Organizational Behavior at Amazon
Organizational Behavior at Amazon
Table of Contents
Abstract
Introduction
Location and Organization
Primary Industry
Products and Services
Values
Amazon History
Work place environment
Use of Organization Behavior
Conclusion
Organization Behavior at Amazon
Introduction
One of the most significant development and commercial use of Internet growth in end of twentieth century made online retail sales was possible (Darling, 2012). As the use of the Internet became more prevalent in society, companies began looking to the web as a new place for commerce. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, the largest e-commerce company, strongly believed that only the Internet could offer customers the convenience of browsing a selection of millions of book title in single sitting. He founded Cadabra.com in 1994, and launched as Amazon.com in 1995 as a tiny online bookstore operated at his garage in Seattle, Washington. Initially, it began as a small online bookstore to offer with the concept of “Earth’s Biggest Selection” of books.
Location and Organization
The company operates in two major divisions: North America, and International. The North America division consists of retail sale of consumer products and subscriptions through North America focused websites such as www.amazon.com and www.amazon.ca. The international division consists of retails sales focused on international based locations, including export sales from these sites to international consumers. Amazon dominates the book industry in United Kingdom, by having 90 percent of electronic books sales (Darling, 2012); this has been achieved through unbeatable price, selection, and combined with exceptional customer service. As publishing commentator Mike Shatzkin wrote, Amazon “has service offerings which range from ‘extremely difficult’ to ‘impossible’ for any other publisher-retailer combination to match.” In late 1990’s it was diversifying its multi-product lines of CDs, video, DVDs, electronics, toys, tools, home furnishings and housewares, apparel, and kitchen gadgets. In 1997, The Company issued public offering of stock, trading under the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN, at a price $18.00 per share (amazon, 1997). In 1998, it enters the online music and video business; companies are acquired in the United Kingdom and Germany. In 1999, the firm expands into selling toys, electronics, tools, and hardware; Bezos is named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” In 2001, amazon.com reports its first net profit during the fourth quarter.
Amazon.com considers itself a completely customer centric company where people can find and discover virtually anything they want to buy online. It provides online services to four primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators. It offers a personalized shopping experience for each of its customer through detail search and compares products, convenient checkout experience with user customer friendly shipping. Key features of Amazon’s websites include editorial and customer reviews; manufacturer product information; Web pages tailored to individual preferences, such as recommendations and notifications; one Click technology; secure payment systems; image uploads; searching on our websites as well as the Internet; browsing; and the ability to view selected interior pages and citations, and search the entire contents of many of the books we offer with our “Look Inside the Book” and “Search Inside the Book” features.
Amazon community of online customers also creates feature-rich content, including product reviews, online recommendation lists, wish lists, buying guides, and wedding and baby registries." The company also provides other marketing and promotional services, such as online advertising and co-branded credit card agreements. It also serves community features like wish lists that help customer discover new products and make informed buying decisions. It provides the ability to its consumers with a focus on selection, price, and convenience.
Primary Industry
Amazon, as an ecommerce company that is able to capture and leverage consumer data to generate personalized customer experiences by using algorithms that they apply to individualized code. For example, Amazon’s “Betterizer” system pioneered the customer code Halo (Frank, 2014) and led the way in designing the Amazon experience around the customer, rather than around the company. Amazon’s “Betterizer” gets its users feedback from their shopping experience, request user to “LIKE” or “Not interested” items per interest of consumers, provide option to “Refresh and show different items”, and “show my new recommendations”(Amazon.com). By engaging with Amazon, a customer elects to gain a more personalized and accurate shopping experience. Companies large and small that focus on the digital experience are following the path Amazon blazed by constructing algorithms around the now familiar phrases “You might also like” and “Customers who bought X also bought Y”. Other online retail companies that hardly count as born digital now follow such constructs.