case study report

亞馬遜網(wǎng)上書店成立于1995年，提供大約150萬在線銷售的各種書籍。到今天，它已經(jīng)發(fā)展成為一個網(wǎng)上書店的領袖。在這個報告利用SWOT戰(zhàn)略分析模型，分析顯示亞馬遜的競爭優(yōu)勢有:

現(xiàn)在亞馬遜已經(jīng)逐漸成為一個集成的在線零售網(wǎng)站，它有多樣化的產(chǎn)品，如書籍、CD / DVD、軟件等等。特別是它提供了各種各樣的書籍，在英國這些書的價格都是不低于任何其他書店的且任何客戶都可以找到他們想買的那本書。它還提供了一個可選擇市場，賣方可以在網(wǎng)上出售二手書和買賣雙方可以相互購買。

亞馬遜一直堅持“客戶至上”的經(jīng)營理念。首先，亞馬遜擁有優(yōu)秀的網(wǎng)絡服務軟件系統(tǒng)，如為客戶提供更方便和以人為本的服務。例如，客戶可以使用搜索框找到他們感興趣的書。一旦客戶在亞馬遜購買這本書，信息系統(tǒng)會自動記錄客戶數(shù)據(jù)對買家的行為，這使它能夠告知客戶一些特定項目或類似項目，客戶通過發(fā)電子郵件之前夠買。其次，非網(wǎng)絡分銷也反映了客戶至上的理念。它不僅提供免費的送貨服務，還可以在30天內(nèi)無條件地退還書本。因為這些優(yōu)質(zhì)服務，，亞馬遜已經(jīng)吸引了成千上萬的新客戶和留住現(xiàn)有客戶。第三，用戶評論用于共享信息和提供反饋，這些信息有助于刺激銷售。

 Amazon online bookstore was founded in 1995, offering approximately 1.5 million online sales of various books. As of today, it has developed into a leader of online bookseller in the world. In this report it makes a strategy analysis of Amazon by using a SWOT model. The analysis shows the advantages of Amazon are:

Amazon has increasingly become an integrated online retail website until now. It has the diversified products such as books, CD/DVD, software and so on. In particular, it offers the variety of books, which of these are not less than any other bookstores in UK. No matter what kind of customers would find the book that they want to buy. It has also provided the option of a market place where a seller can sell the second hand books online and a buyer can buy it from that seller.

Amazon has been holding on to the business concept “customer is supreme “for a long time. First of all, Amazon has excellent web service software systems, such as to provide the customers with more convenient and people-oriented service. For example, customer can use the search bar to find the book they are interested in. Once customer purchases the book on Amazon, the information system will automatically record customer data on buyer behaviour, which enables it to inform the customer to some specific items or similar items that customer bought before by email. Secondly, offline distribution also reflects the idea of the customer first. It not only provides the free delivery service but also is allowed to return the book unconditionally within 30 days. Because of these good services, Amazon has been attracting thousands of new clients and existing customers. Thirdly, User Reviews are used to share information and provide feedback which of these information helps in stimulating sales.

As Amazon is an online bookstore, it saves the cost compared with the traditional bookstore. For instance, Amazon can reduce the cost on its financial management as well as the number of staff or unnecessary expenditures. In addition, it utilizes advanced convenient order processing system to decrease the error rate. Because of good cost control and efficient working rate, Amazon can guarantee a lowest cost to pay more attention on how to improve its sales. The promotion is a useful method for sales, Amazon always provides a reasonable price on its books and the prices always below market value, sometimes the maximum discount for some books up to 40%.If you open a Web page of Amazon, you will easily see a great number of books on a big discount, which is enough to encourage customer to buy what they want. Online shoppers worry about is that the cost of expensive delivery lead to the benefits of the discount decreased. Amazon free delivery service completely dispels customer’s concern, which becomes a major advantage of attracting customers.

競爭劣勢—Weakness

Although Amazon has more than 20 million customers, a large number of which are women, older and from lower socio-demographic groups, which means they have not enough buying power. [3] Amazon has to rely on a large number of orders from such kind of customers to increase the profit.

Generally customers can not preview the books they are interested in on Amazon because you may just get some basic information from the website. Sometimes you have to go to the local bookstore to confirm whether it meets your requirements. Amazon also can not hold a signing event for the new book. Actually it is a big chance to attract customer to buy the new book and any other books they want on the bookstore.

