M.

PHIL ENGLISH

M.PHIL- S1 /Assignment/2020

ASSIGNMENT
Year, 2020

(1st SEMESTER)

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

Student Name : Zainab Ihsan

Roll no :

Date of Submission : 13 DECEMBER 2020

Submitted To :

BAHAUDDIN ZAKARIYA UNIVERSITY

 AMAZON KINDLE EVOLUTION:

QUESTION 1:

What criteria drove Amazon’s decision of where to produce the different components
that go into the Kindle? Were these the right criteria? Should these be the same criteria
today, with a stronger focus on the tablet market as opposed to just the re-reader
market?

ANSWER:

The company knew that if they wanted the kindle to be a success and a product that
was mostly preferred by the buyers it must have features like; affordability, high
functionality, high reliability and an elegant design. As many competitors appeared like
Sony, Noble and specially Apple came up with its iPad. The major goal for Amazon
became the reduction of the price of Kindle so that it can be extremely affordable and
these kindles can be lying around every house as a form of one’s very own digital
library.

Yes, as far as I am concerned, I think that this should be the criteria today. The public
prefers all the good features (high functionality, high reliability and elegance of design)
in a product with an affordable price and the company that offers such a product
becomes the public’s favorite company. As everything around the world is becoming
electronic the book market is also converting into an e-book market. E-books are
preferred by most of the readers so a tablet that can offer such features as being a
tablet and a device like Kindle offering a whole digital library vibe is a fantastic product
according to most of the consumers / buyers.

QUESTION 2:
Some have argued that the fact that only $40 - $50 of the value associated with
manufacturing the Kindle went to U.S companies was the sign of the decline of
American competitiveness. Do you agree with this assessment?

ANSWER:

When a company designs a product and wants to sell it at a low price, it must develop
the product at a low cost too so that they don’t have to face loss over a fantastic product
that involved a creative thinking process. When the display was being designed,
Amazon had to pay $40 to $50 just for the manufacturing of display by E INK (the
company in Massachusetts) and the wireless card chip, lithium-polymer battery the
microprocessor chip were manufactured at very low prices; $13, $8 and $7 that means
they had these parts of the Kindle made from the best companies of Asia but at a very
low price as compared to the display only. So, the matter here is not whether U.S is
competitive enough to develop such technology or not. Obviously, they can develop
better but they would have gone into a big amount of loss due to the cost of
manufacturing in their own country so instead of doing that they got them developed by
Asian companies at low prices.

QUESTION 3:

If Amazon had decided to design and manufacture the Kindle and all its components in
the United States, what do you think the consequences would have been for Amazon?
What about the Fire HDX (and any subsequent “Kindle” products)?

ANSWER:

The designing and manufacture of products was not the problem for amazon. The basic
goal as narrated by the writer was to reduce the price of Kindle. If they decided to
produce all or some of the products in America, they would be launching very
successful product but because of the very high cost of manufacturing of those products
that would be very high, only some of the people would be able to purchase it. The
consequences would be that the company would go in a loss as the cost price would
outgrow the sale price. The product would not reach many people and because of that
unaffordability people would definitely prefer Amazon’s competitors (Sony, Apple) for
the products.