Final Paper- 3 Pages

Amazon

Allyson M. Rush

Rasmussen College

Amazon

Amazon is an American company, and is one of the largest online retailers in the world. The company’s headquarters are in Seattle, Washington and was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos. Amazon started off as an online bookstore which made the company to be known for its wide selection of books. Later, the company expanded to sell other products like electronics, furniture, music, video games apparel, toys, and jewelry among other products. Amazon describes itself as the “everything store”. The company is also the world’s largest cloud services provider (Kantor, & Streitfeld, 2015). Amazon is not only based in America but it has separate retail websites for countries like; the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Mexico, Japan, China, India, Brazil and Australia. The company also offers international shipping to other counties for some of its products.

Jeff Bezos, who is the founder, president, CEO and Chairman settled on the name Amazon which means ‘exotic and different’, because he had a vision that the company would be the biggest store in the world. Today, amazon has had huge successes which includes; being the largest online retailer in the world, the largest internet company by revenue in the world, being among the largest employers in America. Amazon has also acquired other companies like; Woot, Twitch.tv, Goodreads among others. Recently, the company also acquired Whole Foods Market for $ 13.7 billion.

Amazon has a wide variety of products and services, considering that it is the “everything store”. The products sold are categorized into various groups depending on the product or service for example; amazon electronics, amazon fire TV, amazon fire tablet, amazon kindle, amazon video direct, amazon web services, amazon advertising, amazon business, among others (Kantor, & Streitfeld, 2015). When categorized into such broad categories, amazon has over 25 products and service.

Amazon has amazing customer service where they listen, understand and serve the needs of their customers. For example, the kindle was built based on customer’s desires and request to have such a platform. Almost all the products offered by Amazon are as a direct interaction with customers where they understand them, and know which products or services the customers want. The company also focuses on customer satisfaction; this is by creating an experience the customer never forgets, such that the customer keeps coming for more products from amazon. Jeff Bezos notes that Amazon does not take chances when it comes to customer satisfaction. Their shipping rates are also low compared to their competitors and sometimes they offer free shipping when the purchase is above a certain amount. Amazon is also very innovative and comes up with products and services which suit the market.

Amazon’s customers cut across all ages. However, the online book store and the electronics site seem to be the best selling section to date. This is because these were the products amazon started with and so many people associate amazon with books.

Amazon is my company of choice because I have seen how the company has grown in the last 20 years. The company has transformed the retail business, captured a segment that no one thought could be so profitable, and utilized the internet for e-commerce. Amazon for me has really revolutionized the e-commerce industry and every other online store looks up to amazon for important business lessons about e-commerce. Amazon has also been able to capture the needs of the customers and it understands their customers so well such that, when they launch a product or service the market picks it well.

Customer service is an important skill in business for it can determine a company’s survival. One of the things I would like to learn about customer service is the communication skills. The second thing would be how to interpret and use the customer suggestions and needs as a business strategy.

References

Kantor, J., & Streitfeld, D. (2015). Inside Amazon: Wrestling big ideas in a bruising workplace. New York Times, 15, 74-80.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3067455/why-amazon-is-the-worlds-most-innovative-company-of-2017