- About the company - Mission and Vision Statements - Amazon's Competitive Advantage - External Environment that affects the business - Global and environmental trends (prepared by NQCI students)

2. HISTORY OF AMAZON.COM
 July 5, 1994
- Jeff Bezos incorporated the company as "Cadabra".
Bezos changed the name to Amazon a year later after a lawyer
misheard its original name as "cadaver". The company went
online as Amazon.com in 1995.
 "Amazon"
- because it was a place that was "exotic and different"
just as he planned for his store to be;
- the Amazon river, he noted was by far the "biggest"
river in the world, and he planned to make his store the
biggest in the world.
 June 19, 2000
- Amazon's logotype has featured a curved arrow leading
from A to Z, representing that the company carries every

3. HISTORY OF AMAZON.COM
(CONT’D)
 Listed five most promising products which included:
- compact discs, computer hardware, computer
software, videos, and books.
 Bezos finally decided that his new business would sell
books online, due to the large world-wide demand for
literature, the low price points for books, along with the
huge number of titles available in print.
 Washington
- Amazon was originally founded in Bezos' garage in
Bellevue, Washington.

4.  1994
- Amazon was incorporated in the state of Washington.
 July 1995
- the company began service and sold its first book on
Amazon.com: Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies:
Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.
 October 1995
- the company announced itself to the public.
 1996
- it was reincorporated in Delaware.
 May 15, 1997
- Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock, trading under
the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN, at a price ofUS$18.00 per
share ($1.50 after three stock splits in the late 1990s).

5. MISSION AND VISION STATEMENT
Mission:
“We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for four
primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content
creators.”
Vision:
"Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a
place where people can come to find and discover anything they might
want to buy online."

6. 1. Pricing is not a deterrent
Amazon has achieved such a massive scale that it gets the best prices possible from its
vendors. Wal-Mart gets the same thing as do a handful of other retailers in select
areas, but the amount paid to manufacturers is not the only factor in setting prices.
Physical retailers price their goods based on a higher cost structure than a pure digital
store. Wal-Mart has actual stores and those stores cost more money than shipping
warehouses. Of course, it's possible for physical retailers to charge less online but that
can anger in-store customers.
Amazon can operate on razor-thin margins and still make money on the transaction.
Physical retailers can't do that and if they drop prices online they risk cannibalizing
their own sales and driving margin down while having all the same overhead costs.
AMAZON’S COMPETITIVE
ADVANTAGE

7. 2. Amazon has no shipping down
Because it has no physical stores, Amazon has optimized its
efficiency in the delivery business. This includes warehouses
strategically dotted around the country and the aforementioned
robots. The company also has highly advanced software that helps
it set inventory levels and even begin packing orders based on
predictive algorithms.
Amazon also has progressive deals with the United States Postal
Service and UPS (NYSE:UPS) that give it a shipping edge. It's
possible that a competitor could make similar arrangements and
the biggest retailers might match the company's warehouse
network, but it's very difficult, if not impossible, for a competitor
to match all of the shipping advantages Amazon has built itself
over time.

8. 3. The credit card base is key
While Apple has a lot more credit cards on file for registered users than
Amazon does, the company lacks everything else on this list. One of the
biggest hurdles facing any competitor to the online king is getting people to
register and turn over their credit card info. Even big physical retailers don't
have that information and customers tend to be reticent to give it even if
they trust the store when they can just buy the item on Amazon. Call it the
advantage of malaise, but who wants to complete a registration when a
perfectly viable site which already has your info sells pretty much everything
at a fair, and often better, price?
4. It's good to be big
Wal-Mart and Apple could, in theory, make a run at competing with Amazon
and both do in certain areas, but the online retailer has given itself a
sustainable competitive advantage. Equaling the company's shipping
prowess while matching its pricing, and maintaining a similar user base is a
series of hurdles which should trip up competitors.
It's not impossible to compete with Amazon in certain areas, but it's unlikely
we will see a Pepsi to its Coke. Amazon has simply built up too much of a

9. EXTERNAL
ENVIRONMENT
“The environment is everything
that isn’t me.”
― Albert Einstein

10. SOCIO-CULTURAL TRENDS
The use of e-books or electronic books in school and
other companies instead of the traditional book.
- This serves as an opportunity to Amazon.com since they
offer a wide variety of books in their online store. Amazon
offers "Search Inside the Book“, a feature which allows
customers to search for keywords in the full text of many
books in the catalog.

11. TECHNOLOGICAL TRENDS
 Mobile commerce grew three times faster than e-commerce year-over-
year this summer.
- This will have negative effect to Amazon.com since it “hasn’t
mastered mobile”, Startups like Postmates, WunWun, Instacart, and
Curbside have all used smartphones to change the way we shop, offering
more speed and convenience than ever before — and, often, speed and
convenience than Amazon.
Steadily increasing Digital Efforts of other companies such as Wal Mart and
Google.
- This serves as a threat to Amazon.com since its competitors
develop their technologies to outperform them.
 The increasing number of delivery service in the e-commerce business,
providing convenience on customers.
- This serves as a threat in Amazon since the delivery service goes

12. ECONOMIC TRENDS
 The economic fortunes of a number of developing
nations have risen steadily in the past two decades
- Serves as an opportunity because the
developing nation have a lot of potential customers.
 Household income is still way down in rich countries
- This is a threat since it decreases the
purchasing power of customers.

13. POLITICAL/LEGAL TRENDS
Issues concerning LGBT and its legalization in other
countries.
- Served as an opportunity for Amazon.com and
other related parties since it increased the sales of
books and articles related to LGBT. In fact, LGBT books
are included in the top ranks of books sold.

14. DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS
 World population now at nearly 6 billion
Increasing number of early pregnancy which results to
the increase in population.
- This serves as an opportunity to Amazon.com since the
increase in population will increase consumers

15. GLOBAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
TRENDS
 Increasing fatality rate in different countries
such as in Paris and in Syria.
- It serves as a threat for Amazon.com
because it decreases the number of potential
customers.
 War against France and the ISIS
- Also a threat for Amazon.com because it
affects its transaction with its customers in
France.