LCBS5001 Strategic Management Sample
1. Introduction
The current business environment is extremely competitive, which forces companies to be focused on their strategic management in order to sustain their business and increase competitiveness. Considering Amazon, as a successful business, the current report is focused on analysing strategic management at Amazon by critically evaluating the internal as well as external business environment of the organisation. Along with looking at the historical background and the current growth of Amazon, its organisational culture, as well as structure, would also be evaluated in the study. Apart from that, the corporate level and business level strategies of the company would also be analysed critically to discuss its strategic management. Based on the overall evaluation strategic recommendations would be provided for Amazon regarding the further achievement of excellence.
1.1 Historical background and growth of the chosen company
Amazon is one of the renowned companies globally that is operating successfully in the e-commerce, entertainment, and technology sectors. The history of the organisation reflects its continuous growth since its foundation by Jeff Bezos in 1994. After approximately 30 years of its establishment, it launched online services (Bhati, 2022). Considering the mission statement, the organisation is extremely focused on being the most consumer-centric organisation around the world and the best employer, along with being the safest place to work (Amazon, 2023). The values of Amazon are guided by four principles such as commitments to ensure operational excellence, long-term thinking, consumer obsession rather than only focusing on customers, and passion for invention (Amazon, 2023). Throughout history, it is seen that the organisation has provided its continuous focus on being innovative and expanding into new global markets.
Figure 1: Amazon’s annual revenue from net sales of Amazon, since 2004 to 2022
(Source: Statista, 2023)
Amazon is operating its business in more than 200 nations and territories (Amazon, 2023). In addition, the company has over 300 million consumers around the globe (Amazon, 2023). The customer-centric focus of Amazon has been significantly impacting its global business performance, which further ensures its revenue growth (Statista, 2023). Likewise, from 2004 to 2022, the organisation has witnessed significant and continuous growth in its annual revenue from its net sales around the globe. In particular, annual net revenue of Amazon was approximately $386.06 billion in 2020, which became approximately $513.98 billion in 2022 (Statista, 2023). Therefore, it is clear that Amazon is achieving continuous success in the global marketplace.
1.2 Organisational culture and structure
Strong organisational culture is extremely crucial for businesses that provide proper direction, guidance, and consistency of adequate actions and business decisions that fuel their workforce and assist to reach their potential (Lobschat et al. 2021). The organisational structure of Amazon is based on its values and principles, as discussed above. Most importantly, its organisational culture is based on some leadership principles that are impactful in their regular business decisions and activities. The leadership principles include different aspects such as invent and simplicity, learning, thinking big, earning trust, consumer obsession, and others (Amazon, 2023).
Organisational structure of Amazon includes function-based groups, hierarchical structure, and geographical divisions to operate successfully in the international market. In particular, the function-based groups of Amazon include its Chief Executive Officer, business development, Amazon stores, finance, international customer business accounting, and legal aspects (Amazon, 2023). Apart from that, the organisation also has a hierarchical structure to maintain its global business. This kind of organisational structure has been helping to ensure diversity, equality, and inclusion at the workplace, along with providing employees with growth opportunities. Moreover, organisational campuses or corporate offices of the organisation are connected for ensuring consumer-centric innovations in different locations around the globe (Amazon, 2023). Organisational culture and structure of Amazon have been ensuring leadership efforts to its employees that ensure business success.
2. Current business-level and corporate-level strategies of the company
2.1 Business level strategies
Amazon is improving business strategies by inclusion of different operations so that the customers are getting attracted towards the business flow. This organisation has incorporated different business strategies such as enhancement in logistics applications, investment in technologies, and improvement in the web services by fulfilling the capacity by Merger and Acquisition (M&A) strategies.
Enhancement in logistics applications
The increase of logistics powerhouses by including 185 fulfillment centers across the globe has helped Amazon to manage its business operations. The strengthening of the delivery network in Amazon has included an “Amazon Logistic Application” for the truck drivers for picking and dropping the delivery packages appropriately (Amazon, 2022). The inclusion of a machine-learning based inventory management system helps Amazon to analyse data for customers demand, shipment time, cost of the goods and the inventory levels. However, this system does not calculate the inventory and order processing which affects the logistics strategy of the business development.
Investment in technologies
The inclusion technologies and investments in the technologies in Amazon have helped in maintaining the business opportunities. Amazon has invested in implementing Amazon drones in the US, which will be used for delivery of the packages to the customers and as floating airships to the warehouse to manage the inventory. In 2017, “US Federal Government” approved a drone delivery program, which has helped in maintaining an optimised delivery system for the customers. Moreover, Amazon has invested $2 billion in this program and has created a global team of 1000 people who are working on this drone program for optimising the delivery process (Forbes, 2022). Thus, this strategy has helped Amazon to manage its competition at the business level in the market development.
