AMAZON

Kalum Sharon B02/1058/2019

Joseph Kamau Gatenjwa B02/138206/2019
Joshua Sila Kimuyu B02/137417/2019
Birech Elsie Chepchirchir B02/137482/2019
Kakai Franklin Wafula B02/1062/2019
Contents
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................... 4
1984.................................................................................................................................................... 4
1994.................................................................................................................................................... 4
1997.................................................................................................................................................... 4
1999.................................................................................................................................................... 5
2005.................................................................................................................................................... 5
2015.................................................................................................................................................... 5
2020.................................................................................................................................................... 5
PLANNING ............................................................................................................................................ 6
Mission; .............................................................................................................................................. 6
Strategic Plan;................................................................................................................................. 6
Type of Strategy Employed;........................................................................................................ 7
Target Market of The Organization; .......................................................................................... 8
Rivalries with Competitors; .......................................................................................................... 9
ORGANIZING ..................................................................................................................................... 10
LEADING ............................................................................................................................................. 14
Jeff Bezos .......................................................................................................................................... 14
Brief Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 15
Early Life .......................................................................................................................................... 16
Education .......................................................................................................................................... 16
Business Career ................................................................................................................................ 17
Amazon’s Birth.................................................................................................................................. 17
Bezos Expeditions ............................................................................................................................. 18
Public Image ..................................................................................................................................... 18
Leadership Style ................................................................................................................................ 19
Principles .......................................................................................................................................... 19
Cons .................................................................................................................................................. 20
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 20
Andy Jassy......................................................................................................................................... 20
Brief Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 21
Early Life .......................................................................................................................................... 21
Leadership ........................................................................................................................................ 22
CONTROLLING .................................................................................................................................. 23
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................... 25
 INTRODUCTION
Amazon started in its founder, Jeff Bezos, garage. It was first developed as an online
bookstore, eventually becoming the world's leading eCommerce marketplace. Bezos and his
employees used to pack books and bring them to the warehouses themselves. The Company
gradually started to acquire assets and even build warehouses, but many investors still viewed
it as an unattainable dream.

1984
Bezos was a Princeton student and planned to pursue a career in Physics and Mathematics.
However, his Eureka moment happened when he came across a partial differential equation
he could not solve. He spent three hours trying to solve it with his roommate until he opted to
ask for help from his classmate, Yasantha, who was able to solve it effortlessly. He then
shifted careers to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

1994
Bezos strategically selected Seattle, Washington, as the base location for Amazon due to its
lack of lacked sales tax. He financed Amazon with $10 000 of his own money. Then,
together with the help of his wife, MacKenzie, and some small staff, he operated Amazon at
its early stages from that garage in his rented home in Bellevue, Washington.

Jeff Bezos had initially thought of naming the Company Cadabra. However, after seeking
counsel on the matter, they concluded that it could be misunderstood as a cadaver. Another
severe option in the early days was the name Relentless. Even today, you can visit
http://relentless.com/, and it will redirect you to Amazon.

He eventually decided to go with Amazon, named after the largest river in the world to
symbolize that his Company would be the largest online bookstore in the world.

He thought of the idea while looking through the dictionary, specifically targeting names that
began with A, as he believed it would give the Company the advantage of being listed higher
in alphabetized lists.

1997
Amazon went public with a $300 Million valuation at $1.96 per share, so that means that if
you were to have invested $1 000 into Amazon shares in 1997, those shares would have been
worth over $1 137 000 by the end of 2019.
The Company gained traction, making it a target of some of its larger contenders, drawing
lawsuits from both Barnes & Noble and Walmart shortly after going public.

1999
Amazon shifted into a new realm of business as it started to allow third-party sellers to move
merchandise through the site. This was initially pitched as an idea to help consumers in
finding rare and unusual products and specialty items. Within the first four months of this
business move, over 250 000 customers had bought something through a third party on
Amazon.

2005
Jeff Bezos introduced a customer loyalty program, Amazon Prime, that offered free two-day
shipping on any order, along with other perks and benefits for only $79 per year. This led to
a massive rise in customer appreciation and loyalty toward the Company. Even from the
infant stages of Amazon, Bezos’ goal was ultimate customer satisfaction. Inarguably, the
convenience and accessibility to goods that Prime offers, not to mention other benefits,
including T.V. and music, enables Amazon to easily achieve ultimate customer satisfaction.
In 2019, the average Amazon Prime member in the U.S. spent $1 400 on Amazon.

