Amazon Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Amazon Case Study Solution

Amazon first launched its website in 1995. The website was mainly launched to sell books. After few years,Amazon expanded its operations and started to sell different products through the internet.The business structure and strategy of the company is an appealing one because in a very short period,Amazon captured huge market shares.For further growth, the company intends to enter into grocery market by acquiring Whole Foods Company. Our team has tried to help the company in evaluating the decision.

In this report, we analyzed the internal environment of the company by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the company. In this analysis, we concluded that the general management, operations, marketing and innovative capability of the company is a strong one while the company is weak in customer experience. After that, we analyzed the opportunities and relative market threats which should be considered by the company for its success.

Amazon Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

We analyzed the market environment of the industry in which Amazon operates using Porter 5 forces,we concluded that the threat of substitutes has the highest power while the overall risk of the market is a moderate one. Along with this, we also analyzed the general environment of Amazon using PESTLE model.By using this analysis, we concluded that the general environment has also a moderate level of risk however,political factor has the highest level of risk in this environment.

After analyzing the resources and capabilities of the company we have provided recommendations relating to the opportunities which should be grasped by the company.Furthermore, we also conducted financial and risk analyses relating to the grocery market which gives positive results and enables us to provide recommendations.

Strength and Weaknesses

General Management

Strength: In 2002, company launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud computing service to companies conducting research.This indicates that this is a growing market.Along with this, company also makes acquisitions and mergers with other companies to grasp the emerging opportunities. This indicates that the management of the company is an efficient one and takes prudent steps for the growth of the company.

Strength: Amazon increases the price of its product ‘Prime’.Despite increasing the price the demand for the product which was increased by 53% in 2014 and 35% in 2015 indicates that the management of the company is up to date with the market trends and hence takes effective steps to grasp the opportunities.

Weaknesses:In taking aggressive steps for the growth of the company the management does not critically analyze the opportunity hence this causes severe losses.This can be identified by the decision of Fire Phone which caused a loss of 170 million.

Operations

Strength: Amazon conducts its operations through websites.This allows the company to maintain a huge amount of inventory at its virtual stores at low fixed cost. Hence due to are duction in expenses, the overall profit of the company will be improved.

Strength: Amazon sets its own packing and distribution systems which allows the company to market its products without any resistance hence improving the effectiveness of company operations.

Marketing

Strength: Amazon uses its own advertising networks.These networks generated approximately $1.26 million in 2015. This indicates that the company has effective marketing policies.

Customer Experience

Weaknesses: Amazon does not conduct any feedback program like how customer feel after buying or using the services of the company. If a company starts to take feed backs,then it will enhance the confidence of the customers and in result it scans retain them for longer period.

Intellectual Property management

Strength: Amazon provides branded products to the customers.This will enhance the goodwill of the company and improvement in goodwill will ultimately improve the profit of the company.

Weaknesses:Company does not have physical source to maintain its records, data or inventory as it uses technology (internet) for this purpose therefore, at the time of any hazard company may lose its data along with this, anyone can perform technological crimes (like hacking) to misuse company data and in this case company has to suffer a lot,it may need to pay potential penalties due to breaching of data protection act and etc.

Innovative Capability

Strength:Company takes aggressive steps to fulfill the demands of the customers like the launch of ‘Unbox’ in 2006 which streams video on laptops and tablets.The company did not rely on it and innovated this technology in 2013 and offered videos on large scale on TV which is in accordance with the consumers.This indicates that Amazon is a highly innovative company.

Strength: Furthermore, the company also introduced some tablets which can be used by the customers to download digital books and videos from the company’s website. Along with this, company also introduced some good services like Dash Replenishment Service and Dash Button to motivate the customers to purchase from the company hence this will increase the market share of the company.