Amazon’s sales in 2014 were $88.99 billion, an increase of 19.4 percent over 2013. In fact, its sales in 2014 were a whopping 160 percent more than its sales in 2010, only four years prior. Amazon has been able to achieve remarkable gains in sales by providing high quality, rapid, and relatively inexpensive (relative to competitors) service. Amazon has taken on such formidable competitors as Walmart, Google, and Barnes & Noble, among others, and has come out of it as a winner, particularly in the last 4–5 years. Walmart has been emphasizing its online sales as well. In 2014, it grew online sales by about $3 billion, for a 30 percent increase. That seems like excellent progress, until one compares it to Amazon’s sales increase in 2014 of about $14.5 billion. Much opportunity remains for both to improve as total 2014 online sales were $300 billion. Google is clearly the giant search engine with 88 percent of the information search market. However, when consumers are shopping to purchase goods, Amazon is the leader. In the third quarter of 2014, 39 percent of online shoppers in the United States began their search on Amazon, compared to 11 percent for Google. Interestingly, in 2009 the figures were 18 percent for Amazon and 24 percent for Google. So, Amazon appears to be winning this competitive battle with Google.

Questions

1. Can any firm beat Amazon in the marketplace? If not, why not? If so, how can they best do so?
2. How formidable a competitor is Google for Amazon? Please explain.
3. What are Amazon’s major strengths? Does it have any weaknesses? Please explain.
4. Is Jet.com a potential concern for Amazon? Why or why not?