亚马逊网上书店案例分析报告 case study report

case study report

亚马逊网上书店成立于1995年，提供大约150万在线销售的各种书籍。到今天，它已经发展成为一个网上书店的领袖。在这个报告利用SWOT战略分析模型，分析显示亚马逊的竞争优势有:

现在亚马逊已经逐渐成为一个集成的在线零售网站，它有多样化的产品，如书籍、CD / DVD、软件等等。特别是它提供了各种各样的书籍，在英国这些书的价格都是不低于任何其他书店的且任何客户都可以找到他们想买的那本书。它还提供了一个可选择市场，卖方可以在网上出售二手书和买卖双方可以相互购买。

亚马逊一直坚持“客户至上”的经营理念。首先，亚马逊拥有优秀的网络服务软件系统，如为客户提供更方便和以人为本的服务。例如，客户可以使用搜索框找到他们感兴趣的书。一旦客户在亚马逊购买这本书，信息系统会自动记录客户数据对买家的行为，这使它能够告知客户一些特定项目或类似项目，客户通过发电子邮件之前够买。其次，非网络分销也反映了客户至上的理念。它不仅提供免费的送货服务，还可以在30天内无条件地退还书本。因为这些优质服务，，亚马逊已经吸引了成千上万的新客户和留住现有客户。第三，用户评论用于共享信息和提供反馈，这些信息有助于刺激销售。

 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.

竞争劣势—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.

机遇—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.

总结和建议—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.