M&A strategies
Amazon has also focused on strengthening the acquisitions and merger operations in the organisation. It has improved the web services by fulfilling cloud technologies. Moreover, it has merged with data centers in Britain and France for developing the M&A strategies in the business. Moreover, this organisation has acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million, which is a robot designing organisation, which has helped in managing robots in the warehouse process (Rao, 2023). This strategy has helped in maintaining the inventory process within the organisation.
2.2 Corporate level strategies
The corporate level strategies are involved in the organisation for maintaining the specific goals of the organisation by which organisation can manage business growth. The corporate level strategies are mostly based on the working infrastructure of the organisation. Following are the corporate strategies that are implemented by Amazon to manage the sustainability processes
Competitive strategy
Amazon has focused on managing large-scale web presence, which increases the competitive advantages in the organisation. Amazon has a brand value of $705.7 billion, which has helped in increasing its market proposition across the globe (Statista, 2023). This is due to availability of the products in the organisation, which attracts the customers to avail Amazon for their online shopping. Moreover, the implementation of the competitive pricing has helped in maintaining cost leadership in the e-commerce industry. The use of data analytics in managing the customer’s information has also provided this organisation to maintain competition in the market. However, due to high competition in the market, this strategy is facing problems in maintaining the corporate enhancement properly.
Retrenchment strategy
Amazon has implemented a retrenchment strategy for cutting the pricing of the business operations. The implementation of automaton processes such as robotics in the organisation is limiting the needs of the human workforce in the company. Therefore, to manage cost cutting, this organisation has slowed down the hiring process from which money is getting saved. Moreover, this organisation laid off 10000 workers in the organisation, which can help the organisation to manage the retrenchment strategy properly (Kelly, 2022). However, this strategy has failed in managing the trust of the employees to the company.
Expansion strategy
Amazon has a diversified business model, which has helped in improving the expansion of the organisation across the globe. The inclusion of the market penetration process in Amazon has helped it to expand its business in around 20 countries. Other than it’s headquarter in US, Amazon has the largest number of businesses in India, UK, Italy and Germany as well. In the UK, the market development of this organisation has involved 187.6 thousand business application downloads which has helped in managing the expansion process appropriately (Coppola, 2023). This shows that this strategy has helped Amazon to expand its operations properly in the global market.
Figure 2: Number of Downloads of Amazon app
(Source: Coppola, 2023)
2.3 Strategic Map
Figure 3: Strategic map
3. Strategic analysis
3.1 Micro/internal environment
Determining the internal capabilities of companies becomes essential for understanding the aspects that can be achieved by a company in the long run. In the following discussion, a SWOT analysis would be presented for determining its current position.
| Strength | Weakness |
| ● Market capitalization at $1.012 trillion as of 2023 (Companies market cap, 2023)
● Most value brand (Business standard, 2023) ● High-end systems of logistics and distribution |
● Inimitable business model
● Controversies with tax avoidance (ITEP, 2022) ● Product failures and flops (Green, 2019) |
| Opportunity | Threat |
| ● Expanding through physical stores
● Leverage on self-driving technology (The Guardian, 2023) |
● Fake reviews (Pool, 2022)
● Poor work safety (Silberling, 2023) ● Increasing cybercrime affecting security system (Rubinstein, 2020) |
Table 1: SWOT analysis
Strength
Amazon has different strengths with which the company is efficiently leveraging on for gaining success in the competitive environment. The market capitalization of Amazon is at $1.012 (Companies market cap, 2023). Additionally, the brand valuation has overtaken Apple’s brand value and became the world’s most valued brand (Business standard, 2023). The company has also been using high-end systems and distribution for its operations.
Weakness
Amazon also has certain weaknesses such as the model of the company being imitable. Additionally, the company is facing controversies with its tax avoidance. Amazon avoided more than $5 billion in corporate income taxes (ITEP, 2022). This can create a negative impact on the company’s reputation. Furthermore, Amazon has encountered various failures and flops in introducing new products in the market (Green, 2019).
Opportunity
Amazon has the opportunity to expand through increasing physical stores in the market where consumers can visit physically. The company has introduced self-driving technology that is using its employees as its passengers for testing purposes (The Guardian, 2023). This can be an opportunity for the company to improve its network of delivery.
Threat
The company is encountering issues with fake reviews at an increased rate (Pool, 2022). This is creating a threat to trustworthiness of the customers. The work safety of Amazon is at stake due to which the company had been fined by regulators (Silberling, 2023). The issues of cybercrime are also increasing in Amazon, which is putting customers in danger of being vulnerable with personal banking credentials to malicious entities (Rubinstein, 2020).
