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Amazon and its product 7

The Amazon Echo: A Case Study Overview

Introduction

Based in Seattle Washington and officially referred to as Amazon.com, Amazon is an electronic e-commerce and cloud computing company. It was founded in 1994 July 5Th by Jeff Bezos who is the current CEO. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore later diversifying to other ventures that included mp3 and video streaming services. Currently, Amazon is the world’s largest provider of cloud infrastructure and ventures into production of consumer electronics such as kindle e-readers, fire TV and fire tablets. It tried venturing into Smartphone manufacture by launching Fire Phone as iPhone’s competition but that backfired. One of Amazon’s greatest successes at the moment is in the voice response or augmented reality industry. This is marked by ground breaking production of The Amazon Echo which is the agenda of this review. (Zhu, Liu, 2016)

The Building of the Echo

First and foremost, the Echo refers to Amazon’s voice controlled speaker with a wide array of abilities going under the official name; Amazon Echo. But whereas the most that is known is confined within the bounds of its functionality and success, this study reveals the turbulence that characterized its creation and lays bare the terrain of the path the journey took to finally present consumers with what they highly regard at the moment. Below are the most notable events that culminated into what is now referred to as the Amazon Echo as per the accounts of the case study. (Brustein, Sanders, Soper, 2016)

Created in Lab126, Echo was apparently being developed at the same time as Fire Phone. The most interesting thing is that other than developers of Fire Phone, nobody else in the lab knew about its development until it was launched. It however flopped paving way for more attention to be paid to the development of the voice controlled speaker. Among the problems that existed with the talking speaker included simple logistics as the appropriate name and the wake up word. But these were no problems exactly but rather internal logistics arising from the nature of CEO Bezos. Apparently, Bezos wanted the name ‘Amazon Flash’ which was highly detested by the engineers and product managers at lab126. (Brustein, Sanders, Soper, 2016)

Moreover, Bezos wanted the wake up word for the talking speaker to be ‘Amazon’ which the engineers claimed would cause a lot of awkwardness given its commonness amidst people. They claimed that if the wake up word was Amazon, the speakers would wake up upon hearing TV ads that mention Amazon and start to purchase items over the internet despite not being commanded to do so by the owner. This was made worse by the existing fear of challenging Jeff Bezos. However, the engineers and product managers eventually presented their case and the current name and wake up word was adopted hence the launch and shipment of the Amazon Echo. (Zhu, Liu, 2016)

The current logistics that surface with regards to Echo are improvements and tying up services. Currently, Amazon Echo is able to go beyond the simple task of playing music upon command to actually answering questions and performing internet based tasks. By appearance it is 9inches tall and 3.25 inches wide without any screen and the remote that was suggested initially was done away with. Among the specific services the echo can provide include calling a taxi, switching on and off the internet connected light bulbs, telling the weather conditions or entertaining a child by producing its favorite animal sound. (Brustein, Sanders, Soper, 2016)

Upon its wake, the Amazon received a lot of criticism for the release of the talking speaker. First and foremost, the company accused of ‘useless gimmick’ while others accused it of displaying ‘Orwellian’ tendencies. However, amidst these criticism and negativity, the Echo managed to resonate with consumer needs and certainly it gathered love from the market selling 3million devices and commanding 4.5star rating out of the possible 5star. Currently, independent developers are actually creating apps that work with the Alexa software. For cars, one can inquire from the Echo the amount of gas left in their tank, order pizza or even command it to turn off lights at home. (Brustein, Sanders, Soper, 2016)

Ambitions for Amazon Echo

The Echo has been termed as a departure from the past, both literally and figuratively according to the case study. This is perhaps because the Echo brings the aspect of artificial intelligence into voice control. Having established a niche, the Echo developers’ main agenda for the future with regards to functionality of the Echo is to use the voice controlled talking speaker to serve as a link for all the internet appliances that grace the market. (Brustein, Sanders, Soper, 2016)

This also goes hand in hand with the goal of making the Echo tie up services. The case study gives an example as follows. Instead of the owner asking for it to call a curb, the target is to make the talking speaker to actual observe and ask the owner whether or not it should call a curb now that it is almost time to leave. This is a whole new level artificial intelligence and a perfect definition of interactive mode. (Brustein, Sanders, Soper, 2016)

The end goal is not just to make activities at home smart, but to actually make the whole house a smart home. The case study also reveals departure of engineers who worked on the echo. Apparently the working environment at Amazon is not exactly friendly and neither is working under CEO Jeff Bezos. But that’s not the agenda of the paper. Regarding the challenges faced in the course of developing the Echo, the case study quotes one employ as saying that failure and innovation are inseparable twins. Clearly, despite the turbulence, Amazon.com has a product to reckon with in the market. (Brustein, Sanders, Soper, 2016)

References

Brustein, J., Sanders, N., & Soper, S. (2016). The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo:

Bloomberg. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-amazon-echo/

Zhu, F., & Liu, Q. (2016). Competing with Complementors: An Empirical Look at Amazon.

com. Harvard Business School Technology & Operations Mgt. Unit Working Paper, (15-044). Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2533616