. The main challenges though are the massive data size arising from millions of customers, millions of items and recommendations made in real time.

Amazon marketing strategy for partnerships

As Amazon grew, its share price growth enabled partnership or acquisition with a range of companies in different sectors. Marcus (2004) describes how Amazon partnered with Drugstore.com (pharmacy), Living.com (furniture), Pets.com (pet supplies), Wineshopper.com (wines), HomeGrocer.com (groceries), Sothebys.com (auctions) and Kozmo.com (urban home delivery). In most cases, Amazon purchased an equity stake in these partners, so that it would share in their prosperity. It also charged them fees for placements on the Amazon site to promote and drive traffic to their sites.

Similarly, Amazon marketing strategy was to charge publishers for prime-position to promote books on its site which caused an initial hue-and-cry, but this abated when it was realised that paying for prominent placements was widespread in traditional booksellers and supermarkets. Many of these new online companies failed in 1999 and 2000, but Amazon had covered the potential for growth and was not pulled down by these partners, even though for some such as Pets.com it had an investment of 50%.

Analysts sometimes refer to ‘Amazoning a sector’ meaning that one company becomes dominant in an online sector such as book retail such that it becomes very difficult for others to achieve market share. In addition to developing, communicating and delivering a very strong proposition, Amazon has been able to consolidate its strength in different sectors through its partnership arrangements and through using technology to facilitate product promotion and distribution via these partnerships. The Amazon retail platform enables other retailers to sell products online using the Amazon user interface and infrastructure through their ‘Syndicated Stores’ programme.

For example, in the UK, Waterstones (www.waterstones.co.uk) is one of the largest traditional bookstores. It found competition with online so expensive and challenging, that eventually it entered a partnership arrangement where Amazon markets and distributes its books online in return for a commission online. Similarly, in the US, Borders a large book retailer uses the Amazon merchant platform for distributing its products.

Toy retailer Toys R’ Us have a similar arrangement. Such partnerships help Amazon extends its reach into the customer-base of other suppliers, and of course, customers who buy in one category such as books can be encouraged to purchase into other areas such as clothing or electronics.

Another form of partnership referred to above is the Amazon Marketplace which enables Amazon customers and other retailers to sell their new and used books and other goods alongside the regular retail listings. A similar partnership approach is the Amazon ‘Merchants@’ program which enables third party merchants (typically larger than those who sell via the Amazon Marketplace) to sell their products via Amazon. Amazon earn fees either through fixed fees or sales commissions per-unit. This arrangement can help customers who get a wider choice of products from a range of suppliers with the convenience of purchasing them through a single checkout process.

Finally, Amazon marketing strategy has also facilitated formation of partnerships with smaller companies through its affiliates programme. Internet legend records that Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon was chatting to someone at a cocktail party who wanted to sell books about divorce via her web site. Subsequently, Amazon.com launched its Associates Program in July 1996 and it is still going strong.

Here, the Amazon marketing strategy has created a tiered performance-based incentives to encourage affiliates to sell more Amazon products.

Amazon Marketing strategy communications

In their SEC filings Amazon state that the aims of their communications strategy are (unsurprisingly) to:

• Increase customer traffic to our websites
• Create awareness of our products and services
• Promote repeat purchases
• Develop incremental product and service revenue opportunities
• Strengthen and broaden the Amazon.com brand name.

Amazon also believes that its most effective marketing communications are a consequence of their focus on continuously improving the customer experience. This then creates word-of-mouth promotion which is effective in acquiring new customers and may also encourage repeat customer visits.

As well as this Marcus (2004) describes how Amazon used the personalisation enabled through technology to reach out to a difficult to reach market which Bezos originally called ‘the hard middle’. Bezos’s view was that it was easy to reach 10 people (you called them on the phone) or the ten million people who bought the most popular products (you placed a superbowl ad), but more difficult to reach those in between. The search facilities in the search engine and on the Amazon site, together with its product recommendation features meant that Amazon could connect its products with the interests of these people.

Online advertising techniques include paid search marketing, interactive ads on portals, e-mail campaigns and search engine optimisation. These are automated as far as possible as described earlier in the case study. As previously mentioned, the affiliate programme is also important in driving visitors to Amazon and Amazon offers a wide range of methods of linking to its site to help improve conversion.