2015
The Company had been creating the Echo, and Alexa capabilities, since 2011 and finally
began selling the devices in June 2015. The notion of an in-home virtual assistant was fresh
and exciting, but only a few realized its potential.

The most popularly bought Alexa-equipped device is the Echo Dot, but recently Amazon has
been linking Alexa with numerous smart home devices and updating Alexa’s functions daily.
Amazon has now sold over 100 million Alexa-equipped devices, and the sales are expected to
continue to grow rapidly.

2020
No organization was exempted from the worldwide impact of the Coronavirus pandemic, but
few have been such prominent players as Amazon. Bezos stepped back into the day-to-day
running of the Company during the pandemic but then stepped down in 2021, leaving the
reigns to Andrew R. Jassy.
 PLANNING
Mission;
The Amazon Company has four major principles that determine the mission of its operations.

Based on their official website, these are;

➢ Customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention,

➢ Commitment to operational excellence and long-term thinking,
➢ Amazon strives to be Earth's most customer-centric Company, and
➢ Earth's best employer and Earth's safest place to work
From these principles, their mission statement is;

We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and
the utmost convenience.

This mission ensures that the services provided by Amazon go beyond meeting the
customers' needs to offering the best shopping factors, including pricing variety and personal
satisfaction.

The mission is accompanied by the slogan work hard, have fun which ties down the
organization, its workers, and its customers.

Strategic Plan;
Amazon’s mission raised a need for a strategic approach to tackle its needed objectives as it
claimed to become the best customer-oriented corporation in the globe. This enabled it to
provide and deliver to its consumers anything they wished to purchase digitally. The main
aspects to allow this was driven into their strategic plan with the following features;

➢ Global Target
➢ Customer-oriented strategy
➢ The broadest choice of goods and commodities
During the pandemic, the strategy was broken down and revisited, enabling faster supply
chain distribution. The revision of this strategy allowed Amazon to stay afloat amidst the
pandemic, increasing its stock market value by almost 220% and giving it a current market
cap of $1.22 trillion.
 Type of Strategy Employed;
Amazon has played a crucial role in dealing with the pandemic situation as a globe as it has
been able to provide products and services for everyday consumption by concentrating on
proposals as other corporations to form an appropriate online market structure and cope with
high demands.

This is met by employing a high-performance structure with a significant focus on the

customers’ data and outcomes supported by a unique annual planning process called Adaptive
Planning. The Amazon Planning Process is divided into a bi-annual process; O.P. 1 and O.P.
2, Operation Plan 1 & 2.

O.P. 1 happens around June, and a mandatory document is created by every Project Manager
on each team addressing the following;

➢ Last year’s achievements compared to the plans set in place for the achievements.
➢ Prospected achievements if the level of investment remained constant for the period
➢ Resources required to increase business growth by ten times
The feedback provided by the organization would then determine whether the team would
receive a total investment or would be disbanded based on their report. Considering it’s a
global company spearheading several fronts, a lack of a viable business plan and path that
would lead to market dominance is seen as the team’s acceptance of defeat in the market.

After a month of gradual but detailed preparation and communication between the different
teams, their plans are submitted. The ideas are then passed on to every organizational layer
until the C.E.O. sits and reviews the complete company goals summarized into six pages. His
feedback on the concept is crucial, and the results tickle down the hierarchy for fruition.

The O.P. 2 takes place in December and is also another 6-page document from each team
inquiring on what was accomplished since O.P. 1.

In summary, OP1 is about how to increase your business ten times, while O.P. 2 is about
closing the year with realistic and well-managed expectations and reflecting on the
Company’s most active period considering Black Friday is held in November.

O.P. 2 asks;

➢ What did you accomplish since O.P. 1 compared to what you planned?
➢ Reasonably, how will you finish out this year and the first quarter of next year?
If O.P. 1, with its questions about how to multiply your business by ten times, is about blue-
sky thinking, O.P. 2 is about closing the year realistically and managing expectations. O.P. 2
also reflects what’s already happened during the team’s most active period, Black Friday and
holiday shopping.

Target Market of The Organization;

Based on the Amazon Website, their market success and company development are attained
by focusing their efforts on customer reviews, 1-click shopping, personalized
recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, A.W.S., Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle,
Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire T.V., Amazon Echo, Alexa, Walk Out technology, Amazon
Studios, and The Climate Pledge which are among things pioneered by Amazon.

