Rsources and Capabilities of Amazon

Amazon: Resources and Capabilities

Introduction

The industry analyzed for this report is online retail industry and the company identified is Amazon.com. The company has been a pioneer in online retail business and has changed the way retail business is done. Amazon started its operations in 1990s and survived the dot com bust of 2001. The company soon posted its first profit in 2003 (Ajello, 2004). Amazon started with selling books and soon expanded into other categories. The company to this date is looking to enter more product categories. The new Amazon logo shows an arrow from A to Z, indicating the company’s aim to sell wide range of products.

Over the years, Amazon added diverse product range such as movies, furniture, jewellery, mobile and electronics to its product range and partnered with firms such as Target and Toys-R-Us to sell their products online. The company also increased the number of warehouses and expanded to various cities (Mahajan et al., 2002). At the same time, Amazon expanded to other countries in Europe and Asia and increased its global footprint. Amazon worked on the model of keeping low inventory of products and partnering with retailers to quickly ship the items ordered. Choice of location for the warehouses was determined both by the location of suppliers as well as the cost of transporting the items. In spite of the competition from various players, the company has maintained its position of topmost online retailer in the world.

Resources of Amazon

Amazon has been successful over the years because it was able to develop various resources that gave the company an advantage over the competitors. According to Peng (2009, pp 89-90), both tangible and intangible resources play a part in the success of a company. He defines tangible resources as “assets that are observable and easily quantified” and includes financial, physical, technological and organizational resources. Intangible resources are defined as “assets that are hard to...