Prepare a power point presentation Amazon.com

Amazon.com is an American organization having headquarters In Seattle and is the largest online in the world ( Jopson , 2011). Amazon.com start its life with an online book store, but after a few span of time watches an opportunity to expand the business towards other areas and starts dealing in DVD?s, CD?s, MP3?s, Jewelry, Toys, Download Streaming Video games and etc. This company was incorporated as a name of Cadabra by its founder ?Jeff Bezos? in July 1994, after which the company got its name Amazon.com in 1995 ( Byers, 2006). The name of the company is taken after the name of the famous river Amazon. Amazon through its unique business model achieves a successive growth in its life period and results in an increase in the number of clients. Today amazon.com is operating in the different areas of the world along with the successive provision of e-commerce channel to them. Amazon is also presenting in the top 100 companies list of fortune 500 index. Its position in this index will be 100 ^th company in 2010 as compared to the previous position of 130 ^th company in 2009 (FORTUNE 500, 2010). During its life time, Amazon.com faces a lot of problems due to changes in trends and technology in the society, and the growth in the company position on fortune 500 index shows that the company can successfully face these challenges.

Business model of Amazon.com:

The business model of amazon is divided into nine different areas called the key factors or canvas in the business model. The success of the model lies in these canvases, and can be seen through the fact that in almost 19 years of life, Amazon.com never face any difficulty to attract its customers both in short and long term run. The aim of amazon in this business is to become a cost leader in its industry and provides products at low cost to its customers. The successive business model of the amazon.com is revolved around the value preposition of the customer and ensures the adaptability and flexibility according to the changes arises in the trends of people (Johnson, 2010). The company starts as a book store and focuses on the profit of the company and increase the profit of the company in white space. Soon after the success of the business in book selling, amazon watches the changes arises in trends and focus on other areas. The successive performance of the company in this area is through the conduct of time to time surveys to identify changes in the market, its values preposition, its competition and etc. The company uses porter model along with industry competitive analysis for its self-recognition and adopts the flexibility according to the situation.

Problems faced by Amazon.com:

In spite of the growing image of the amazon.com, this organization also faces a number of challenges on the daily basis to run its operations. Out of these challenges, the most significant challenge faced by this company is the stressful operations of the organization. The recent economic crises along with the increase in the decrease in the market share of the company. This decrease is due to challenge of increasing price as compared to the other online book sellers.

How Amazon.com solve these challenges:

The role of the technological development changes the way of the response for the organization to solve the problems with these challenges. The increased pressure of reduction in prices along with the technological advancement became a challenge for this company, and Amazon shift its preference towards the effective supply chain management to solve these challenges and reduce its cost, and solve its considerable challenges through increasing efficiency.

Importance of supply chain process for amazon:

In this age of technological development, supply chain management is deep rooted into the organization success. It is clear that for the effective functioning of the organization, coordination and cooperation among all the departments is applied, and supply chain process ensures this coordination among organizations beyond logistics (Cooper, Lambert, & Pagh, 1997). Similarly, this concept is also of considerable importance for amazon.com because the pressure of downward prices is possible only through effective management of the process to reduce the cost of production. In this way, the supply chain process is the only method that helps this organization for getting the solution of this most challenging problem. The supply chain process importance for amazon.com can be seen through the fact that company entirely based upon this channel and owe much of its success through the adoption of this approach in their process.

Role of supply chain in the e-commerce industry:

Most of the people consider that companies like eBay and amazon are dealing in the online sale and purchase of things. The internal operations of the company along with relationship with external parties are crucial for success and became more complex due to the stiff competition of this age. It is well known fact that the success of the company can entirely dependent upon its successful relationships and coordination among all areas and this objective is fulfilled through the supply chain process. The supply chain process is considered to be the competitive differentiator for an organization. The supply chain process enables an organization to prove its skills, strategies and aims along with relationship with external parties to determine its competitive and strategic success ( Croom, 2001). The e-commerce industry has benefited from this approach, because of the direct involvement of this process in their operations. Electronic businesses ensure the order generation from a customer and fulfill it within a limited span of time, and without spending a much cost. Supply chain process helps them to reduce the time, and increase the specialization through communication with specialist of each area and reduce the lead time that will increase the overall satisfaction of the customer. It also help this company, because of the more efficiency in performance through effective movement of materials from different places to ensure the high satisfaction of consumer.