From these products provided, its more accessible to break down Amazon’s target market via
various categories based off;

i. Demographic
Its age demographics include adults aged 18 to 60, with 45% in the 35-49-year-old age
group. Amazon Prime customers continue to grow, mainly in the U.S., where it offers the
most benefits.

ii. Geographic location

Amazon’s a global company operating in over 100 countries. However, more than 60% of its
website traffic comes from the U.S., followed far behind by Germany, The U.K., and Japan.

iii. Behavioral habits

This is easily analyzed due to the implementation of Amazon Prime, which tends to reward
customers for consecutive purchases and loyalty over time. Prime members receive
discounts, and concurrent purchases are legible to coupons and deals, ensuring customer
affiliation and traffic flow in terms of assets with a need to satisfy the demand-supply of the
customer’s appetite.

iv. Customer Psychology

Its global nature ensures that Amazon has users from almost all walks of life; a need for
accessibility, convenience, and competitive pricing ensures engagement with the brand based
on personality types defined as Resigned, Struggler, Aspirer, Succeeded, and Reformer.
Amazon’s target audience is made of an average age of 37 years. Thanks to the customer
segregation principle, their customers are easily split equally, male and female, and their
segmentation can be found in rural and urban areas.

Amazon Primes Club is used to propagate loyalty and repetitive purchase by customers
obtaining 200 million members worldwide, each spending an average of $1 400 a year.

Rivalries with Competitors;

i. Amazon faces stiff competition from other retailers such as eBay, Walmart, Ali
Express, Wish, BestBuy, and Target. However, they can remain relevant in the
market by offering services beyond online shopping, venturing into venues of
technological development with Alexa AI and Amazon Fire Streaming Services
such as Prime Video.
ii. In addition to this, their utilization of social media platforms, through the constant
engagement of their C.E.O.s with the public through domains such as Twitter and
Instagram, ensures the Company remains relevant despite the change in
generational times.
iii. Another driving factor is constant engagement through advertisements. Their
advertisements are propagated on all media platforms with an emphasis on
smartphone-accessible programs and software that use Ad revenue to generate
income. These websites, such as YouTube, mobile games and applications, social
media pages, and Ad presented premiums on other products, ensure that the
Company remains relevant in the current market's communication.
On the other hand, Amazon, the brand, though big enough to produce large event Ads such as
the Superbowl ad spots featuring world-famous celebrities, has a marketing strategy that is
much more than that. A significant reason for Amazon's huge success is its customer
experience, from competitive pricing to the fast and free shipping that the Company is
famous for.
 ORGANIZING

https://fourweekmba.com/amazon-organizational-structure/

A more detailed show of the structure is shown below;

Amazon has only two geographic divisions; North American and International.

The Company utilizes groups according to a physical location, and related business goals,
e.g., https://www.amazon.com/ Inc is the e-commerce arm of the Company. The Company
uses teams to manage e-commerce operations according to geographical regions and their
associated regulatory frameworks and logistical challenges. Ultimately and consequently, this
allows amazon to address country or region-specific issues proactively and efficiently.

Amazon is a centralized organization with global, function-based groups and geographic

divisions. This gives the Company extensive top-down control over global operations,
allowing it to increase market share and maintain market leadership status.

At the top is a senior management team that answers directly to the C.E.O., Andy Jassy.

The team dubbed the S team has senior executives in charge of several function-based
groups, including;

➢ Finance
 ➢ Human resources
➢ Corporate affairs
➢ Worldwide consumers
➢ Amazon web services
➢ Amazon devices and digital management
➢ Worldwide operations, and
➢ Legal and secretariat.
While the Company started as a flat organization in its early years, it transitioned to
hierarchical, with its jobs and functions clearly defined as it scaled.

Many would assume that a large centralized organization would be rigid and resistant to
change.

However, the Company is a flexible and adaptive market leader in e-commerce, achieved
through small product teams having autonomous access to company resources and stable,
experienced leadership.

Stability is also a notable feature in the organization, especially in senior management.

Amazon has a diversified business model.

In 2021, Amazon posted over $469 billion in revenues and over $33 billion in net profits.
Online stores contributed to over 47% of amazon revenues, Third-party seller services
Amazon A.W.S., subscription services, advertising revenues, and physical stores.
 https://fourweekmba.com/amazon-organizational-structure/

One disadvantage of its organizational structure is that it has limited flexibility and
responsiveness. The dominance of the global function-based groups and global hierarchy can
limit the Company's capacity to rapidly respond to new or emerging issues and problems,
such as security risks in the online data processing.

