History
The launch of Amazon.com in July of 1995 was the creation of a new and bold way of doing business on the Internet. Amazon.com forced the traditional physical world brick and mortar retailer in the book industry to change the way they target the industry's consumers and then epitomized Business-2-Consumer e-retailing. Although, Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, according to eRetailNews , they have since spread its wings into other industries such as music, DVD, toys, videos etc...
Subsequently, this has created a multitude of direct competitors for Amazon.com in several different industries. As Amazon.com continues to grow and create new alliances with other industry's leaders, the competition for global online market share grows intensively.
-------------------------------------------------------
Strengths.
* Amazon is a profitable organization. In 2005 profits for the three months to June dipped 32% to $52m (£29.9m) from $76m in the same period in 2004. Sales jumped 26% to $1.75bn. Until recent years Amazon was experiencing large losses, due to its huge initial set up costs. The recent dip is due to promotions that have offered reduced delivery costs to consumers.
* Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Information Technology (IT) support Amazon's business strategy. The company carefully records data on customer buyer behaviour. This enables them to offer to an individual specific items, or bundles of items, based upon preferences demonstrated through purchases or items visited.
* Amazon is a huge global brand. It is recognisable for two main reasons. It was one of the original dotcoms, and over the last decade it has developed a customer base of around 30 million pe ...