The Success of the Company Amazon.com - Case Study Example

Online Sales: Amazon Executive summary Amazon.com has enabled its online marketplace to successfully spark competition, generate trust and confidence in online marketplaces, better career development by providing employment in numerous sectors and so on. The impact of such marketplaces demands a strict continuance in the impact of sales and generation of business. The sale for the products and services becomes a prime issue and influences a lot in deriving a continued trust and confidence among people. The intelligence is in developing a model to analyze the present trend of sales and also forecast a trend for its products. The market basket analysis would be performed for enriching the all together experience for all section of products to make better decisions. The decision making in this sense would be to innovate the existing products by capitalizing on their market deficiencies and ensuring better business for the customers. Table of Contents Executive summary 1 Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Aims and Objectives 4 Introduction The paper aims at defining a model based on the surveys and questionnaire method for deriving the sales figures of various products and services of Amazon. The first section takes an innovative approach towards the aims and objectives of the various products. It lists the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the various aims and objectives. The second section defines a boundary for the analysis of the paper and ensures various definitions of the goals are taken care well. The literature review forms the next section for this analysis and makes sure that previous work is taken into account to form an opinion and innovate the very opinion for making decisions and conclusions. The next section highlights the methodology to be followed for the paper which depicts the large scale manner for data fetching and analysis. The work plan, ethics and resources form the last section which enables one to have a clear picture of the paper and the progress which are to be made with the help of various resources. Aims and Objectives The aim of the paper is to acknowledge the fact that sales of products and services for Amazon require a dynamic strategy for innovation and decision making. It also takes a stand towards organizing products and their services. The objectives are listed as follows: 1. To classify the products and services offered by Amazon.com 2. To effectively capitalize on surveys and questionnaire method for deriving the correct data capturing methods. 3. The primary objective is to track the sales data for Amazon.com 4. To analyze the current trend of sales for Amazon’s products and services 5. Forecasting of sales for products and services would be done for determining the future prices. Scope and definition The project is to analyze the sales trend of its various products and services and to come up with a model to forecast the online sales of Amazon’s products and services in US and UK. The scope and definition of the project is as follows: 1. The dissertation takes into account the commercial products and services of Amazon.com and classifies it under heads. 2. The scale for measurement of the surveys would be classified as the following: a. User acceptance b. Usability c. Price d. Region e. After sales service f. Competitive advantage g. Feel good factor 3. The regions would be only restricted to US and UK due to the complexity of the analysis. Literature review Amazon's brand has enabled them to pursue differentiation strategy. They have an excellent reputation due to their efficient one-click purchasing system, prompt after-sales service and tight security measures. Amazon are using innovative business models such as e-mail alerts, which deliver value in ways that have not been economically viable in “traditional” physical settings. Their distinctiveness is evident in their online value proposition "Earth's biggest selection." Their brand, accompanied by reputation and trust is difficult for competitors to imitate, making it a source of sustained competitive advantage. Barnes and Noble previously traditional intermediaries, now conduct business using both traditional and online methods. Due to its large share of traditional consumers and physical store outlets, Barnes and Noble are able to appropriate benefits of EC innovation in a manner that Amazon cannot match. (Kauffman, 2003) Our client is also ideally positioned to adopt any technical innovations Amazon may look to introduce. Crucial to Amazon's competitive advantage has been their ability to build affiliate/associate networks. "Amazon has in excess of 500,000 affiliates, which have links to the Amazon site." (Chaffey, 2004.) They have entered exclusive bookseller relationships with five of the top six sites on the web: AOL, Yahoo, Netscape, GeoCities and Excite. Amazon pays commission on sales referred from these sites. In return brand awareness, traffic and sales for Amazon increase enormously. Methodology The methodology selected is questionnaire and previous documents method. Questionnaire form of requirements gathering is best suitable for a large number of people in a relatively short period of time and can be less biased in the interpretation of results. It would largely save time on the vendor’s part but would generate no personal touch on each other’s part. Strengths: There could be various sections of people, arranged in groups and they can be catered with different set of questionnaires to exactly match their information gathering platform. It would focus on specific direction so as to fetch the information rich in content and exact content can be analyzed. The information richness is medium to low. Weaknesses: It is quite expensive in operation. Chances for follow-up and probing are limited and follow-up done after original data collection. In this case respondent can be unknown. No clear commitment is done on the subject (Hoffer, 2002). The use of white papers and company financial sales reports are also taken into account for the purpose of the gathering the records. This form of requirements gathering takes place when the information is quite large for simple gathering methods. Work plan The work plan is as follows: Resources The resources for the paper are as follows: 1. Amazon.com website 2. White papers, last ten year financial documents 3. Access to customer database for surveys and questionnaires 4. Questionnaire and survey analysis tool Ethics The rules of referencing and plagiarism policies of the university are followed throughout the paper. All documents and survey responses are taken in a fair perspective to analyze the company’s sales figures without any importance and influence from any person in the management of the company. Conclusion The company Amazon.com is one of the largest and truly trusted by all over the world for genuinely great products and services towards quality and delivery. The established model would ensure better communication and innovation for its products which would not only foster growth but would ensure volume of transactions and growth of several other businesses. References/Bibliography Chaffey, D. (2004) E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 2nd Edition, Prentice Hall, Pearson Education Limited, pp.46, 53, 55, 224, 492. Chircu, M. & Kauffman, R. (2003) Strategies for internet middlemen in the intermediation / disintermediation / reintermediation cycle, The International Journal of Electronic Commerce and Business Media, 9, 2, 1999, pp. 109-117. Hoffer A. Jeffery (2002). Modern Systems Analysis and Design, Pearson Education. Read More