LEADING
Jeff Bezos
 Brief Introduction

Born on January 12, 1964, Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American businessman, media mogul,
investor, computer engineer, and commercial astronaut. He was the Company's founder,
executive chairman, and previous president and C.E.O. According to Bloomberg's Billionaire
index and Forbes, his net worth is over $139 billion as of October 2022, and he was the
richest person in the world from 2017 to 2021.

Since starting as an online bookstore, the business has grown to offer a wide range of other e-
commerce goods and services, including streaming audio and video, cloud computing, and
artificial intelligence. Through its branch, it is currently the leading provider of virtual
assistants and cloud infrastructure services as well as the largest online sales firm, internet
company by revenue, and internet company overall.

Blue Origin, a provider of suborbital spaceflight services and an aerospace manufacturer,

was established by Bezos in 2000. In addition, he paid $250 million for Washington, a
significant American daily, and he oversees a variety of other assets through his venture
capital firm, Bezos Expeditions. Bezos co-founded the biotechnology business Altos Labs in
September 2021 with Yuri Milner, a Russian entrepreneur, co-founder, and former
chairperson of Mail.Ru Group.

Early Life
Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jackie and Theodore Jorgensen, who were
then 17 and 19, are his parents. The father of Bezos was a Danish American who was raised
in a Baptist family in Chicago. Despite a number of difficult circumstances, Bezos finished
high school after his parent's divorce. His mother, Jackie, wed Michael Bezos, a Cuban
immigrant who left his country as a teenager. He then adopted Jeff soon after the marriage,
changing his name from Jorgensen to Bezos.

They relocated to Houston, Texas, where Mike began working as an engineer for Exxon, one
of the biggest names in the oil and gas industry, after receiving his degree from the
University of New Mexico. Bezos enrolled in elementary school and spent his summer
vacations with his grandfather, Lawrence Preston Gise, an Albuquerque-based Regional
Director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (A.E.C.). Later, he would buy this ranch and
increase its size from 25 000 acres to 300 000 acres. In order to keep his younger siblings out
of his room, Jeff once modified an electric alarm, demonstrating scientific curiosity and
technological prowess.

He attended Miami Palmetto High School after his family relocated to Florida. Bezos took up
a part-time position as a short-order line cook at McDonald's during the breakfast shift. When
Bezos was a student at the University of Florida's Student Science training program, he
graduated as the class valedictorian in 1982 and indicated in his graduation address that he
had a dream of a time when mankind would colonize space.

Education
When Jeffrey Bezos was two years, he attended a Montessori school in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. After their move to Mexico, Bezos joined fourth grade in River Oaks Elementary
School till sixth grade. In 1986, he graduated with the highest distinction from Princeton
University with a 4.2 GPA and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Degree in Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science. From 1986 to the beginning of 1994, he worked on Wall
Street in a range of related disciplines. Amazon was started by Bezos in late 1994 while he
was traveling from New York City. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Quadrangle
Club while at Princeton, one of its 11 eating clubs. In addition, he was elected to Tau Beta Pi
and was The President of The Princeton Chapter of The Students for The Exploration and
Development of Space.

Business Career
Following his graduation from college in 1986, Bezos received employment offers from
companies including Intel, Bell Labs, and Andersen Consulting. His first position was as a
Network Builder for an international trade organization at Fitel, a fintech telecoms startup. He
then received promotions to Director of Customer Service and Head of Development. From
1988 until 1990, he worked as a Product Manager at Bankers Trust, making the switch to the
banking sector. In 1990, he then started working for D. E. Shaw & Co., a newly established
hedge fund with a focus on Mathematical Modeling. He remained there until 1994. At age 30,
Bezos was appointed the Fourth Senior Vice President of D. E. Shaw.