For example, affiliates can use straight text links leading direct to a product page and they also offer a range of dynamic banners which feature different content such as books about Internet marketing or a search box. Amazon also use cooperative advertising arrangements, better known as ‘contra-deals’ with some vendors and other third parties. For example, a print advertisement in 2005 for a particular product such as a wireless router with a free wireless laptop card promotion will feature a specific Amazon URL in the ad. In product fulfilment packs, Amazon may include a leaflet for a non-competing online company such as Figleaves.com (lingerie) or Expedia (travel). In return, Amazon leaflets may be included in customer communications from the partner brands.

Our Associates program directs customers to our websites by enabling independent websites to make millions of products available to their audiences with fulfillment performed by us or third parties. We pay commissions to hundreds of thousands of participants in our Associates program when their customer referrals result in product sales.

In addition, we offer everyday free shipping options worldwide and recently announced Amazon.com Prime in the U.S., our first membership program in which members receive free two-day shipping and discounted overnight shipping. Although marketing expenses do not include the costs of our free shipping or promotional offers, we view such offers as effective marketing tools.

Marcus, J. (2004) Amazonia. Five years at the epicentre of the dot-com juggernaut, The New Press, New York, NY.

Round, M. (2004) Presentation to E-metrics, London, May 2005. www.emetrics.org.

By Dave Chaffey

Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here . Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice . In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary . Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question .

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Hacking the Case Interview

If you’re interviewing for a business role at Amazon, there is a good chance that you’ll receive at least one case study interview, also known as an Amazon case interview. Amazon roles that include case study interviews as part of the interview process include:

• Business Analyst : Candidates are often given mini case interviews
• Business Development : Candidates are often given M&A case interviews
• Corporate Strategy : Candidates are often given strategy case interviews
• Product Manager : All candidates are given product manager case study interviews
• P roduct Marketing : Candidates are often often given product manager case study interviews
• Marketing : Candidates are often given marketing case interviews

To land an Amazon job offer, you’ll need to crush every single one of your case interviews. While Amazon case study interviews may seem ambiguous and challenging, know that they can be mastered with proper preparation.

If you are preparing for an upcoming Amazon case interview, we have you covered. In this comprehensive Amazon case interview guide, we’ll cover:

• What is an Amazon case study interview
• Why Amazon uses case study interviews
• The 6 steps to ace any Amazon case interview
• Amazon case interview tips
• Recommended Amazon case study interview resources

If you’re looking for a step-by-step shortcut to learn case interviews quickly, enroll in our case interview course . These insider strategies from a former Bain interviewer helped 30,000+ land tech and consulting offers while saving hundreds of hours of prep time.

What is an Amazon Case Study Interview?

Amazon case study interviews, also known as Amazon case interviews, are 20- to 30-minute exercises in which you are placed in a hypothetical business situation and are asked to find a solution or make a recommendation.

First, you’ll create a framework that shows the approach you would take to solve the case. Then, you’ll collaborate with the interviewer, answering a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions that will give you the information and data needed to develop an answer. Finally, you’ll deliver your recommendation at the end of the case.

Case interviews have traditionally been used by consulting firms to assess a candidate’s potential to become a successful consultant. However, now a days, many companies with ex-consultants use case studies to assess a candidate’s capabilities. Since Amazon has so many former consultants in its business roles, you’ll likely encounter at least one case study interview.

The business problems that you’ll be given in an Amazon case study interview will likely be real challenges that Amazon faces today:

• How can Amazon improve customer retention for their Amazon Prime subscription service?
• How can Amazon improve its digital streaming service?
• How can Amazon increase ad revenues from merchant sellers?
• How should Amazon deal with fake products among its product listings?
• How can Amazon Web Services outcompete Microsoft Azure?

Depending on what team at Amazon you are interviewing for, you may be given a business problem that is relevant to that specific team.

Although there is a wide range of business problems you could possibly be given in your Amazon case interview, the fundamental case interview strategies to solve each problem is the same. If you learn the right strategies and get enough practice, you’ll be able to solve any Amazon case study interview.

Why does Amazon Use Case Study Interviews?

Amazon uses case study interviews because your performance in a case study interview is a measure of how well you would do on the job. Amazon case interviews assess a variety of different capabilities and qualities needed to successfully complete job duties and responsibilities.

Amazon’s case study interviews primarily assess five things:

• Logical, structured thinking : Can you structure complex problems in a clear, simple way?
• Analytical problem solving : Can you read, interpret, and analyze data well?
• Business acumen : Do you have sound business judgment and intuition?
• Communication skills : Can you communicate clearly, concisely, and articulately?
• Personality and cultural fit : Are you coachable and easy to work with?

Since all of these qualities can be assessed in just a 20- to 30-minute case, Amazon case study interviews are an effective way to assess a candidate’s capabilities.

