To become one of the “giants” in the e-commerce industry, Amazon has built and implemented effective business strategies. Let’s learn and analyze Amazon’s business strategy in detail in the article below.
Overview of Amazon Company
According to Wikipedia , Amazon.com, Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Seattle, Washington focused on cloud computing, digital streaming, artificial intelligence, and e-commerce. The company is considered one of the Big Four technology companies along with Google, Apple and Facebook.
Amazon is known for changing the mindset of established industries through technological innovation and large-scale development. The company is the world’s largest e-commerce marketplace, AI assistant provider, and cloud computing platform as measured by revenue and market capitalization.
Amazon is the largest Internet company by revenue in the world. It is the second largest privately held company in the United States and one of the most valuable in the world. Amazon is the second largest technology company by revenue.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994, in Bellevue, Washington. The company initially did business as an online distributor of books but later expanded to sell electronics, software, video games, apparel, furniture, food, toys and jewelry.
In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization. In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.4 billion, which greatly increased Amazon’s presence as a brick-and-mortar retailer. In 2018, Bezos announced that Their two-day delivery service, Amazon Prime, has over 100 million subscribers worldwide.
The name Amazon.com was chosen because the Amazon River is the largest river in the world, and so the name evokes large scale, and also partly because it begins with ‘A’ and will therefore appear near the top of the list. alphabet books.
This multinational company started with an online book selling service but has quickly diversified its fields into all other segments such as home appliances, furniture, electronics, technology items, and electronics. entertainment, food… With the right business strategies, after 21 years, Amazon has earned a fortune of 136 billion USD from business.
Amazon distributes video, music, and audiobook downloads and streaming through its Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, and Audible subsidiaries. Amazon also has a publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, a film and television studio, Amazon Studios, and a cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services. The company also makes consumer electronics including Kindle ebook readers, Fire tablets, Fire TVs, and Echo devices. Additionally, Amazon’s subsidiaries also include Ring, Twitch.tv, Whole Foods Market, and IMDb.
Amazon SWOT analysis
The SWOT model is a famous tool known and applied by many businesses because of its usefulness in helping managers analyze important factors inside and outside the business from which to establish strategies. appropriate strategy and business plan.
SWOT stands for 4 words: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats – is a famous model that helps businesses analyze and build your business strategy effectively.
Among the 4 elements of the SWOT model, strengths and weaknesses are two factors for internal assessment of the business. For these two factors, businesses can control and change. Often these factors are related to company operations, assets belonging to the business, product development, etc.
Besides, the remaining two factors, opportunities and challenges, are external factors that are often related to the market and are macroeconomic in nature. Businesses may not be able to control these two external factors. Businesses can fully seize opportunities, but they must also pay attention and be wary of external challenges that can occur at any time.
Read more details about the SWOT model in the article : What is the SWOT model & 7 steps of SWOT analysis
Strengths
Regarding the strengths in Amazon’s SWOT model, this brand has some of the outstanding strengths below.
- Strong Brand : As a global e-commerce giant, Amazon has a strong position and successful brand image in the market.
- Customer Orientation : Amazon serves a large number of customers for their daily needs at low prices. This has made it a customer-oriented brand.
- Differentiation and innovation : Amazon regularly comes up with innovative ideas and innovative additions to its product and service line like the Withings Aura Smart Sleep System. This makes Amazon different from other companies.
- Diverse product mix : Amazon has a rich product mix that attracts online customers to make the majority of their purchases from there instead of other online retailers. As of 2018, Amazon has sold 562.3 million products on its Amazon.com Marketplace.
Weaknesses
Besides its strengths, Amazon also has weaknesses that need to be overcome.
Some of the main weaknesses in Amazon’s SWOT model can be listed as follows:
- Easy-to-imitate business model : Online retail businesses have become quite popular in this digital world. So, imitating Amazon’s business model for rival companies is not too difficult. Some businesses are even giving Amazon a hard time. These include Barnes & Noble, eBay, Netflix, Hulu and Oyster, etc.
- Loss of profits in some regions : In some regions like India, Amazon has faced losses. Offering free shipping to customers may be one reason for the risk of losing profits in some markets.
- Some products failed : The launch of the Fire Phone in the US was a huge failure while the Kindle fire device didn’t even do well.
Opportunities
To take advantage of strengths and overcome weaknesses, Amazon can seize a number of beneficial opportunities to develop its brand and increase sales as follows:
- Market expansion : Amazon may gain opportunities to enter or expand operations in developing markets.
- Acquisitions of e-commerce companies : Acquiring more e-commerce companies can increase the company’s capabilities and reduce competition.
Threats
Besides opportunities, Amazon also needs to face some challenges. The main challenges in Amazon SWOT analysis can be listed as follows:
- Government regulations : Government regulations could also threaten Amazon’s business progress in several key countries. Amazon does not deliver to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Styria.
