STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

TEOH BEI NING

981014016152
Contents

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 3

Task 1 ................................................................................................................................ 4

Summary ........................................................................................................................... 7

Reference .......................................................................................................................... 8

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Introduction

Amazon is an American multinational technology company based in Seattle,

Washington, that focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming,

and artificial intelligence. Amazon is considered one of the Big Four technology

companies along with Google, Apple, and Facebook. Amazon was founded by Jeff

Bezos. Amazon is known for its disruption of well-established industries through

technological innovation and mass scale. It is the world's largest e-commerce

marketplace, AI assistant provider, and cloud computing platform[13] as measured

by revenue and market capitalization.

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus,

passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking.

Amazon distributes downloads and streaming of video, music, audiobook through

its Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, and Audible subsidiaries. Amazon also has a

publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, a film and television studio, Amazon Studios, and

a cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services. It produces consumer

electronicsincluding Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, and Echo devices. In

addition, Amazon subsidiaries include Ring, Twitch.tv, Whole Foods Market,

and IMDb. Among various controversies, the company has been criticized for

technological surveillance overreach,a hyper-competitive and demanding work

culture,tax avoidance,and anti-competitive practices.

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Task 1

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning technique used to help a person or organization

identify their SWOT related to business competition or project planning. SWOT is a

framework used to evaluate a company's competitive position and to develop strategic

planning. SWOT analysis assesses internal and external factors, as well as current and

future potential. Carrying out a SWOT analysis is a powerful way to evaluate a

company or project, whether you’re two people or 500 people.

So, what is SWOT? S is about strengths. W is about weakness. O is about opportunities

and T is about threats. Users of a SWOT analysis often ask and answer questions to

generate meaningful information for each category to make the tool useful and identify

their competitive advantage. SWOT has been described as the tried-and-true tool of

strategic analysis, but has also been criticized for its limitations. The organization needs

to keep the analysis accurate by avoiding pre-conceived beliefs or gray areas and

instead focusing on real-life contexts. Companies should use it as a guide and not

necessarily as a prescription.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the company, things that the company has

some control over and can change. Examples include who is on your team, your patents

and intellectual property, and your location.

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Strengths is about characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage

over others. About strengths, the company can list out the things that company does

well and the qualities that separate you from the competitors. Besides, the company can

list out the internal resources such as skilled and knowledgeable staff. Moreover, the

company can list out the tangible assets such as intellectual property, capital,

proprietary technologies and so on.

About weakness, it is about characteristics of the business that place the business or

project at a disadvantage relative to others. Don’t look down at the

weakness.Weaknesses are negative factors that detract from your strengths. These are

things that you might need to improve on to be competitive. The leader or members can

list out the things the company lacks, things the competitors do better than the company

and about resource limitations. Besides, list out the unclear unique selling proposition.

Opportunity is the elements in the environment that the business or project could

exploit to its advantage. Opportunities are external factors in your business environment

that are likely to contribute to your success. For example, you can underserve markets

for specific products and few competitors in your area. Moreover, you should emerge

need for the products or services. You can list out the media coverage of your company.

The final element of a SWOT analysis is Threats. Everything that poses a risk to either

your company itself or its likelihood of success or growth. Threats are external factors

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that you have no control over. You may want to consider putting in place contingency

plans for dealing them if they occur. For example, threats include emerging competitors,

changing regulatory environment, negative press or media coverage. Besides than that,

it includes changing customer attitudes toward the company.

The four elements above are common to all SWOT analyses. However, many

companies further compartmentalize these elements into two distinct subgroups:

Internal and External.

Typically, Strengths and Weaknesses are considered internal factors, in that they are the

result of organizational decisions under the control of your company or team.

For amazon, they have Amazon SWOT analysis. Their strength is low cost structure,

the largest merchandise selection and a huge number of third-party sellers. The

weakness is easily imitable business model and losing margins in Few areas. The

opportunity of amazon is to penetrate or expand its operations in developing markets

and by expanding physical stores. For the threat is about few controversies,government

regulations and increasing of cybercrime.

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Summary

A company can use a SWOT for overall business strategy sessions or for a specific

segment such as marketing, production or sales. This way, you can see how the overall

strategy developed from the SWOT analysis will filter down to the segments below

before committing to it. You can also work in reverse with a segment-specific SWOT

analysis that feeds into an overall SWOT analysis. A company who use this method will

hit their target sooner just like Amazon.

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Reference

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)

2. https://www.aboutamazon.com/

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis

4. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/swot.asp

5. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/12/20/swot-analysis

6. https://www.liveplan.com/blog/what-is-a-swot-analysis-and-how-to-do-it-right-with-

examples/

7. https://bstrategyhub.com/swot-analysis-of-amazon-amazon-swot/

8. https://www.strategicmanagementinsight.com/swot-analyses/amazon-swot-

analysis.html

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