In order to do well on the personality and cultural fit portion, you should familiarize yourself with  Amazon’s Leadership Principles before your interview. At a high level, these principles include:

• Customer obsession : Leaders start with the customer and work backwards
• Ownership : Leaders are owners and act on behalf of the entire company
• Invent and simplify : Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify
• Learn and be curious : Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves
• Insist on the highest standards : Leaders have relentlessly high standards
• Think big : Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results
• Frugality : Accomplish more with less
• Earn trust : Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully
• Dive deep : Leaders operate at all levels and stay connected to the details
• Deliver results : Leaders focus on key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion

The 6 Steps to Solve Any Amazon Case Interview

In general, there are six steps to solve any Amazon case study interview.

1. Understand the case

Your Amazon case interview will begin with the interviewer giving you the case background information. While the interviewer is speaking, make sure that you are taking meticulous notes on the most important pieces of information. Focus on understanding the context of the situation and the objective of the case.

Don’t be afraid to ask clarifying questions if you do not understand something. You may want to summarize the case background information back to the interviewer to confirm your understanding of the case.

The most important part of this step is to verify the objective of the case. Not answering the right business question is the quickest way to fail a case interview.

2. Structure the problem

The next step is to develop a framework to help you solve the case. A framework is a tool that helps you structure and break down complex problems into smaller, more manageable components. Another way to think about frameworks is brainstorming different ideas and organizing them into different categories.

For a complete guide on how to create tailored and unique frameworks for each case, check out our article on case interview frameworks .

Before you start developing your framework, it is completely acceptable to ask the interviewer for a few minutes so that you can collect your thoughts and think about the problem.

Once you have identified the major issues or areas that you need to explore, walk the interviewer through your framework. They may ask a few questions or provide some feedback.

3. Kick off the case

Once you have finished presenting your framework, you’ll start diving into different areas of your framework to begin solving the case. How this process will start depends on whether the case interview is candidate-led or interviewer-led.

If the case interview is a candidate-led case, you’ll be expected to propose what area of your framework to start investigating. So, propose an area and provide a reason for why you want to start with that area. There is generally no right or wrong area of your framework to pick first.

If the case interview is interviewer-led, the interviewer will tell you what area of the framework to start in or directly give you a question to answer.

4. Solve quantitative problems

Amazon case study interviews may have some quantitative aspect to them. For example, you may be asked to calculate a certain profitability or financial metric. You could also be asked to estimate the size of a particular market or to estimate a particular figure.

The key to solving quantitative problems is to lay out a structure or approach upfront with the interviewer before doing any math calculations. If you lay out and present your structure to solve the quantitative problem and the interviewer approves of it, the rest of the problem is just simple execution of math.

5. Answer qualitative questions

Amazon case study interviews may also have qualitative aspects to them. You may be asked to brainstorm a list of potential ideas. You could also be asked to provide your opinion on a business issue or situation.

The key to answering qualitative questions is to structure your answer. When brainstorming a list of ideas, develop a structure to help you neatly categorize all of your ideas. When giving your opinion on a business issue or situation, provide a summary of your stance or position and then enumerate the reasons that support it.

6. Deliver a recommendation

In the last step of the Amazon case interview, you’ll present your recommendation and provide the major reasons that support it. You do not need to recap everything that you have done in the case, so focus on only summarizing the facts that are most important.

It is also good practice to include potential next steps that you would take if you had more time or data. These can be areas of your framework that you did not have time to explore or lingering questions that you do not have great answers for.

Amazon Case Interview Tips

Below are eight of our best tips to help you perform your best during your Amazon case study interview.

1. Familiarize yourself with Amazon’s business model

If you don’t understand Amazon’s business model, it will be challenging for you to do well in their case interviews. If you are interviewing for the Amazon Web Services team, you should know how Amazon makes money as a cloud service provider. If you are interviewing for the Amazon Prime team, you should be familiar with how their subscription service works.

2. Read recent news articles on Amazon

A lot of the times, the cases you’ll see in an Amazon case study interview are real business issues that the company faces. Reading up on the latest Amazon news will give you a sense of what Amazon’s biggest challenges are and what major business decisions they face today. There is a good chance that your case study interview will be similar to something that you have read in the news.

3. Verify the objective of the case 

Answering the wrong business problem will waste a lot of time during your Amazon case study interview. Therefore, the most critical step of the case interview is to verify the objective of the case with the interviewer. Make sure that you understand what the primary business issue is and what overall question you are expected to answer at the end of the case.

