Role of IT in Amazon: Analysis of Competitive Environment, Logistics, and Support Activities

Managing Information
and Technology

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Introduction of company........................................................................................................3
Background information of company.....................................................................................4
Products and services of company.........................................................................................4
Analysis of competitive environment of company.................................................................4
Inbound and outbound logistics and operations.....................................................................7
Analysis of support activities in Porter's value chain.............................................................7
Identification of key value adding activities..........................................................................8
How IT and innovative ideas help to improve business processes........................................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFRENCES.................................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Information technology is being increasingly used in businesses so that competitive
advantage can be gained in market as with the use of IT company's performance increase, it can
save more money and also maximum customer satisfaction can be achieved. With the use of IT
in business, communications have become fast along with increased speed of data processing and
gaining more market knowledge (Rohitratana 2017. IT helps business in using its data and
information efficiently so that effective results can be drawn and business processes can be
improved. In this report Amazon company is taken which is an American multinational
technology company that focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming and
artificial intelligence. The company is based in Seattle and is an IT company which increase the
importance of IT in it. In this report the role of IT in Amazon, analysis of competitive
environment of company, inbound and outbound logistics and operations, Porter's value chain
model etc. will be discussed in detail so that a competitive advantage can be gained by it in
market.
MAIN BODY
Introduction of company
Amazon is an American international technology company which is based in Seattle,
Washington, US and mainly deals in e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming and AI.
Amazon is the world's largest online retailer which enables people to shop efficiently through the
website or online app of Amazon. The company provides various services ranging from online
shopping, AI assistant provider and cloud computing platform. It is the largest internet company
in terms of revenue and is the second largest private employer in US. The company is among
top big 4 technical companies which are Apple, Google and Facebook. Amazon.com is well
known for its lightning speed of selling virtually anything online and is also known for its Kindle
book store where book lovers can find a large number of online books. The company purchases
all its inventory from various brands either directly or from traditional wholesalers and factories
so that customers can be provided with branded products. The vision of the company is to
become world's most customer-centric company and also offer them with a variety of thousands
of products while increasing their convenience of online shopping (Liu, Kimree Technology Co
Ltd, 2016).

Background information of company
The company was founded by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington in the year 1994 in the
garage of their rented home. Bezos' parents invested $250,000 in the start-up. The company was
established in Seattle as Microsoft was also located there which could help it in technical
assistance. The company began its business by selling music and videos in 1998 and it also
began operating at international level by acquisition of book sellers in UK and Germany. The
company then began selling video games, consumer electronics, home renovating items,
software games and toys etc. Amazon name was chosen as Amazon is the largest river in the
world and Bezos planned on making Amazon the biggest book store in the world. When Amazon
was founded first Jeff Bezos had called it his “regret minimization framework” as it was the
effort which helped him in defending against his inability to participate earlier in internet
business boom (Shahar, Satar and Bakar 2019).
Products and services of company
Amazon is the world's largest online retailer and a salient cloud service provider. The
company is an American multinational technology company which mainly focus on various
online services. The products and services of Amazon ranges from several media including
videotapes, software, apparels which are suitable for people of different age and sex, baby
products which are clinically proven, consumer electronic items, beauty products which are
clinically tested against any side effects etc. The company also gives various internet services
that cater to fulfil the requirements of different domains of which some most widely used
domains are computing, storage, database, analytics, networking etc. Thus it can be seen that
Amazon is a big company which offers a wide variety of products and services which are able to
fulfil the requirements of customers as per their needs and wants while increasing their
convenience of online shopping (Xu and et. al. , 2013).
Analysis of competitive environment of company
Porter's five forces is a model which help in determining the competition of business in
market which will help in evaluating the overall attractiveness of industry. The model was first
published in Michael E. Porter's book "Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing
Industries and Competitors" in 1980. as per this model there are five forces which work on a
company and helps it in analysing its competitiveness in the market. The model thus help in
formulating corporate strategies so that the negative factors which affect the company can be