3.2 Industry level analysis
Porter’s 5 Forces framework is one of the renowned frameworks for conducting industrial analysis. This framework analyses an industry through suppliers’ bargaining power, customers’ bargaining power, competitive rivalry, threats of new entrants as well as substitute products and services (Appiah et al. 2021). Hence, considering these stages the industrial level analysis of Amazon has been conducted below in a tabular format –
| Forces | Impact | Justification |
| Competitive rivalry | High | Amazon has been facing extensive market competition by organisations such as Disney Plus, Flipkart, Walmart, eBay, Alibaba, Netflix, and others (Akshay, 2022). Hence, competitive rivalry for Amazon is significantly high. |
| The threat of new entrants | Low | The global e-commerce as well as the online streaming sector has been witnessing significant growth that is attractive for global investors as well as new companies to enter for ensuring profitability (Tolstoy et al. 2021). However, the threat of new entrants in the sector of e-commerce and online streaming for Amazon is significantly low. This is because there is a requirement of high investment to enter both fields and achieve a market presence like Amazon. |
| The bargaining power of suppliers | Low | While considering the e-commerce business, it is extremely important to have positive relations with suppliers, because without adequate suppliers companies would be unable to serve customers (Lahkani et al. 2020). However, the availability of suppliers is significantly high in the sector and there is no significant switching cost. Therefore, for renowned companies like Amazon, the bargaining power of suppliers is comparatively low. |
| The bargaining power of customers | High | There are different organisations that offer products and services like Amazon in both sectors (Akshay, 2022). In addition, customers do not have to pay any switching costs. Hence, the bargaining power of consumers for Amazon is significantly high. |
| Threat of substitute | High | In terms of online streaming services of Amazon, customers can easily go to other entertainment options such as outdoor activities and others (Zuhana, 2023). On the other hand, in terms of e-commerce, they are the option of brick-and-mortar or traditional street-side stores for buying products (Menezes, 2020). Hence, it can be stated that the threat of substitutes for Amazon’s products and services is high in both sectors. |
Table 2: Porter’s five forces
3.3 Macro/general environment
Environmental analysis can be significantly done through the PESTLE framework through which the outside environment of a company can be analyzed in detail. In this report, the macro-environmental analysis of Amazon would be discussed thoroughly.
| Factors | Implications | Impacts |
| Political | ● Government support to businesses without an online presence (UNCTAD, 2021)
● Digital initiatives with digital wallets (GOV, 2023) |
High |
| Economic | ● Global GDP at $96.53 trillion in 2021 (World Bank, 2023)
● Global inflation rate at 3.50% in 2021 (Macro trends, 2023) |
High |
| Social | ● World population at 8 billion (Worldometers, 2023)
● Increased inclination of customers towards online shopping (Morgan, 2020) |
Medium |
| Technological | ● Escalated growth of technologies
● High tech budget growth in media, entertainment, and leisure (Sava, 2022) |
High |
| Legal | ● California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) (Dentons, 2022)
● Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA) (ICLG, 2022) |
High |
| Environmental | ● A huge portion of CO2 emission (Earth, 2022)
● Rise of sustainability in the e-commerce industry (Gepard, 2022) |
High |
Table 3: PESTLE analysis
Political
The government is actively supporting such businesses that do not have any online presence in the market (UNCTAD, 2021). Furthermore, there exists a portion of people that are scared to make online transactions. Thus, for mitigating these issues, digital wallets are being introduced through digital initiatives for acquiring a larger share of consumers in the competitive market. Digital wallets are available for such consumers that can access online shopping through Pay.gov or PayPal and Amazon Pay; these are secure and simple for making payments (GOV, 2023).
Economic
Figure 4: Global GDP level
(Source: World Bank, 2023)
From the above figure, the growth of GDP over the years in the global context can be noticed. Thus, it can be stated that the e-commerce industry has a bright future in expansion through different countries over different markets due to the rising rate of GDP. Although, the rate of inflation has increased to 3.50% in 2021 from 1.92% in 2020 which can impact the pricing of products by companies (Macro trends, 2023). Thus, it can be determined that the economic implications are posing a high impact o the e-commerce industry.
Social
The inclination of consumers toward online shopping has been noticed to increase at a phenomenal rate since the emergence of Covid-19 (Morgan, 2020). Additionally, the world population is at 8 billion in recent times (Worldometers, 2023). This is making a lucrative approach for the e-commerce industry for making a huge range of revenue over the years. Consumers are referred to as one of the most integral parts of any industry. Thus, through a growing rate of consumers with an increasing inclination towards online shopping, the prospects of the e-commerce industry are noticed to be attractive.