4. Ask clarifying questions

Do not be afraid to ask questions. You will not be penalized for asking questions that are important and relevant to the case. 

Great questions to ask include asking for the definition of an unfamiliar term, asking questions that clarify the objective of the case, and asking questions to strengthen your understanding of the business situation.

5. Do not use memorized frameworks

Interviewers can tell when you are using memorized frameworks from popular case interview prep books. Amazon values creativity and intellect. Therefore, make every effort to create a custom, tailored framework for each case that you get.

6. Always connect your answers to the case objective

Throughout the case, make sure you are connecting each of your answers back to the overall business problem or question. What implications does your answer have on the overall business problem?

Many candidates make the mistake of answering case questions correctly, but they don’t take the initiative to tie their answer back to the case objective.

7. Communicate clearly and concisely

In an Amazon case study interview, it can be tempting to answer the interviewer’s question and then continue talking about related topics or ideas. However, you have a limited amount of time to solve an Amazon case, so it is best to keep your answers concise and to the point.

Answer the interviewer’s question, summarize how it impacts the case objective, and then move onto the next important issue or question.

8. Be enthusiastic

Amazon wants to hire candidates that love their job and will work hard. Displaying enthusiasm shows that you are passionate about working at Amazon. Having a high level of enthusiasm and energy also makes the interview more enjoyable for the interviewer. They will be more likely to have a positive impression of you.

Recommended Amazon Interview Resources

Here are the resources we recommend to land an Amazon job offer:

For help landing interviews

• Resume Review & Editing : Transform your resume into one that will get you multiple interviews

For help passing case interviews

• Comprehensive Case Interview Course (our #1 recommendation): The only resource you need. Whether you have no business background, rusty math skills, or are short on time, this step-by-step course will transform you into a top 1% caser that lands multiple consulting offers.
• Case Interview Coaching : Personalized, one-on-one coaching with a former Bain interviewer.
• Hacking the Case Interview Book   (available on Amazon): Perfect for beginners that are short on time. Transform yourself from a stressed-out case interview newbie to a confident intermediate in under a week. Some readers finish this book in a day and can already tackle tough cases.
• The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook (available on Amazon): Perfect for intermediates struggling with frameworks, case math, or generating business insights. No need to find a case partner – these drills, practice problems, and full-length cases can all be done by yourself.

For help passing behavioral & fit interviews

• Behavioral & Fit Interview Course : Be prepared for 98% of behavioral and fit questions in just a few hours. We'll teach you exactly how to draft answers that will impress your interviewer.

Land Multiple Tech and Consulting Offers

Complete, step-by-step case interview course. 30,000+ happy customers.

Case Study: Amazon AWS

Mar 14, 2019

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Case Study: Amazon AWS. CSE 40822 – Cloud Computing Prof. Douglas Thain University of Notre Dame. Caution to the Reader: Herein are examples of prices consulted in October 2014, to give a sense of the magnitude of costs. Do your own research before spending your own money!.

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Case Study: Amazon AWS CSE 40822 – Cloud Computing Prof. Douglas Thain University of Notre Dame

Caution to the Reader:Herein are examples of prices consulted in October 2014, to give a sense of the magnitude of costs. Do your own research before spending your own money!

Several Historical Trends • Shared Utility Computing • 1960s – MULTICS – Concept of a Shared Computing Utility • 1970s – IBM Mainframes – rent by the CPU-hour. (Fast/slow switch.) • Data Center Co-location • 1990s-2000s – Rent machines for months/years, keep them close to the network access point and pay a flat rate. Avoid running your own building with utilities! • Pay as You Go • Early 2000s - Submit jobs to a remote service provider where they run on the raw hardware. Sun Cloud ($1/CPU-hour, Solaris +SGE) IBM Deep Capacity Computing on Demand (50 cents/hour) • Virtualization • 1960s – OS-VM, VM-360 – Used to split mainframes into logical partitions. • 1998 – VMWare – First practical implementation on X86, but at significant performance hit. • 2003 – Xenparavirtualizationprovides much perf, but kernel must assist. • Late 2000s – Intel and AMD add hardware support for virtualization.

Virtual-* Allows for the Scale of Abstraction to Increase Over Time • Run one process within certain resource limits. Op Sys has virtual memory, virtual CPU, and virtual storage (file system). • Run multiple processes within certain resource limits. Resource containers (Solaris), virtual servers (Linux), virtual images (Docker) • Run an entire operating system within certain limits. Virtual machine technology: VMWare, Xen, KVM, etc. • Run a set of virtual machines connected via a private network. Virtual networks (SDNs) provision bandwidth between virtual machines. • Run a private virtual architecture for every customer. Automated tools replicate virtual infrastructure as needed.