Amazon’s Birth
Bezos made the decision to launch an online bookshop after learning that the Internet was
expanding at a rate of 2300% per year in late 1993. On July 5, 1994, he and his then-wife,
Mackenzie, quit their positions at D. E. Shaw and started Amazon in a rented garage in
Bellevue, Washington. They wrote the Company's business plan while driving from New York
City to Seattle. The groundwork was created for this garage-run business to expand
dramatically. Bezos looked about establishing his Company at an Indian reservation close to
San Francisco before deciding on Seattle to avoid paying taxes. Bezos gave his new business
the name Cadabra at first but then changed it to Amazon in honor of the Amazon River in
South America. Part of the reason for this name change is that Amazon starts with the letter
A, which is at the start of the alphabet. At that time, website listings were alphabetized, so
when users performed internet searches, names beginning with "A" would show up more
quickly. He also thought the name Amazon, which is also the name of the world's largest
river, was appropriate for what he believed would be the biggest online bookshop. He took
his parents' $300 000 investment and put it into Amazon.com. Many of the Company's early
investors were forewarned by him that there was a 70% possibility that Amazon would fail or
go bankrupt. Despite the fact that Amazon began as an online book retailer, Bezos had
always intended to expand to other products.

In 1998, the Company was diversified into the sales of music and video and, by the end of the
year, expanded to other consumer goods. He launched Amazon Kindle in 2007 after facing
financial ups and downs in the Company, and by 2013 had secured a $600 million contract
with the C.I.A. In October of that year, Amazon was recognized as the world’s largest online
shopping retailer.

He founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup as well, wanting to preserve the Earth
from overuse from resource depletion.

Bezos Expeditions
Bezos was one of the first to own shares in Google, where he put in $250 000, resulting in
$3.3 million shares of its stock. He invested in Unity Biotechnology, a firm researching how
to slow or stop the process of aging, and others like GRAIL (focuses on early detection of
cancer), Juno Therapeutics (targets cell surface antigens expressed on cancer cells), and
Zocdoc (allows online finding and booking of medical appointments). Bezos used Bezos
Expeditions to fund several philanthropic projects, including an Innovation Center at The
Seattle Museum of History and Industry and the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics
at Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

Public Image
The public demeanor and personality of Bezos have been characterized by The New York
Times journalist Nellie Bowles as that of a bright but elusive and coldblooded corporate
giant. Bezos had a reputation for doggedly advancing Amazon during the 1990s, frequently at
the price of social welfare and public charity. Tim O'Reilly, a technologist, agreed with
journalist Mark O'Connell, who attacked Bezos' unwavering consumer emphasis as having a
very modest impact on mankind as a whole. With his own riches and that of Amazon, his
business practices gave the impression to the public that he was prudent and frugal.
Multibillionaire Jeff Bezos drove a 1996 Honda Accord. He was considered nerdy or geeky in
the early 2000s.

Some others thought Bezos was overly analytical and data-driven. Alan Deutschman
elaborated on this impression when he said that he talks in lists and tallies the factors, in
order of priority, for every decision he has taken. His persona has been the subject of some
controversies and media attention. Notably, author Brad Stone claimed in a book that Bezos
was a demanding and fiercely competitive employer and that he may have bet the biggest on
the Internet than anybody else. Bezos is known for being a highly opportunistic C.E.O. who
acts without any regard for challenges and externalities.

Early in 2010, Bezos had a reputation for using aggressive commercial tactics, and his public
image started to change. Bezos began to dress in tailored attire, work out and follow a strict
diet, and spend his money freely. His physical metamorphosis has been compared to
Amazon's makeover; the firm frequently refers to him as its metonym. His physical attributes
contributed to the public's image of him as a symbolically prominent figure in commerce and
popular culture, where he was ridiculed as a cunning supervillain. Since 2017, Kyle Mooney
and Steve Carell have played him on Saturday Night Live, typically as a dominant character
who undercuts others. The International Trade Union Confederation designated Jeff Bezos as
the World's Worst Boss in May 2014, with general secretary Sharan Burrow stating; Jeff
Bezos embodies the inhumanity of employers who are promoting the North American
corporate model. Harvard Business Review ranked Bezos as the best-performing C.E.O. for
four consecutive years since 2014. Bezos overcame his image of being averse to spending
money on non-business-related costs in the late 2010s. Since 2016, the public's reaction to his
relative lack of generosity in comparison to other billionaires has been unfavorable. Bezos
has a history of openly disputing assertions made in negative publications.

Leadership Style
Bezos is known to use the Regret Minimization Framework in his leadership years. He has
been characterized by many as trying to quantify his employers. He would list them down on
a spreadsheet and base executive decisions on data. He built amazon using a GET BIG FAST
mantra where the Company needed to scale up its operations fast in order to dominate the
market. He also preferred to divert the companies’ profits back into the Company instead of
sharing amongst its shareholders.

