Amazon.

com
The Up Thrust of Amazon

Group 4

Aakar Shivankar (PGP/22/058) Barkha (PGP/22/071)

Eshana Jain (PGP/22/075) Jaiswal Pooja Mohan (PGP/22/079)
Neha Sharma (PGP/22/088) Sonali Seth (PGP/22/111)
 SYNOPSIS
• Introduction
• Amazon Innovation Process
• Amazon Strategy
• Competitor Analysis
• Challenges
• Opportunities & Recommendations

2
E-COMMERCE

3
AMAZON.COM

4
 Company milestones Product launches

Kindle e-books outsell hardcover books

Jul 2010

Amazon S3 Amazon Instant Video Amazon Underground

Mar 2006 Feb 2011 Aug 2015

Amazon founded Lawsuit against Barnes & Noble Amazon Fresh Acquires Kiva Systems Amazon Prime Air
July 5, 1994 Mar 2002 Aug 2007 Mar 2012 Dec 2016

Acquires IMDB Amazon Prime Amazon Kindle Amazon Launches in India 23-year anniversary
Apr 1998 Feb 2005 Nov 2007 Jun 2013 July 5, 2017

1994 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2017
Aug 1998 Oct 2003 Sep 2007 Mar 2011 Jul 2014 Jun 2017
Expands beyond books A9.com Amazon Music Amazon Appstore Kindle Fire Acquires Whole Foods

Nov 2005 Jul 2009 Nov 2015

Amazon Mechanical Turk Acquires Zappos Opens its first physical store

May 1997 Aug 2006 Mar 2013

IPOs at $18.00/share Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Acquires GoodReads

Source : Office TIMELINE

 MAJOR AMAZON INNOVATION PROCESS
Amazon is born as an online book retailer
in 1994.

Expands into CDs and DVDs with launch of 1997 Goes Public at $18 per share, giving it a
AutoRip in 1998 valuation of $300 million.
Acquires bookpages.co.uk and launches
Amazon UK

Amazon secures "1-Click" patent 1998 -99

Expands into toys and electronics
Launches 3rd party seller marketplace like
Auctions and zShops
Starts selling clothing
2002
Launches Amazon Web Services, its cloud
computing platform
Amazon enters China in 2004
2005
Amazon Prime, a club that offers fast,
cheap shipping.
Amazon Fresh, its online fresh food delivery
2006 business, launches in Seattle

Kindle book e-reader launches 2007

www.presentationgo.com
 MAJOR AMAZON INNOVATION PROCESS
Launces Amazon Games
2008 Acquires audiobooks company Audible

Acquires shoe shopping site Zappos

Launches Amazon Studios to create 2009
original television content
Kindle Fire, the company's tablet, is unveiled.

2011
Acquires robotics company Kiva Systems in
2012

Launches Amazon Art

Drone delivery plans unveiled for first 2013
time under 'Prime Air' name.

Echo, Amazon's voice-activated

information and home gadget device,
2014 launches in the US.
Amazon opens its first physical bookstore
in 2015
Unevils its first (and last) smartphone

Acquires Whole Foods in 2017 2015 - 18

Acquires the social video game streaming
Amazon reaches a $1 trillion market cap in site Twitch
2018

www.presentationgo.com
AMAZON’S FLYWHEEL STRATEGY
• Concept: Low prices would enable a better customer
experience. This would drive more traffic which in turn
would result in lower costs. And this would allow for even
lower prices, and on and on and on in a virtuous cycle

• Affecting any of these factors further accelerates the

flywheel

• Implemented by Amazon in every product, service or

capability they add to their portfolio.

• Amazon continues to get bigger, stronger, faster, and

continues to create highly differentiated value.

• All of this makes it ever more difficult to compete in the

same space against Amazon

8
AMAZON’S BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY
• Red Ocean V/s Blue Ocean: Fundamental premise of the
Blue Ocean strategy is that as opposed to continuing to
compete in the red ocean, you should try to find new
space in which to sell your goods and services.

• Amazon’s Mantra: Achieving success through innovation

& making competition irrelevant

• Blue Ocean strategy must result in unique products or

assortment which a customer can not get anywhere else.
 And Blue Ocean strategy must provide unique services
and capabilities.

