Successes and Failures of Growth Strategies Adopted by Amazon: A Case Study

MANAGEMENT
RESEARCH

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
KEY ANALYSIS.............................................................................................................................6
NEW RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION................................................................11
RECOMMENDATIONS..........................................................................................................11
CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13
Books and Journals...................................................................................................................13
Online sources...........................................................................................................................13

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In the current research project, data about different strategies adopted by Amazon is
taken. It has included several significant strategies that helped business to grow such as Amazon
Prime, Amazon Web Service, Kindle etc. This has also involved several strategies that have
backfired the company and did not help in grabbing attention of existing as well as potential
customers. This has also included the different evolutions that made by Amazon to develop and
improve their whole business.

INTRODUCTION
The case study organisation for the present report is Amazon. The company as ubiquitous
and large as Amazon is today, it is quite tough to remember that it incorporated in a garage. Jeff
Bezos and first few number of employees packed books and bought them to the post office by
themselves in those days (Pandis, 2021). Even after the organisation had made warehouses for
storing inventory, forming it a organisation with real assets and real revenue, many investors had
written Amazon off as the other dot-com fever dream, destined to be wiped out by Borders and
Barnes & Noble. But with the time, in the year 2011 Borders had been filed for bankruptcy
protection and had closed many stores. Meanwhile, the company Amazon moved towards every
imaginable kind of media, service and product. According to eMarketer by 2018 Amazon had
taken half of online retail sales and decreased the business of physical retail business.
Amazon has evolved greatly due to their great operations, strength and new ideas. Some
of the major events that assisted in explaining rapid evaluation of Amazon include: the year 1994
is known as born year of Amazon as they started online book store and financed the organisation
with $10,000. In 1997, Amazon went public at $18 per share and given it a valuation of total
$300 million. In 1998, Amazon had expanded its whole offerings and started selling DVDs and
CDs. In 1999, the company came with 1 click payment and prompted customers to purchase
more. It had launched marketplace for 3rd party seller and it has sparked the volume of
transactions. The Time Magazine named Jeff Bezos as Bezos Person of the Year. In 2002, the
company had started selling clothing and made partnership with 400 apparel brands. In 2003, it
has generated extra income by licensing platform to other sites of e-commerce such as
Target.com and Borders.com. From this year, Amazon has come up with new things each year
such as it has entered China, Prime debuts, Kindle went on sale, announced new headquarters in
Seattle, acquired audiobooks, acquired Zappos, acquired robotics organisation Kiva Systems,
started delivery packaging on Sundays, unveiled first and last smartphone, acquired Whole
Foods, reached $1 trillion market cap, raised minimum wage, sales and profits of Amazon surged
during global pandemic (Chadwick and Asner, 2018).
Amazon is known as an American multinational technology organisation which majorly
focuses on cloud computing, artificial intelligence and e-commerce. It is popularly known as
under Big Five Companies in the United State information technology industry with Meta,
Google, Microsoft and Apple. The current CEO is Andy Jassy and founder is Jeff Bezos.