He also tends to believe that having balance means that you can have either one item or the
other, while harmony enables the ability to have both in a peaceful sort of manner. Hence his
faith was in work-life harmony instead of work-life balance.

During interviews with candidates, he worked with three principles;

i) His ability to admire the person

ii) Whether the individual could raise the existing state of affairs of the Company
and,
iii) What circumstances could make the person exemplary?

He would meet with investors for a total of six hours a year, and instead of using
presentations, he expected presentations in the form of six-page narratives.

Principles
a) Focusing on the customers instead of the investors
b) Take risks for market leadership
c) Facilitation of staff drive
d) Building company culture
e) The empowerment of people

Cons
Bezos has been reported to create an antagonistic environment in the workplace, making
insulting and verbally abusing his employees. He is also reported to have declined to give
his employees bus passes to encourage them to stay in the office.

Conclusion
Throughout his life, Bezos is seen to have clear, focused goals despite his ups and downs,
which have led to numerous achievements and accolades from all over the world. It is
through his leadership principles and drives to create a better version of the existing one
that he has been able to emerge successful.

Andy Jassy
 Brief Introduction
Andrew R. Jassy, born on January 13, 1968, is an American Business Executive who is
currently the president and C.E.O. of Amazon since 2021, when Bezos stepped down. Mr.
Jassy grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., and went on to earn his bachelor’s degree and M.B.A. from
Harvard. His first job out of undergraduate was at M.B.I. Inc. as a maker of jewelry and
coins. He was previously Senior Vice President and C.E.O. of Amazon Web Services from
2003 to 2021. He has a wife, Elana Caplan, a fashion designer for Eddie Bauer, and has two
kids.

He resides with his family in Capitol Hill, Seattle.

Early Life
Jassy is the son of Scarsdale, New York, residents Margery and Everett L. Jassy. His father,
who was Jewish with Hungarian ancestry, was a senior partner and chairman of the
Management Committee of The Corporate Law Firm Dewey Ballantine in New York City.
Jassy was raised in Scarsdale and went to Scarsdale High School, where he participated in
varsity tennis and soccer.

Prior to receiving an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, Jassy graduated with Honors in
Government from Harvard College, where he also served as The Harvard Crimson's
Advertising Manager. He argued in The Crimson in 1989 that despite an ongoing labor
dispute at Eastern Air Lines, the journal ought to carry its advertisements.

After graduating, Jassy worked as a project manager for M.B.I., a firm that deals in
collectibles, for five years before beginning his M.B.A. program. He subsequently launched a
company with an M.B.I. coworker and shut it down.

As a marketing manager for Amazon, Jassy joined the Company in 1997 alongside a few
other Harvard M.B.A. classmates. He and Jeff Bezos had the concept to build the Amazon
Web Services cloud computing platform in 2003, and it became live in 2006. Its 57-person
staff was led by Jassy, who was 2016 named Person of the Year by the Financial Times and a
month later promoted from Senior Vice President to C.E.O. of the web services. In 2021 he
was officially appointed as Bezos's successor as C.E.O. of Amazon.

Leadership
Andrew Jassy discusses how his life experiences, such as his competitive tennis career and
lessons from his father, helped him become the person he is today. He was able to develop
the work ethic and responsibility he now utilizes to lead the $1 trillion firm today.

He practiced diligence and picked up proper behavior from his father. He emphasizes the
value of acting quickly, coming to decisions quickly, completing tasks quickly, and making
sure consumers are satisfied, principles that are almost identical to Bezos'. In that, there is no
favoritism or politics involved, but rather based on one's production at work. He offers tennis
as an illustration of what occurs when you work hard for something and when you don't.
Known as Mr. Jassy.
 CONTROLLING
We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and
the utmost convenience.

Amazon Mission Statement

Amazon has invested in and maintained certain hardware product lines for the consumer
market, which are strongly tied to its main business venture of online retail. These can
therefore be argued to be control devices within their business model.

With the emergence of smartphones and widespread adoption of the Internet in the mid to
late 2000s, Amazon developed and launched the Kindle series of e-readers. This is a personal
tablet device for reading digital books. While it works with most standard media files, the
devices are tied to the amazon store, ensuring the Company has control over the available
sources that the end user gets to choose from. Further, they can also monitor both delivery
and customer feedback directly by this method, without any third party in between.