Technological
The utilization of technologies is increasing at a rapid pace with the advent of time and focus on digitalization. Additionally, apart from just the e-commerce industry, Amazon operates in the entertainment industry as well. The entertainment industry is expected to see strong growth in the tech budget (Sava, 2022). Thus, it can be determined that the implication of technology in the entertainment and e-commerce industry would highly and positively impact operations.
Legal
The e-commerce sector is noticed to have been surrounded by different laws and regulations for protecting consumers and data. Through California Consumer Privacy Act, the privacy of acquired data needs to be maintained by companies operating in the e-commerce industry (Dentons, 2022). Additionally, they need to abide by the Federal Trade Commission Act that is applied to prohibit businesses from implementing insufficient measures of cybersecurity, which can breach customers’ data security (ICLG, 2022).
Environmental
The e-commerce sector is negatively impacting the planet through its plastic waste and shipping emissions. It has been noticed that a huge amount of CO2 emission has been generated by the shipping emissions of e-commerce. In 2020, the emission from shipping and their returns accounted for 37% of the total GHG emissions (Earth, 2022). Additionally, another contributor to CO2 emission is plastics from the packaging of products (Earth, 2022). Thus, the concept of sustainable e-commerce is being addressed at a rapid pace for conducting online operations in such a way that does not exhaust natural resources and also aims towards satisfying the customers without compromising on future generations (Gepard, 2022).
4. Strategic recommendation
Competency based model can be involved in Amazon
This model in the organisation can help in identifying the issues with the strategies so that the problem in maintaining expansion of the organisation can be mitigated appropriately. The problem in cost cutting by laying off employees from the organisation can impact trust and loyalty of the employees who are already working. Therefore, Amazon can provide prior notice to the employees at least before 45 days to search for new jobs. Moreover, monitoring the employees with competency can help in understanding their credibility with the working processes. The implementation of a competency based model will help in analysing the needs of the organisations and keen actions against it.
Implementing automation inventory management
The implementation of automation in inventory management will help in counting the stocks that Amazon warehouse holds. This will also help in understanding the requirement in the inventory. The inclusion of smart shelves in the warehouses came to help in calculating the stocks automatically (Samsukha, 2023). This can help in reducing the workforce and time management in the business. Moreover, this will also help in avoiding out-of-stock situations and enhancement in the waste reduction process by which the nearest expiring products can be delivered first to the others.
Improving the network of delivery by implementing physical stores
Amazon can start its physical stores from where the customers can provide orders and can be delivered to their house directly. There is a need to improvise the process of Amazon Now, as customers are providing negative feedback for the fresh vegetables, fruits and other eatables (The Guardian, 2023). The implementation of physical stores will help customers to visit the store and order the products by their physical presence. This will help in improving the network of delivery in every location.
Increasing fulfillment centers in rural areas to improve delivery process
Amazon is required to increase the fulfillment centers where they can manage their stocks, which can help in maintaining fast delivery of the packages. The availability of the products in the fulfillment centers in rural areas will help in delivering the products in less time. This will help in optimising the delivery process and minimising the threat of competition in the organisation. Moreover, this can help in acquiring competitive advantages in the e-commerce industry as the organisation can provide the customers with Amazon fulfilled products.
Implementing higher system securities
Amazon requires involvement of high securities such as implementation of firewall that can help in minimising the cyber threats in the organisation. The inclusion of high system security will help in securing the personal data of the customers by which business can manage growth in the industry. Moreover, this will also help in improving the experiences of the customers in the organisation so that the organisation can manage trust of the employees in the organisation.
5. Conclusion
It is clear that one of the well-known international organisations functioning profitably in the e-commerce, entertainment, and technology industries is Amazon. This assignment has revealed that Amazon has seen an increase in sales over the past few years. In order to maintain its global operations, Amazon has a hierarchical organisational structure based on its beliefs and principles. The principles of leadership cover a variety of topics, including innovation, simplicity, learning, thinking strategically, earning trust, and consumer focus. This organisation has used several business strategies, such as improving logistics applications, investing in technology, and enhancing web services by utilising M&A strategies to fill capacity. However, this organisation’s corporate strategies also include a competitive strategy, a retrenchment plan, and an expansion strategy. From the SWOT analysis, it can be concluded that there are significant threats and weaknesses in the organisation that need to be handled. Moreover, the industry analysis has helped in finding high impact on competition. Lastly, it has been suggested to involve automation inventory management, higher system securities and increasing fulfillment centers in rural areas for mitigating the gaps in the strategic development of Amazon.
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