Amazon AWS • Grew out of Amazon’s need to rapidly provision and configure machines of standard configurations for its own business. • Early 2000s – Both private and shared data centers began using virtualization to perform “server consolidation” • 2003 – Internal memo by Chris Pinkham describing an “infrastructure service for the world.” • 2006 – S3 first deployed in the spring, EC2 in the fall • 2008 – Elastic Block Store available. • 2009 – Relational Database Service • 2012 – DynamoDB • Does it turn a profit?

Terminology • Instance = One running virtual machine. • Instance Type = hardware configuration: cores, memory, disk. • Instance Store Volume = Temporary disk associated with instance. • Image (AMI) = Stored bits which can be turned into instances. • Key Pair = Credentials used to access VM from command line. • Region = Geographic location, price, laws, network locality. • Availability Zone = Subdivision of region the is fault-independent.

EC2 Pricing Model • Free Usage Tier • On-Demand Instances • Start and stop instances whenever you like, costs are rounded up to the nearest hour. (Worst price) • Reserved Instances • Pay up front for one/three years in advance. (Best price) • Unused instances can be sold on a secondary market. • Spot Instances • Specify the price you are willing to pay, and instances get started and stopped without any warning as the marked changes. (Kind of like Condor!) http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

Free Usage Tier • 750 hours of EC2 running Linux, RHEL, or SLES t2.micro instance usage • 750 hours of EC2 running Microsoft Windows Server t2.micro instance usage • 750 hours of Elastic Load Balancing plus 15 GB data processing • 30 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage in any combination of General Purpose (SSD) or Magnetic, plus 2 million I/Os (with Magnetic) and 1 GB of snapshot storage • 15 GB of bandwidth out aggregated across all AWS services • 1 GB of Regional Data Transfer

Surprisingly, you can’t scale up that large.

Simple Storage Service (S3) • A bucket is a container for objects and describes location, logging, accounting, and access control. A bucket can hold any number of objects, which are files of up to 5TB. A bucket has a name that must be globally unique. • Fundamental operations corresponding to HTTP actions: • http://bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/object • POST a new object or update an existing object. • GET an existing object from a bucket. • DELETE an object from the bucket • LIST keys present in a bucket, with a filter. • A bucket has a flat directory structure(despite the appearance given by the interactive web interface.)

Easily Integrated into Web Applications <form action="http://examplebucket.s3.amazonaws.com/" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data"> <input type="input" name="key" value="user/user1/" /> <input type="hidden" name="acl" value="public-read" /> <input type="hidden" name="success_action_redirect" value="http://examplebucket.s3.amazonaws.com/successful_upload.html" /> . . . <input type="text" name="X-Amz-Credential” value="AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE/20130806/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request" /> . . . <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Upload to Amazon S3" /> </form> http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/sigv4-post-example.html

Bucket Properties • Versioning – If enabled, POST/DELETE result in the creation of new versions without destroying the old. • Lifecycle – Delete or archive objects in a bucket a certain time after creation or last access or number of versions. • Access Policy – Control when and where objects can be accessed. • Access Control – Control who may access objects in this bucket. • Logging – Keep track of how objects are accessed. • Notification – Be notified when failures occur.

S3 Weak Consistency Model Direct quote from the Amazon developer API: “Updates to a single key are atomic….” “Amazon S3 achieves high availability by replicating data across multiple servers within Amazon's data centers. If a PUT request is successful, your data is safely stored. However, information about the changes must replicate across Amazon S3, which can take some time, and so you might observe the following behaviors: • A process writes a new object to Amazon S3 and immediately attempts to read it. Until the change is fully propagated, Amazon S3 might report "key does not exist." • A process writes a new object to Amazon S3 and immediately lists keys within its bucket. Until the change is fully propagated, the object might not appear in the list. • A process replaces an existing object and immediately attempts to read it. Until the change is fully propagated, Amazon S3 might return the prior data. • A process deletes an existing object and immediately attempts to read it. Until the deletion is fully propagated, Amazon S3 might return the deleted data.”

Elastic Block Store • An EBS volume is a virtual disk of a fixed size with a block read/write interface. It can be mounted as a filesystem on a running EC2 instance where it can be updated incrementally. Unlike an instance store, an EBS volume is persistent. • (Compare to an S3 object, which is essentially a file that must be accessed in its entirety.) • Fundamental operations: • CREATE a new volume (1GB-1TB) • COPY a volume from an existing EBS volume or S3 object. • MOUNT on one instance at a time. • SNAPSHOT current state to an S3 object.

