Class Presentation

1. Amazon
Aaron Bowen, Catie Hornyak, Jacqueline James, Gabi Paradiso

2. About Amazon
● Founded by Jeff Bezos, July 5th 1994
● Revenues of $75 billion in 2013
o 65.5% electronics and general merchandise
o 29.2% media
o 5.3% other
● Main competitors: eBay, B&N, Walmart

3. How Amazon makes its money
● General merchandise sales and revenues
from vendors
● Kindle e-book, Fire phone
● Prime instant video
● Services: web services, order fulfillment,
and co-branded credit cards

4. SWOT Analysis
Strengths:
● largest online retailer
● strategic acquisitions have increased
its technical platform
● constantly extending its product line
● Kindle has a presence in eBooks
Weaknesses:
● frequent outages of cloud computing
and web hosting services
● patent infringement issues
Opportunities:
● increase in online retail sales
● growing online display advertising
business
● growing eBook and tablet sales
● growing demand for cloud computing
services
Threats:
● pressure to collect sales tax on online
sales
● competition in the e-reader market

5. Do you believe that Amazon’s decision to
branch out from its general merchandise
sales to include various web services and
order fulfillment will enable it to become
an even bigger player in the tech world, or
is the company spreading itself too thin?
Discussion Question

6. Benefits of Amazon Prime
● Free two-day shipping
● Prime Instant Video
● Prime Music
● Prime Photos
● Prime Pantry
● Kindle First

7. More Benefits of Amazon Prime
● Membership Sharing
● Students get a free 6-month trial

8. How Effective is Prime?
● Prime account holders shop twice as
much as regular customers
o Spend twice as much annually
 $1340 vs. $650
● Approx. 40 million members worldwide

9. Amazon Prime Air
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98BIu9
dpwHU

10. ● Do you think Amazon air is an applicable
method for expedited delivery?
● What are some other benefits amazon
can provide for their prime members?
Discussion Questions

11. How Amazon Uses Big Data
● What is Big Data?
o Massive sets of information that exceed the processing capability
of regular database systems
o Use analytical tools to mine data into useful material for
companies
● 152 million customer accounts
o customer recommendation system
 click-stream data
 historical purchase data
 customization
● New project regarding packaging information
o increasing advertising revenue

12. How Amazon Uses Big Data
● Customer Relationship Loyalty
o prepares customer service
representatives
o personalized service helps
retain customers
● Amazon Elastic MapReduce
o newly installed analytics
platform
o monitor, track, secure 1.5
billion items in fulfillment
stores around world
o stores and updates
product catalogue data

13. ● Trying to solve the biggest
disadvantage of e-commerce
● Patent for algorithm-based system
o ship products before order is
placed
o increase sales, reduce costs
● Using data from prior Amazon
activities
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F
kNfnjkDFxQ
Anticipatory Shipping

14. Do you support Amazon’s use of data to tailor
their services to you personally? Do you feel as if
this is an invasion of privacy and would require
your permission before Amazon could access your
information?
Discussion Question

15. ● Those invited to
become Amazon
Vine reviewers
receive free things
in exchange for
online reviews
Amazon Vine Viewer

16. ● Enables users to crowdsource human intelligence tasks
to people all around the world
Mechanical Turk

17. ● Available in select cities: NYC, Seattle, London
● Packages dropped off at secure, public, 24-hour locations such as 7-
Elevens
● Enter code received via text to access storage locker
Amazon Locker

18. ● Allows you to take pictures of products on your
smartphone and then automatically adds that product
to your Amazon shopping list
Amazon Flow

19. Managerial Implications
● Information systems are seamlessly aligned with
Amazon’s organizational structure
● Together they allow Amazon to achieve their mission:
“to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where
customers can find and discover anything they might
want to buy online.”
● Making shopping as easy and seamless and possible