Cause And Effect Of Amazon

The article, “Amazon.com Is a 21st Century Deal with the Devil” from Amy Koss, published by Los Angeles Times on June 4, 2017. The death of the American mall is avoidable. It is avoidable by promoting it on the Amazon website, or it is also avoidable by closing down the website. Even if none of this happens, there will always be people who are not lazy enough to get up and go to the mall. There are also a lot of people in the world who do not know about the website amazon.com. For those who do not, it means they go to the mall instead of shopping online.

In the article, “Amazon.com is a 21st century Deal with the Devil” the author Amy Koss makes her piece an argumentative writing. She tries to persuade the reader that the company, Amazon, is cruel and untrustworthy. The author states,”They’re offering deals and deeper discounts, closing branches, consolidating staff, trying to fend off the inevitable. According to the feds, there have been 60,000 retail jobs in just the last two months.” I disagree with the author’s statement and believe that Amazon is just doing what they have to do, so they can make money and build a stronger business. It isn’t exactly Amazon’s fault that other businesses are closing making people loses their jobs. The other businesses must have their prices very high, making

Unlike Starbucks, Macy’s is not doing very well, as evidenced by the fact they announced last month the impeding closure of 68 stores (Peterson, 2017). The company has been struggling for a few years with the growth of the internet and online businesses such as Amazon making their brick and mortar stores impractical in modern times. While the number of stores may not seem like as much of a problem as it is, as other companies have had to close down more in recent years or go out of business in general, this is a symptom of larger problems in both the company and the industry.

Amazon understood firsthand that the competitive advantage of a company originates immediately from how distinctive the organization's resources and competencies are. Amazon is able to both engage in production at a lower cost and generate a superior product at a standard cost. This is accomplished mostly via Amazon's strategy of having a wide variety of goods and competitive pricing. Customers know they can find basic products at slashed prices or high quality goods at standard prices and this is all achieved via the enormous range of products and product brands and types available on their massive marketplace. For example, the depiction displayed in the case study which shows how growth was related directly to: lower cost structure- lower prices customer experience traffic sellers -selection and convenience. While this is a grave oversimplification of the Amazon business model, it demonstrates how many aspects of the strategy reinforced one another.

Also, Amazon has emphasized on building “several distribution centers around the world to hasten deliveries”(Hof and Himelstein, 1999). Coupled with its software it provides a “laser-like focus on the buying experience”(IT Business Edge, 2012). Such a system and service is what draws customers towards Amazon and subsequently retains them.

Amazon can benefit from lower transaction costs. In the past, many firms did not want to price discriminate because it was time consuming, difficult and expensive to collect information about how each customer reacts to a change in price. However, recent advances in computer technology have pushed the transaction costs

Amazon has earned a great reputation in customer service for allowing customers to shop without face to face, avoiding talking to a customer’s service representative agent on the phone, everything it done online. Sales clerk does not exist, everything is ordered with a click of the mouse, and arrives extremenely quick in the mail (Cohen, 2009). Amazon at interval has gotten involved with the customers when they can have too. According to Green, H. (2009), “Amazon stands out most markedly from other companies, and helps explain how the company earned the No. 1 spot on Business Week’s customer service ranking this year”( para. 1).

Amazon.com has successfully managed to make its customers to feel that anything they could possibly want could be found on their website. Additionally, its products are marketed at a competitive price. Another important factor is their speedy delivery with their usage of UPS and FedEx (United States) and Royal Mail (United Kingdom). The company also caters for people that prefer online shopping with extra services such as Amazon Prime - a service with a yearly payment, customers are eligible for free next day delivery. Even though Amazon.com is known to be an online seller of most things, it still excels in its original market of book selling. Evidence of such is

Amazon’s fulfillment centers are valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and organized to captured value. Thus, they attribute to Amazon’s competitive advantage. Amazon Prime and 1-Click are also valuable to the organization. However, they can be replicated. Walmart launched a membership program to compete with Amazon’s Prime Service. With Walmart’s membership program customers receive free two-day shipping when they spend $35 or more on orders. Amazon Web Services is valuable, rare, costly to imitate and the organization has capture the value of it. Therefore, AWS has contributed to Amazon’s sustainable advantage. Amazon’s brand name and reputation have also given the company sustainable advantage. Amazon acquired enormous brand valuation in a short period of time. It is

Amazon.com is a customer centric company. They put more effort in improving their system to make the experience of customer more comfortable so that he keeps on returning to the website. Jeffery Bezos who is the founder of the Amazon.com started this company after seeing the use of internet increasing rapidly.

Amazon focuses on global reach, putting customer first,, and extensive selection of products through its vision which is “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online” (Gregory 2016).

LaVecchia, O. (2016, November 29). Report: how amazon’s tightening grip on the economy is stifling competition, eroding jobs, and threatening communities. Retrieved September 9, 2017, from https://ilsr.org/amazon-stranglehold/

The author’s argument is that amazon is not good for any kind of business, small or large. I disagree, to me, amazon would have to buy the items it displays from the companies that are stated to being brought to their knees. For small businesses, yes amazon is bad. But the retail giants should be fine, as they get more money a whole hell of a lot quicker. Besides, it lets people buy more stuff as items are almost always in stock on the web, but in normal stores you might not always find what you want or need when you want or need it. With the discounts given on amazon, people will buy more than they will from normal stores, as they bring up the prices. So, I say that amazon isn’t as bad as this

LA Times journalist Amy Koss proposed in the article “Amazon.com is a 21st century deal with the devil” that the online retailer Amazon caters to customer’s lustful desire for easy consumption as it enables the consumer’s tendencies for sloth and greed. Furthermore, throughout the article Koss implements the image of Amazon as a manifestation of the devil that tempts people to sin and as a destroyer due to its leading success in the market causing former retail giants to go out of business. Koss’s stance is evident when she brought attention to the executive director of the Southern California Independent Booksellers Assn. Andrea Vuleta’s belief that Amazon’s objective is that, “he wants our “information” to sell us everything else, and to

Amazon’s core competencies are in its ability to effectively use and develop technology to drive site traffic and enhance the customer experience. Their distinctive use of website real estate coupled with their ability to leverage their brand and effectively use that leverage to deliver low prices and high quality products, makes them a leader in online retailing. Their partner brands and their ability to adapt and recognize deficiencies enable them to effectively cut out the middle man, or at the very least, partner with them.