EBS is approx. 3x more expensive by volume and 10x more expensive by IOPS than S3.

Use Glacier for Cold Data • Glacier is structured like S3: a vault is a container for an arbitrary number of archives. Policies, accounting, and access control are associated with vaults, while an archive is a single object. • However: • All operations are asynchronous and notified via SNS. • Vault listings are updated once per day. • Archive downloads may take up to four hours. • Only 5% of total data can be accessed in a given month. • Pricing: • Storage: $0.01 per GB-month • Operations: $0.05 per 1000 requests • Data Transfer: Like S3, free within AWS. • S3 Policies can be set up to automatically move data into Glacier.

Durability • Amazon claims about S3: • Amazon S3 is designed to sustain the concurrent loss of data in two facilities, e.g. 3+ copies across multiple available domains. • 99.999999999% durability of objects over a given year. • Amazon claims about EBS: • Amazon EBS volume data is replicated across multiple servers in an Availability Zone to prevent the loss of data from the failure of any single component. • Volumes <20GB modified data since last snapshot have an annual failure rate of 0.1% - 0.5%, resulting in complete loss of the volume. • Commodity hard disks have an AFR of about 4%. • Amazon claims about Glacier is the same as S3: • Amazon S3 is designed to sustain the concurrent loss of data in two facilities, e.g. 3+ copies across multiple available domains PLUS periodic internal integrity checks. • 99.999999999% durability of objects over a given year. • Beware of oversimplified arguments about low-probability events!

Architecture Center • Ideas for constructing large scale infrastructures using AWS: http://aws.amazon.com/architecture/

Command Line Setup • Go to your profile menu (your name) in the upper right hand corner, select “Security Credentials” and “Continue to Security Credentials” • Select “Access Keys” • Select “New Access Key” and save the generated keys somewhere. • Edit ~/.aws/config and set it up like this: • Now test it: aws ec2-describe-instances [default] output = json region = us-west-2 aws_access_key = XXXXXX aws_secret_access_key = YYYYYYYYYYYY Note the syntax here is different from howit was given in the web console! AWSAccessKey=XXXXXX AWSSecretAccessKey=YYYYYYYYY

S3 Command Line Examples aws s3 mb s3://bucket . . .cplocalfile s3://bucket/key mv s3://bucket/key s3://bucket/newname ls s3://bucket rm s3://bucket/key rb s3://bucket aws s3 help aws s3 ls help

EC2 Command Line Examples aws ec2 describe-instances run-instances --image-id ami-xxxxx -- count 1 --instance-type t1.micro --key-name keyfile stop-instances --instance-id i-xxxxxx aws ec2 help aws ec2 start-instances help

Warmup: Get Started with Amazon • Skim through the AWS documentation. • Sign up for AWS at http://aws.amazon.com • (Skip the IAM management for now) • Apply the service credit you received by email. • Create and download a Key-Pair, save it in your home directory. • Create a VM via the AWS Console • Connect to your newly-created VM like this: • ssh -i my-aws-keypair.pem ec2-user@ip-address-of-vm • Create a bucket in S3 and upload/download some files.

Demo Timehttp://aws.amazon.com

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Case Study on Amazon Supply Chain Metrics.pptx

This study aims to clarify the position of Amazon in the retail industry which it primarily gained through high-­‐level supply chain and logistics developments. The first part of this research describes the retail industry, especially E-­‐Commerce, as well as supply chain practices whereas the second part focuses on Amazon as a representative company. Drivers of the company's supply chain as well as numerous product and service developments such as Anticipatory Shipping, Amazon's Chaotic Storage Model and Amazon's Logistics Network Plan are identified and discussed. It becomes apparent that constant innovation in a supply chain context has more extensive and significant long-­‐term effects on company success than large profit figures. A comparison of Amazon with Apple, Google, Walmart and other relevant companies shows that Amazon's supply chain is more diverse, implying that numerous services that are offered by competitors are combined within Amazon and its supply chain. Amazon's supply chain may be described by an efficient and flexible inventory management, fast delivery fulfillment, effective collaborations with partners, strategic acquisitions of supporting systems and companies and a high level of customer service. The results of this research paper may direct future studies towards the investigation of further competitive advantages of Amazon as well as how potential threats and weaknesses a company faces may be overcome in a supply chain context.