Further continuing this idea of making most operations in-house, the Company has invested
heavily in its own delivery and logistics systems, such as warehouses and vehicles. This is
especially true in North America. Having these systems in place ensures almost unmatched
efficiency can be achieved, and to the customer, having the convenience of having your order
delivered right to your doorstep. It is also notable that Amazon Inc., albeit having very well-
established and efficient logistics systems, is always an advocate for the latest advancements
in technology with regard to logistics, making them always at the forefront of innovation. For
instance, they are experimenting with drones and electric vehicles. Wherever there is an
aspect that can be brought in-house, they do so, and wherever there is space for improving the
efficiency of their operations, they do not hesitate.

The Company is currently a big advocate for Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), robotics, and
automation within their operations. This has been in a bid to maximize efficiency and reduce
error. For instance, their most advanced warehouses, known as Amazon Fulfilment Centers,
use automated systems and robots for sorting millions of deliveries with minimal supervision
by human input, and maximum elimination of the possibility of error that would happen if
people were exclusively doing the work. This also combines with their presence in many
personal devices, such as using the artificial intelligence assistant Amazon Alexa, to collect
as much information as possible from the end users and use A.I. for predictive suggestions to
the potential customer.
Being at the forefront of technology and having seen great financial success, Amazon Inc. has
broadened its online presence not just to retail but to entertainment services as well.
Examples of these include Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, and the twitch Streaming
platform. The strategy here seems to be to use the Company's financial might to diversify into
any currently trending space, with the above mentioned being answers to Netflix, Apple
Music, and YouTube Gaming respectively. However, Amazons offerings have some caveats;

i. the user will have to use an Amazon account, and

ii. the platforms, while significantly cheaper than the competition, usually have
advertisements for other Amazon products or to their main e-commerce store.
Here we see control coming from the data that can be gathered from millions of users,
allowing the company indirect customer feedback. It also allows them to direct the users to
Amazon products they might not even have required.

Amazon as an e-commerce platform is held in very high regard when it comes to customer
satisfaction and loyalty. Studies, especially in countries with delivery to a physical address,
show a customer satisfaction rate above 75%, and a brand loyalty or tendency to shop with
Amazon again of above 90%. It can therefore be argued that the data collection, use of
efficient systems, and going above and beyond to push for further innovation, and using these
control systems for a customer centric business model is very successful.
 CONCLUSION
Turn around Strategies for Amazon
Having an extensive list of goods for the customer’s consumption
Since Amazon already has a trend of reinvesting its revenue back into the company, the
revenue collected can be used to increase the diversify the entire Amazon universe. Venturing
into the movie making industry for example then provides an even wider market for the
consumers who prefer movie watching and through that it can end up advertising more of
their goods throughout the movie duration. Customers’ tendency to try and mimic celebrities
can henceforth be manipulated through this.

Adaptability

Those who survive are not the strongest or the most intelligent, but the most adaptable to
change

Charles Darwin

Sequoia Capital managed to survive the Great Economic Recession by investing in

disciplined domestic companies at the moment and after warning the companies of the
oncoming Economic Recession. They even advised the companies to preserve enough capital
so as to remain afloat. Sequoia Capital then ended up working with companies like Airbnb
and Dropbox and ended up boosting their valuation even higher. It also began investing in the
Chinese market to curb the downfall of the company in case of any Economic Recession in
the future.

Cash Flow Strategy

After the dot com bust Amazon lost almost 90% of its stock value in the late 90s and the
early 2000s. But its cash flow strategy helped to keep it afloat during such times. Then it had
raised enough money and its system of reinvesting back into the company ensured that there
was enough capital to help keep it afloat. After the pandemic in 2020, Amazon would have
also gone bankrupt had it not been for the sale of the convertible bonds to European investors
amassing to a whooping $700 million. In the early 2000s amazon was able to survive through
a negative cash conversion cycle and due to the customers’ loyalty to the company, they paid
before amazon had acquired products from their suppliers. This helped in gaining more
shares in the market even with a negative profit. Later on, amazon ended up creating what is
currently known as Amazon Web Services, to enable other developers to rent servers from
the Amazon data centers. At the end of the dot com bust Amazon had outlasted their
competitors ending up as one of the greatest e-commerce giants.

How The Principles Learnt Can Be Applied to Set Up a Company

➢ Focusing on the customers instead of the investors

➢ Take risks for market leadership
➢ Facilitation of staff drive
➢ Building company culture
➢ The empowerment of people

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