KMGT 710 - Evaluating Amazon's Strategic Capabilities and Resources

This essay examines Amazon's strategic capabilities and internal resources through the lens of the VRIO framework (Value, Rarity, Inimitability, Organization). It identifies Amazon's key strategic capability as its leading online bookstore position and its customer-centric three-pillar strategy focusing on price, selection, and convenience. The essay also highlights Amazon's valuable and rare internal resources, including its vast e-commerce products and services, and its ability to leverage these resources across different businesses. The author discusses strategies for managers to maximize resource utilization, such as providing individual development plans for employees, setting performance metrics, and removing organizational barriers. Effective management of strategic capabilities involves clear strategies, strategic development support, effective service program design, and global service models to enhance customer experiences. The essay concludes that managers should prioritize strategies that optimize the use of available resources to improve organizational performance.

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Strategic capabilities and internal resources
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VRIO stands for Value, Rarity, Inimitable, and Organization. This criterion is used in the
evaluation of capabilities and the resources which determines an organization’s competitive
potential. In most cases, VRIO applies in the resource-based organizations which evaluate its
performance as well as internal characteristics often. Therefore, for this paper, VRIO is used to
access strategic capabilities as well as internal resources at Amazon Company.
Amazon.com is one of the significant companies which take a full advantage of the
online world and develops a capability that has changed into a vital force in regard to technology
and increasing the organizational resources (Linden, Smith and York, 2003 p.46). To start with,
the key strategic capability of Amazon.com is that it is identified as the web's best and largest
online bookstore. A significant growth controls Amazon’s capabilities as it perceives that it can
achieve a high growth rate by being customer-oriented as well as improving the customer
experiences by employing a three-pillar strategy (Chailan, 2017 p.10). The three pillar strategy
focuses on focusing on prices, selection, and convenience which attracts customer’s traffic to the
website. On the other hand, Amazon’s internal resources include the vast products and services
for E-commerce. These products are valuable and rare as they feature a portfolio which
incorporates electronics as well as media content which facilitates an online platform for small
businesses. In regard to Amazon, the internal key capability and internal resources are inimitable
as it can leverage to other businesses assuring both long and short-term results connected to
investments. Amazon has an organization as the key competencies align with the company’s
internal resources.
As a manager, I would employ various strategies to make maximum use of available
resources to enhance effective performance in the organization. For instance, ensuring the

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employees have individual development plans is a significant strategy which would help towards
achieving organizational performance. I would ensure performance metrics are provided as they
would guide the employees to work on realistic goals. In the case of Amazon, I would assist to
increase the customer experiences by ensuring they receive constructive feedback for questions
that arise based on the products and services. Finally, removing barriers which prevail at
Amazon guides the key strategic capabilities and resources towards effective implementation of
a functional development.
Managers can ensure a successful development, as well as management of strategic
capabilities for the institution, are achieved through various ways. For instance, developing clear
and transparent strategies in regard to the technical services will help institutions achieve an
operational efficiency (Sehnem, Roman, Sehnem and Machado, 2016 p.2768). Moreover,
supporting the strategic development helps managers establish an all-inclusive strategic
representation that allows implementation of significant tactics to achieve the institutional goals.
In addition, implementing an effective service program design is important as it sets value-added
services for the customers (Digan, Kerrick, Cumberland and Garrett, 2017 p.65). Finally,
managers should adopt global service models which give customers best experiences and
increases their satisfaction.
To summarize, VRIO applies to the resource-based organizations which evaluate its
performance as well as internal characteristics often such as Amazon. Therefore, managers
should seek to employ various strategies to make maximum use of available resources to
enhance effective performance in the organizations.

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Bibliography
Chailan, C., 2017. Art as a means to recreate luxury brands' rarity and value. Journal of Business
Research.
Digan, S.P., Kerrick, S., Cumberland, D.M. and Garrett, R., 2017. The Roles of Knowledge and
Organizational Form on Opportunity Evaluation. Journal of Small Business Strategy, 27(2), p.65.
Linden, G., Smith, B. and York, J., 2003. Amazon. com recommendations: Item-to-item
collaborative filtering. IEEE Internet computing, 7(1), pp.76-80.
Sehnem, S., Roman, D., Sehnem, A. and Machado, N.S., 2016. Competitive Advantage in a
Credit Cooperative: The Role of Resources. International Business Management, 10(15),
pp.2768-2779.