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Amazon is the first large company that sells goods and services over the internet it was founded by jeff bezos in 1994. Amazon started out as an online book store then it grows quickly to add new items such as DVD’s, video games, electronics, clothing and more to the extent that the company logo symbolizes means that they sell all products from A to Z. Amazon.com try their best to get customer loyalty and trust. They offer state shipping service and they have many retail stores in different countries. It also purchases customer data and information to achieve customer needs and wants. Amazon is one of the first in the world to sell online and has many competitors like: ebay, rakuten and flipkart. Therefore, amazon has own over 40 subsidiaries includes: zappos, shopbop, IMDb, Amazon Prime, appstore, and amazon drive.

Texila International Journal of Management

Texila International Journal , Chukwuka Ukeni

The success of any business is dependent on the strategy/strategies that are deployed in the operation of such a business. Strategy is a critical determinant of business success. Amazon.com is one of the most successful brands in the world; the company has been in business for over two decades and has recorded an unprecedented business success in human history. In this research work, the key strategy behind the success of Amazon will be extensively investigated. Given the unusual success rate of this organization over the past two decades and their high prospect for greater success, it becomes imperative to investigate the strategy behind this tremendous business success in-order to unveil and/or re-emphasize an established business principle that may not be obvious to many businesses. The purpose of this research is mainly to identify these strategies and extend further emphasis on the viability of such business strategies in order to strengthen existing research on the subject matter. Using the waterfall methodology, the history of the company will be reviewed, the financial reports, company memos, press releases, etc., will be analysed. The evolvement of the business from its inception as an online book retailer to its diversification into numerous other lines of businesses will be reviewed and analysed.

Journal of Retailing

Robert Palmatier , Barton Weitz , Shankar Ganesan , Sandy Jap

Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln IV

Porter Analysis: A Business Strategy of Amazon.com through a Value Chain and Comparative Advantage Analysis of Amazon's Trademarks and Intangibles Amazon is considered the preeminent online retailer in the world. It operates in varying areas from robotics, movie databases, web services, audio books, food markets, etc. Its expansive reach is a matter of e-commerce highly dependent on the logos and Amazon trademarks, such as the Amazon smiling face, the Amazon logo, etc. The E-commerce industry falls into the category of internet and software services according to S&P's Industry Surveys on "Internet Software & Services. E-commerce can be categorized into two major segments on the internet: business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B). Amazon.com falls into the B2C category, because Amazon's main target is consumers. Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world. But it operates with a great deal of competitors. Below is a chart of the main competitors Amazon deals with in the economy. Working Paper.

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences-revue Canadienne Des Sciences De L Administration

Thierry Isckia

Amazon.com has been through several stages of development: first as a cyber-bookstore, then a cyber-market, and now an Application Service Provider (ASP). I apply the concept of “business ecosystem” to describe the evolution of Amazon.com, and highlight the role of web services in the shaping of its ecosystem. The company plays a central role in the ecosystem, working with a network of partners to bring products and services to customers. By continually trying to improve the health of its ecosystem, Amazon ensures its own survival and prosperity. The mechanisms through which Amazon has created its ecosystem are discussed and ideas for firms looking to create analogous business communities are advanced. Copyright © 2009 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Amazon.com a désormais deux visages: celui du E-Retailer que nous connaissons tous, et celui moins connu, d'Application Service Provider (ASP). Dans cet article, je présente le concept d'écosystème d'affaires et le rôle joué par les Web services dans la constitution de cet écosystème. L'activité d'ASP d'Amazon est récente et marque une nouvelle phase de développement de l'entreprise au cours de laquelle elle a constitué une véritable communauté d'affaires composée de très nombreux partenaires. Amazon occupe aujourd'hui une place centrale au sein de ce réseau de valeur. A travers cet article j'analyse le développement de l'écosystème d'affaires d'Amazon. J'espère, modestement, que lecture de cet article sera une source d'inspiration pour les entreprises souhaitant développer leur propre écosystème d'affaires. Copyright © 2009 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Supply Chain Management: An International Journal

Ivan Russo , SIDDIK BOZKURT

Purpose Although supply chain scholars have acknowledged the fundamental disruptive changes experienced by today’s supply chains and the ensuing novelty of the research problems worthy of investigation, they have primarily relied on a limited number of theories to help explain the phenomena of interest. The purpose of this paper is to use a systematic literature review to address this gap and propose additional theories that supply chain researchers can use to help address novel supply chain phenomena, such as those caused by technological disruptions. Design/methodology/approach The authors use a systematic literature review to examine the studies published over the last 10 years in six of the top supply chain management journals (411 articles) and six of the top marketing and management journals (1,214 articles). Findings First, the findings show that 15 theories have been relied upon by over 95 per cent of the studies within supply chain management that use formal theories. Second, the authors identify the most frequently used theories within marketing and management (217 theories). Third, as space limitations make it impossible to offer a rich description of each of the 217 theories, the authors identify 30 theories that they considered to be the most salient to supply chain research and suggest areas where supply chain scholars can apply these theoretical lenses. Originality/value The research effort allowed the authors to map the current use of theories within the field to gain a better understanding of what other theories could augment the body of theories used within supply chain management. Thus, the current study is a “one stop shop” that supply chain scholars can consult when in a quandary about what theoretical lens to utilize.

