Amazon.com SWOT Analysis

Amazon is a pioneer and a vast internet industry that holds a vast number of products available to the customer online. Amazon has intended to move its headquarters in Seattle, the buildings will be known for being eco-friendly and will consist of ‘Leadership Energy & Environmental Design’ aka LEED.

Strengths:

•    Leading e-retailer for products that entertain and educate as well as many other commodities from new to used items are available.

•    Market Leader.

•    Top 5 of Fortune’s ‘World’s Most Admired Companies List’.

•    Communication is very effective when it comes to Amazon.

•    It has a powerful and renowned stature in the world of internet.

•    It holds the status of being one of the original dotcoms with a customer-base of above 30 million people in no more than a decade.

•    It is known to be as an initiator for online technologies such as e-commerce making it the first online retailers to achieve success.

•    It holds a vast portfolio of products like CD/DVD, Books (softcopy / hardcopy), and other genuine products.

•    The CRM (customer relationship management) is the essence of Amazon, because it alongside recording customer behavior also manages products in such a way that attracts the customer by providing different offers or bundles of products.

•    User Reviews play as a way to share info, and Amazon provides feedback that would hold a sense of loyalty towards the customers that will lead to sales.

•    Any customer can provide a product that he/she wants to sell, be it brand new or used. A trust factor is enhanced due to this mechanism. Both the sellers and the buyers’ info are retained and their values are determined by Amazon along with the feedbacks.

•    An expansion known as ‘Amazon MP3’ that is a bit cheaper than iTunes.

•    ‘Kindle’ being a product that reads e-books and these specially designed e-books can be downloaded from ‘amazonkindle.com’. It also has the option of directly downloading the required e-book through its 3G technology.

•    Delivery (on-time) and shipping are made free provided the amount spent is more than $25. The customer can speed the delivery through its GAD (Guaranteed Accelerated Delivery) option.

•    It has different modes of packaging that also provide environmental solutions.

Weaknesses:

•    Product expansion (not related to books) will risk brand image as the online retailer for books in the mind of the consumer.

•    Maintenance regarding the systems, it is of vital importance that the systems should be ensured to be in order at all times in order to provide the best service to the customer without any inconvenience.

•    It refers to outsourcing its delivery function which increases costs.

Opportunities:

•    Provide catalogues for the books available, and partner with a library (public sector) that will also cover rare books collection.