As a worldwide online bookseller, Amazon needs to provide its customers the online service that the brand is anticipated. Due to this reason every year the company need to spend a huge sum of money on technology support and the system maintenance. Furthermore as the number of consumers raise up, the money spent on this aspect will also going up under this situation the company will be in a dilemma zone.

Another problem that Amazon faced is their delivery service. Because the company does not have its own delivery department, so most of the delivery services are provided by the external companies, as a result the level of this service is not steady in different country and area. It is no good for Amazon to keep their reputation and custom loyalty.

There are still some potential negative effects to Amazon when the direct trade taken place between the private seller and the buyers, because these kinds of products and services are not provided by Amazon itself, so like the third party delivery service the quality cannot be guaranteed. Sometimes this will cause the misleading to the consumers that the services and products’ quality cannot reach to their expectation, it is no good to the company’s brand image.

機遇—Opportunities

Due to its leading position in the online book selling industry with the good reputation, Amazon can easily build up some unique relationships among the famous publishers, which can give Amazon the right to provide some exclusive products to its consumer. That will make Amazon have much more competitive strength than other competitors.

As a listed company that gives Amazon variety channels to get the investment. As a result Amazon will have sufficient financial support to upgrade its service and expand its power to earn more market share.

Amazon has also produced a wireless device “Amazon kindle” which is a software and hardware platform developed for rendering and displaying e-books and other media via wireless connectivity. [4] It is a great chance for Amazon to develop its e-books market share because users can only buy e-books for this device from Amazonkindle.com. As a wireless device, it is also convenient to directly download the required e-books from Amazon and some other kindle content providers.

By using the advantage of economic of scope, Amazon can make its products more diversified, not only the books but also some derivatives of the multimedia to get more turnover in the future. And Amazon do realize this aspect the company have controlled the LoveFilm.com by earning its share, that give Amazon an opportunity to enter into a new market. [5] 

To build up a sophisticated membership management and service system, this can provide the customers better experience when they are shopping with Amazon. This will help Amazon to consolidate its reputation and increase the loyalty among its consumers.

The financial crises give many traditional physical booksellers a heavy strike, many of which are facing the bankrupt, so it is a good chance for Amazon to take over these companies to enter into the new market to increase its own market share. For example in recent days the famous bookstore Borders has been under administration, its worth for Amazon to consider how to occupy the market share left by Borders.

As we can see the above table, the market share for internet bookselling is lower than ordinary bookstores, which is only 8%. Even if there is 8% market share, more and more competitors such as Waterstone’s, Tesco, and Play.com try to hold it. [6] So Amazon faces a fierce competition on the online bookselling.

So far the fuel price becomes higher and higher, correspondingly the delivery costs for Amazon will also increase. Therefore Amazon has to pay the additional fares to the transportation company, which will directly impact on the customers because Amazon perhaps cancels the free delivery policy under the high pressure of cost or transfer the extra fees to customers.

There is prospect of a very profitable market for Amazon under a good economy environment. It may offer a lot of discounts to its customer from its high profit, and customer also has the sufficient buying power to carry the offers. However, financial crisis has broken out all over the world in the past two years. Customer may consider more carefully when buying than usual and focus more on promotional books. It is a chance for Amazon to create more positive promotion methods to attract such kind of customer.

總結(jié)和建議—Conclusion and Recommendation

In the past year 2008 the financial crisis can be seen as a difficulty to all kinds of industry. In such an embarrassment economy state, Amazon as the leading online bookseller also has been affected on its own business. [7] It is not only a challenge but also an opportunity for Amazon during the recession period. Combined with its internal and external condition, the recommendations for Amazon are following:

Amazon should keep up with the rapid development of new technologies in order to enhance the leading position in internet bookselling in the recent years. Under the financial crisis, customer prefers to buy the cheapest book when there are a lot of choices. So it is important for Amazon to consider this situation, it should provide multiple promotion methods and continue to reduce costs in any departments as possible as it could. It can also use digital technology to make promotion more flexible and build its own transportation department that is independent of the third party.

For the private trade, Amazon should take action to coordinate between seller and buyer when there is a conflict occurred.

In the future online bookselling will continue to be the mainstream for book sales. Amazon should keep on maintaining its own business, as well as open new sales streams to enhance the profit.