- High level of competition : Fierce competition with large retail companies like Walmart and eBay could give Amazon a tough time in the future.
Amazon SWOT analysis table
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Detailed analysis of Amazon’s business strategy
To become one of the leading e-commerce companies in the world, Amazon has extremely effective business strategies. So what is Amazon’s business strategy?
Amazon’s business philosophy
As for the philosophy of Amazon’s business strategy, this brand has used 5 main business philosophies including:
- Always apply the “day one” philosophy : Bezos has pursued the “day one” philosophy since the early days of Amazon’s founding. This philosophy means staying true to the spirit of a startup, resisting complacency that can kill success and lead to collapse.
- Customer-centricity : From the early days, Bezos has always been obsessed with innovating according to the needs and desires of customers. He believes that the focus must be on customers, not on competitors.
- Building the best working team for the company : The company’s success depends mainly on the people recruited. That’s why Bezos always attaches importance to building a human resources team. His philosophy is to focus on bringing the right people onto the management team, then letting them reap the rewards of the company’s success – keeping them motivated to contribute.
- Always keep the spirit of innovation and creativity : Step by step on the path to building the world’s largest e-commerce empire, Bezos added features and functions that were initially considered costly, but brought benefits. beneficial for customers.
- Be willing to accept failure to succeed : One of the core strategies for the success of Bezos and Amazon is his attitude towards failure. He believes in trying a variety of ideas, knowing that some may fail. He believes that accepting carefully calculated risks is necessary.
Amazon’s business strategic goals
Regarding the goals of Amazon’s business strategy, from the beginning, Jeff Bezos’ goal was to make Amazon the source of almost all the goods that customers want to buy, starting with a very large catalog of products. books and traditional products, then expanded to many different types of goods. In other words, Amazon’s goal is to become “the everything store”.
Amazon’s business model
From an e-commerce platform specializing in selling books to its current position as a technology giant is the result of a suitable and correct business model of Amazon. Thanks to that, Amazon is also known as the initiator in changing the thinking of industries, becoming the example and inspiration of brands.
Amazon’s business model, originally an e-commerce platform, now incorporates entertainment, music, cloud computing, delivery and many other services.
From a relatively simple eCommerce platform, Amazon has evolved into a complex digital ecosystem. Amazon’s business model is not a single entity, but a portfolio of business models.
Read more : What is a business model? The 10 most successful business models today
Amazon’s 3 main business strategies
To attract customers and grow strongly, Amazon has built effective business strategies. Amazon’s 3 most prominent business strategies include:
Always apply the philosophy of creativity
Amazon’s first business strategy is to always apply the philosophy of innovation.
Among the three elements that the company pursues: “Creativity, company, technology”, the creativity factor is placed first and is the guideline for operating in this fiercely competitive environment. However, creativity is never an easy or accepted job. Amazon has proven to the world that creativity is in the company’s DNA and has become the philosophy of this company’s operations.
Creativity is deeply ingrained in Amazon’s DNA. It is no exaggeration to say that from just a company with a very ordinary book selling website, it has now developed into a corporation with state-of-the-art technology. The company’s creativity comes with innovation and its innovations are very suitable for current trends and cutting-edge technology. From robot loading and unloading staff, warehouse staff normally have to go to the shelves, now robot cargo trucks run on their own, delivery staff apply advanced techniques including drones in the process. delivery.
In addition, the E-commerce giant also opened an Amazon Go supermarket, or an Amazon Echo voice control device… All thanks to Amazon’s business strategy of constantly improving and penetrating the flow of operations. Their actions require employees to constantly come up with creative ideas.
Take advantage of artificial intelligence
Alexa is a “living witness” of how Amazon uses AI and automation to create new customer experiences, collect data to better understand customer behavior and increase revenue. .
With the development of digital technology and the Internet, businesses can fully take advantage of business strategies using artificial intelligence like Amazon, a typical example is using chatbots to support customer care.
Focus on improving customer experience
Customer experience (in English, Customer Experience – CX) is the synthesis of a customer’s experience during the purchasing journey and exposure to a certain product, service or brand.
This is not a temporary feeling of the customer in a short period of time, but what remains after all the times the customer comes into contact with that brand through website, social, email, call or direct channels. with any employee representing the brand.
Read more: What is customer experience? Definition and how to apply it to business
From Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Alexa, paid cloud computing options are available. Customers can simplify the reordering of their audio products. Amazon has created a support ecosystem that serves both themselves and their customers.
Summary
To become one of the “giants” in the e-commerce industry, Amazon has built and implemented effective business strategies. Effective Amazon business strategies include:
- Always apply the philosophy of creativity
- Take advantage of artificial intelligence
- Focus on improving customer experience
Hopefully through this article, you have learned more about Amazon’s effective business strategies so that you can refer to them to implement appropriate strategies for your business. Visit our blog to update good knowledge every day!