Supply chain of Amazon:

Amazon uses a combination of three different supply chain processes. These models are amazon.com As seller, amazon.com as intermediary and amazon.com as a full service e-commerce provider. The first model of the company will be responsible for all the relationship with customers along with logistic management, provision of technology along with immediate inventory provision to ensure the efficient performs of selling activities (Maltz, Rabinovich, & Sinha, 2004). In this model amazon creates a partnership with its suppliers and pay a percentage in each unit sales to them to retain them and increase their motivation along with amazon. The second model will introduced by the company in 2000, to represent itself as a virtual trading company. This model ensures the meeting of buyer with supplier. Amazon through this channel provides front end customer relationships and provides technological assistance to both parties and serves as an intermediary between two parties. This success of this model can be analyzed through the fact that after its implication, amazon gained more than 850000 seller accounts within a year of this implication (Szkutak, 2004).the purpose behind this model is to provide the market place through which cost can be saved by performing the third party operations, and reduced the incremental cost to the zero level.

Amazon.com is recognized for its unique website design and its innovative customer satisfaction strategy. Amazon uses its supply chain dominance in technology improvement and uses a design a new mode to provide technological assistance, website designs for companies on their website. The purpose behind this model is to give authority to the retailers to use their own site, and brand, while utilizing the framework design by amazon.

Although these different models are designed by amazon, but their primary responsibility is still attached with getting the order and shipping it to the consumer. The third party design of model by the amazon will proves successive and results in a growth of 17% to 26% in 2002-04 (Colby & Marguarette, 2005).

International supply chain of Amazon.com:

Amazon.com is performing its operations through the internet, and internet is accessed from any place throughout the world, and place an order on the website. This situation leads to the problem for amazon to fulfill the customer demands. Amazon takes the help of supply chain process in this problem to solve it in the age of globalization. Amazon increases its supply chain processes throughout the world and made contracts with suppliers at international level to serve the customers. Amazon use of ?drop shipping? strategy plays an pivotal role in this regard. This strategy helps amazon.com to made real time relationship with manufacturers in different areas of the world, and shipped products to the consumer on behalf of this online company (Knowledge@Wharton, 2009). Similarly, amazon creates contracts along with real time partnership agreements with different suppliers and transportation companies to provide the goods on behalf of amazon. Amazon designs a complete process in which customer order is segregated among different peoples according to the area so that the final delivery will be made efficiently. Along with these contracts amazon uses distribution centers, and warehouses approach also for effective operations in different areas of the world (Zeppieri, 2004).

Suppliers of amazon.com:

Amazon an online book store or a retail store having a large number of suppliers around the globe, with the help of them, this organization perform its operations successfully in different areas of the world. The dominance of suppliers in this company will be medium, because of the some portion of its own inventory in different areas of the world. Amazon also defines certain standards to for suppliers to ensure the quality performance in the long run relationship. The suppliers of amazon include suppliers on the market place along with the companies having web service partnership with amazon. The success of this company can entirely depends upon the collaboration that they made with online sellers along with businesses like target company (nikamalfard, 2011).

Customers of the amazon.com:

Amazon.com is performing in the online services regarding to the bookstore and other retail services to every on one the internet. Every person around the globe having access of the internet became a customer of amazon.com. Amazon always gives preference to is customers and design a number of strategies to increase the customer satisfaction in its services. The company can always give preference to the consumer, and this is the cause of increasing the market growth of the company. The buying power of consumer among other competitive forces became high, and it became a top priority of amazon to facilitate them. If, we look at the income history of the company than we can easily find out the increase in the revenues results in an increase in revenues of the company.

Conclusion:

The role of effective supply chain management is never ignored in this age of technological development, and became the core factor captured the keen importance of organizations towards itself. This case also represents the similar situation but on the international level and for the online trading organization. Amazon uses this process as a core strategy in its operations to increase the overall market share.

Although the company experiencing a tremendous growth throughout its life period. The last few years increases the competition in the market and increases challenges for satisfaction of the customers, amazon through its successive strategic planning efficiently overcome its problems and lead towards successive growth in past and also sure about future growth in the economy.

Percentage of Overall Unit Sales Amazon.com as Intermediary - Third-Party Sales 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 2002 2003 Fiscal Year 2004 In Millions $45,000 $40,000 $35,000 $30,000 $25,000 $20,000 $15,000 $10,000 $5,000 $0 Dec '00 Silicon Alley Insider Net Sales. (Y/Y Growth) Amazon's Net Sales Mar Dec Sep Sep Jun '01 02 03 '03 '04 Jun '05 Chart of the Day Mar '06 Source: Company Filings Net Sales (Trailing 4 Quarters) Dec Sep Jun Mar Dec Sep Jun '06 '07 '08 '09 '09 '10 '11 Y/Y% Change 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%