Amazon Case Study

Term Paper Assignment-2

Allison Goldman

The international business I have chosen is Amazon.com. They are the global leader in e-commerce. Amazon was established in 1994 in Seattle, Washington by Jeff Bezos. In 1997 the company went public and in 2000 they opened their original Amazon Marketplace. Over the years, they have added many new options. In 2007 they introduced Amazon MP3, 2010 Amazon Video, and 2011 they introduced Amazon Kindle and Amazon App Store. In 2014, they introduced their original Amazon smartphone and Fire stick. Amazon is the global leader in e-commerce and has about 130,000 employees. It offers a very wide range of products, both new and used. They also offer rentals. In 2015 Amazon had reported revenues of 107.01 billion dollars and a net income of 34.02 billion dollars. Amazon’s e-commerce website offers books, electronics, apparel, fitness equipment and much more. They also offer web services such as computing, networking, database, and storage & content delivery. Amazon’s web services have multiple Availability Zones and data centers, unlike any other infrastructure provider. They also have the leading cloud infrastructure platform since 2006.

  Amazon offers shipping to many different countries, however they have separate retail websites for United States, United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India and Mexico. There is a feature available for you to browse products that are available for international shipping. While their international sales were growing in 2014, they have decreased in recent years. They really have been focusing on the emerging markets of China and India recently. A major focus has been how Amazon plans to compete with Alibaba, a global leader in e-commerce originated in India. Internationally, the increase in internet shopping has helped Amazon with their expansion. People in other countries are now using smart phones more, and are more open to internet shopping.

When it comes to innovations, it seems like Amazon is consistently adding new sections of its business. As I discussed in the previous assignment, they started off as just the Amazon marketplace. They now offer Amazon MP3, Amazon Video, Kindle Store, Amazon TV, Amazon Smartphone, and their web services. They are consistently upgrading and adding new features to their products. The fact that they are a one stop shop is a draw, you can get almost anything you are looking for.  In addition to the services they continue to add left and right, there are also innovations in their logistics. They are one of the first companies to plan on the use of drones to deliver their product. This would make it possible to order online and get your product delivered within hours. Amazon is also said to have plans to eliminate the middle-man and create their own delivery service in addition to the drones. Amazon has already mastered logistics in comparison to its competitors and guarantees that their customers get their product when they are expecting it.