Amazon Case Study

1. What is Amazon’s business?

a. Offering a wide variety of products, beginning with books and eventually all kinds of products like DVDs, CDs, apparels, electronics, software, health and personal care items, etc.

b. Offering an online marketplace where users are able to use its site to sell and buy products.

c. Amazon has its own online music store, Amazon MP3, where it sells music exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management.

d. Through its own warehouse, Amazon is able to keep inventory at low costs and offers products at relatively competitive pricing.

e. Amazon's Subscribe & Save program offers a discounted price on an item (usually sold in bulk quantities), free shipping on every Subscribe & Save shipment, and automatic shipment of the item every one, two, three, or six months, with the option of canceling at any time.

2. What challenges did Amazon face when it first entered the marketplace?

a. Building warehouses was expensive to set up and operate

b. Dealing with Information systems and processes was new

c. Redesigning bottlenecks

d. Depreciation

3. What role did information management play in turning things around?

a. Allows consumers to select the items they want out of millions of products

b. Eliminate costs and errors from internal processes

4. In what directions did Amazon grow its business and how did information management and information technology investments influence these choices and Amazon’s ultimate success as an enterprise?

|Information Management Activities |IT |Contribution to Amazon’s Success |

| |Investments | |

|Consumers choose products they want from millions|Process is computerized...