Amazon's Functional Structure: Analysis, Benefits, and Challenges

This report examines the functional structure of Amazon, a leading e-commerce company. It details the company's organizational structure, highlighting the functional divisions and their roles. The report explores Amazon's business operations, including merchandising, supply chain, and partnerships. It also covers the company's financial position, key competitors, and customer base. The analysis includes an overview of the external environment, addressing sustainability and environmental issues. The report references relevant academic literature and provides a comprehensive understanding of Amazon's organizational structure and its impact on business performance. This analysis is designed to help students understand the practical application of organizational structures in a real-world business context, offering insights into how a functional structure supports a large-scale e-commerce operation.

BUSINESS FUNCTIONAL DIVISIONAL MATRIX
Structure of Amazon
The organizational structure of the amazon is functional due to immense size of business. It is one of the largest online retailer in world in terms of
revenues and employing 647000 people around the world. Functional Structure is most Functional structure is common organizational structure used by
the businesses that involves grouping employees by skills, specialty or the related roles. It is based on different levels of hierarchy which includes
different departments under direction of the designated leaders (Ahmady, Mehrpour and Nikooravesh, 2016).
Amazon Company was founded on 5th July 1994 in Bellevue, Washington, USA.
Legal Structure: Amazon is a Public Limited company listed over different stock exchanges. The company is owned by Jeff Bezos who is founder of
the company.
Products and Services: it provides number of products and services such as Amazon Fresh, Amazon Prime, Amazon Web Services Alexa App store
Amazon Drive Echo Kindle Amazon Game Studio Amazon Studios Amazon Wireless and many more
Manufacturing and selling countries Manufacturing USA, China, UK, India, France, Ireland, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and Mexico
Financial Position Revenues – US$ 280.522 billion Profits – US$ 11.588 billion Share Prices – US$ 3095
Issues – First party e-commerce business has lost some of steam with 10% growth each year
Activities and its structure Merchandising digital and physical goods Design, Development & optimization of platform E- commerce Supply chain
&Logistics Securing & building partnership with sellers and suppliers. They are all structured in hierarchical manner.
Main Competitors: Alibaba Group Microsoft Oracle IBM
Customers It has large customer base of 310 million divided in consumers, sellers and developers.
External environment issues: Limited disclosure over sustainability and environmental initiatives. REFERENCE
Ahmady, G.A., Mehrpour, M. and Nikooravesh, A., 2016. Organizational
structure. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences.230.pp.455-462.