Jacobin Magazine

Charmaine Chua

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/04/amazon-global-supply-chains-organizing-unionize-logistics

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Case Analysis and Presentation: Amazon Case Example - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Case Analysis and Presentation: Amazon Case Example

Background including company history, the events leading up to the critical ... what about increases in interest rates 'irrational exuberance' quote by greenspan ... – powerpoint ppt presentation.

• Dr. Tom Housel
• Naval Postgraduate School
•   Ø background including company history, the events leading up to the critical part of the case and the environment
• Ø state the problem concisely (principal problems, challenges)
• Ø  primary decision-makers and stakeholders
• Ø  what are the goals and objectives of the company
• Ø  a list of your recommendations
• Ø support your recommendations with logic and facts
• (Optional Future challenges/opportunities)
• Opens virtual doors in 1995
• 3.5 million titles by 1996
• 1999 - 1Billion from bond offering
• Contract with AOL
• Diversified product offerings (e.g., toys, CDs, videos)
• 19 million items -- 300 million, 5 million square foot warehouse
• Person-to-person auctions
• Technical Architecture
• Dist, Order, Fulfillment
• Passion for Innovation
• E-Commerce Know-How
• Business Development
• Partnership Know-How
• 20M Loyal Customers
• Investors analysts, VCs, big and small
• Management and employees
• Government-regulators (e.g., SEC)
• (Possible discussion point Role of stakeholders in influencing-formulating strategy comparable stakeholders in DoD environment)
• Continued exponential growth
• DiversificationeCom portal intermediary
• Piece-of-the-action
• One-stop-shopping
• Survival Buy.com, eBay, others
• (Possible discussion point Are these the right goals given the environment, customer base, stakeholders Comparable goals for DoD agencies, initiatives, e.g., e-bus in government)
• Market value justification and slowing growth rate
• Need to continued high growth (33 down to 7)
• Competition bricks and mortar to clicks an mortar, eBay
• Creating complete supply chain and distribution network
• (Possible discussion point Are these their only big problems? What about increases in interest rates irrational exuberance quote by Greenspan? Comparable DoD
• Loss of control over customer relationship
• Possible damage to reputation
• Potential delivery problems
• Cost of guarantees
• Need to attract top-tier, best of breed brands
• Need for full range of products
• SWOT analysis
• Stick with Brand Names
• Personalize customer interface
• Co-Brand with Merchants
• Provide data mining services for Merchants
• Provide billing services for Merchants
• Enroll service companies
• Create communities of interest based on data mining
• Offer other services to Merchants (e.g., manage their IT, electronic supply chains, distribution, co-marketing)
• Reliability and Credibility
• Brand recognition
• Access to larger customer base
• Sharing Amazons e-com infrastructure
• Guarantee and credibility
• Access to Amazons customer database
• Added revenue using subscription model
• Customer intelligence
• Chapter 10 Amazon case review
• 1. What were the potential problems for Amazon when they entered the warehouse phase of their development?
• What was the impact on investors perceptions?
• What was the impact on the organizational priorities?
• What is the corollary problem for DoD organizations?
• 2. How should the DoD foster an organizational environment to stimulate entrepreneurs such as Bezos?
• What reward system should be used?
• How would the financing work?
• What changes in organizational culture and structure would be necessary?
• 3. What role did the stakeholders play in the creation of zShops?
• a. Investors
• b. Customers
• c. Amazon Employees management
• d. Merchants
• 4. How can zShops add value for these stakeholders?
• Key take-away from last class meeting?
• Scaling the information technology platform
• Secure transactions
• Going Global
• Competition
• Get organizational buy-in
• Make sure you know who the stakeholders (e.g., customer) are for your service/product
• Understand the implications of a slow or fast adoption rate
• Brand your e-Bus service/application
• Offer service guarantees (service level agreements)
• Clearly identify the value-addeds of your service
• Clearly identify the potential risks of your service

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