• Amazon continually looks to create and implement Blue

Ocean Strategies

• Kindle E-Reading solution, Drone Delivery, Cloud Based

Computing, Amazon Prime, or One Hour Delivery are
all examples of Amazon creating uncontested space (ie.
Blue Oceans)

9
Amazon’s Acquisition Strategy
• Amazon: Traditionally conservative buyer

• Started acquiring companies only after 2008

• Amazon pursue buyouts in diverse areas

• Whole Foods, a grocery chain, for $13.7

billion in 2017 is the company’s biggest
acquisition to date and points to expanding
ambition in the grocery and brick & mortar
space

• Zappos, a shoe retailer, for $1.2 billion in

2009

• Twitch, an e-sports streaming site, for $970

million in 2014

• Ring, a smart home system, for $1.8 billion

• Amazon (AMZN) had roughly $31 billion in

cash, cash equivalents, and marketable
securities on March 31,218

• Amazon’s ample cash reserves indicate that

its acquisition spree is likely to continue

10
AMAZON BUSINESS STARTEGY

11
 FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
ANNUAL REVENUE

12
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

13
AMAZON’S BUSINESS & RESEARCH
PARTNERSHIP

14
KEY LEARNINGS

15
CHALLENGES

16
 CRITICISMS & ETHICAL CONCERNS
Anti-competitive practices
• Mainly start in physical
and e-books space
• With Amazon’s unchecked
growth and power, the
fear that the company will
control the entire space is
worrisome.
• Price Control: Amazon
played hardball with
Hachette, taking down
pre-order buttons, raising
prices and increasing
shipping times.
• Removal of competitors
products: Amazon
announcement on
banning of Apple TV and
Google
Chromecast products from
sale on Amazon.com by all
merchants to prevent
"customer confusion", as
these devices do not
support Prime Video
ecosystem.
Tax Avoidance
• Tax avoidance in the US:
Amazon does not collect
sales tax from customers
in US where they don’t
have a physical presence.
• Tax avoidance in the UK:
The company generated
more than £3.3 billion of
sales in the UK but paid no
corporation tax on the
profits.
• Tax avoidance in Japan:
Amazon refused to
acknowledge the tax debt,
claiming Japan had no
jurisdiction on Amazon,
due to Amazon not having
a physical presence or
registered company in
Japan.
• Its tax affairs are also
being investigated in
China, Germany, France,
Japan and Luxembourg.
Treatment of workers
• Through undercover
reporting, Amazon’s
treatment of staff came
under the scanner.
• Opposition to trade union
• The company refuses to
allow sick leave, even if
the employee has a
legitimate doctor’s note.
• Employees are made to
work a compulsory 10½
hour overnight shift at the
end of a five-day week.
• Their labour practices
have sometimes been
compared to even
Walmart’s abysmally low
standards.
• 2018 worker strikes:
Complaints were based on
wage cuts, working
conditions, and
restrictions on time off
Other issues
• Trademark issues
• Alleged release of
personal details: Actress
Junie Hoang filed, a $1
million lawsuit against
Amazon, for allegedly
revealing her age on
internet movie database,
which amazon owns, by
using personal details
from her credit card.
• Items prohibited by UK
law
• Counterfeit products:
American copyright
lobbyists have accused
Amazon of facilitating the
sale of unlicensed CDs and
DVDs particularly in the
Chinese market.
17
OPPORTUNITIES & RECOMMENDATIONS

18
 REFERENCES
• Amazon's extraordinary 25-year evolution by Lydia DePillis and Ivory Sherman (
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2018/10/business/amazon-history-timeline/index.html)
• Amazon timeline: from internet bookshop to the world's biggest online retailer by James Quinn (
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/11801515/Amazon-timeline-from-internet-bookshop-to-the-worlds-biggest-online-retailer.html )
• Amazon History Timeline (https://www.officetimeline.com/blog/amazon-history-timeline)
• Amazon Business Strategy: Insights Of Its Operation And Investment Plan To Become A Trillion Dollar Corporation (
https://www.greyb.com/amazon-business-strategy/)
• The ethical issues with Amazon (https://ethicalunicorn.com/2019/01/12/how-ethical-is-amazon/)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon

19
20