1. Young Lee Amazon Case Study
BUS 550 FALL 2018

2. HIGHLIGHTS History Technology Organization/Management
Business Challenges/Opportunities
Customer Relations/Strategies
Testbeds
Discussion
Questions
HIGHLIGHTS

3. History Started by Jeff Bezos in 1994 Lost 3 Billion in first 7 years
Started his career as a product manager in banking
VP of D.E. Shaw & Co (hedge Funds)
Lost 3 Billion in first 7 years
Many skeptical of ever making it as a dot com
Started as a online book store
Fastest firm in history to reach $100 billion in sales.
History

4. Technology Ecommerce Free shipping to members Largest Online Retailer
Little store front
Free shipping to members
Largest Online Retailer
Use of Kiva
Kindle, Kindle Fire
Fire TV
Echo
Trunk delivery
Blue Origin
Cloud Computing
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Technology

5. Organization/Operations
Low prices, Faster delivery, Vast selection.
Amazon focused on costs, data, and processes
Efficient cash conversion cycle
Wait to the last minute to pay
Amazon spent $21.7 Billion in shipping cost
Spend a lot of time studying logistics
Challenging the shipping industry
Allow other vendors to use Amazon as a “storefront”
Huge pricing power
Large investment into technology
Organization/Operations

6. Challenges and opportunities
Stiff eCommerce competition
Walmart with Ecommerce
Competiton in TV market
Netflix
Apple TV
Roku
Groceries has not figure out the right formula
Cell phone flop
Channel conflict
Fighting publishers and Apple
Different charging method
Growing
Content publishing
AWS growing market
“While e-commerce brings in the most in terms of sales revenue, AWS is now responsible for the majority of the firm’s profits.”
Echo and IOT
Campus bookstores
Personal storage
Challenges and opportunities

7. Customer Metrics/ Strategies
Huge data on data from its customers
Algorithms to study buying
Target marketing
Customer Metrics/ Strategies

8. Testbeds Amazon Go Bookstores no cash Own shipping company
Drone shipping on the last mile
Testbeds

9. Discussion Can Amazon survive at the top Is Amazon making enemies
Too much focus on technology
User data :manipulation or free game
Discussion

10. How many years did it take for Amazon to be profitable?
Question?