Executive Summary

                                      Executive Summary

Amazon is the largest online retail store in the world with valuation of over $700 billion. It was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 in a small garage as an online book store. After its initial listing in 1997, the company has expanded rapidly covering sales of wide range of products and services. Currently, it is the most valuable public company in the world and its growth and expansion over the years has been really commendable.

Amazon has always been customer centric. Driven hyperrational entrepreneur and founder Jeff Bezos initially idealised on his rationale of not confining only as a book store and hence surged a frantic rush into every conceivable sector of ecommerce with sole focus on customer experience and availability of selections. With focus on long term objectives and maximum occupancy in market share, Amazon has always disregarded the preference of earning maximum profit rather it has always focussed on grabbing the market share and increasing the revenue irrespective of profit. Hence, even though the company has seen an unprecedented increase in its revenue over the decade, the profit has always been notably on a lower scale.

Amazon offers customers with every perceivable alternative in terms of products and services. User friendly and simple web design provide customers with in-depth and overwhelming shopping experience at a very competitive price and promotional offers. Although Amazon has been facing fierce competition from its competitors like eBay and Alibaba, the market position of Amazon has been growing at a very rapid pace and has been the first preference of many customers across the world. One of the key entities that define ecommerce retail store is the delivery service. With numerous positive responses from the customers and users across the world, it is safe to conclude that the delivery service provided by Amazon is truly praiseworthy as they are driven by motive of maximum customer satisfaction.

With the world being taken over by technology and internet, the rise of ecommerce is quite inevitable. We can analyse the competitive advantage of Amazon by analysing Porter’s Six forces which covers the aspects of Competitive Rivalry, Barriers to Entrants, Bargaining Power of Buyer, Bargaining Power of Supplier, Substitutes, and Complementary Products within the industry. These six forces provide an insight into the industry of ecommerce and the analysis of Amazon from the perspective of its competitors within the industry.

Although Amazon is well established as an online retail store, they welcome the partnerships with different independent sellers who can use Amazon to sell their products online by paying a commission of 15% of the sales to Amazon. Apart from retail sales, Amazon has also capitalised on various opportunities provided by the market by launching Amazon Prime and Cloud services which has helped to establish a loyal customer base although the threats presented in front of them is quite eminent. The strength, weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats can of Amazon can be analysed with the help of SWOT Analysis which can help to provide the insights of the company at the present and in the future.

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