Amazon Books
Amazon.com and Borders Books are both companies dealing in trading of books and other products like DVDs, cds music players among others. The two companies are located in the U.S.A. Both companies have had mixed results in their operations, since they began trading as one of the companies was excelling and one was going to collapse.
This is a good contrast of how failure to react to market changes will be costly to the entire firm eventually, or within a short period of time. Borders Books, which begun its operation in the year 1971, was one of books and music stores in the U.S. at the time. It continued to excel in its operations up to the year 2007, when it started to collapse, until it filed for chapter 11 in 2011. On the other hand, Amazon.com was not that promising from the beginning until 2005, when it started experiencing the tremendous growth in its profits. We shall look at each of these individual companies separately now (Brown, 2008).
Amazon.com was founded by Bezo in1995, as an online book store and made its first sale in 1996. It was then incorporated in other states in the U.S.A. It began its operation on a unique plan that was proven to many shareholders and financial analysts that it was slow in profit realization. The company also suffered a major blow during its early years, whereby most firms collapsed due to the introduction of computer based trading. The business philosophy of Amazon is mainly focused on the consumers, regardless of its enormous growth. The company has 425 goals that were created in 2009, and among them, 360 unswervingly affected customers. Their mission statement is to seek to be Earth’s most popular customer-centric online company for three main customer sets: seller customers, consumer customers and the developer customers. The operational strategies of the company revolve around six core values namely: novelty; bias for action; possession; high hiring bar and prudence. It is devoted to enduring development based on consumer pleasure (Ann, 2006).
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The company managed to cheat the market shake-up that had been caused by the dot.com bubble burst and managed to record profits in the year 2001. These profits are highly attributed to the management strategies of the director and management of the company. Its valuation of stock also grew gradually just like its popularity. The company was able to organize and succeed in gaining attention of people to embrace online buying. Through this achievement, its founder Bezo was awarded the Times Magazine Person of the year award. The company also popularized itself as the number one book seller in the U.S and acquired different employees from the competitors.
The company was able to convince many customers to embrace online activities and sensitized the market players to change tactics. The company also diversified it operations and started dealing with many other products. Its online store was easily accessible for many people even from their homes; this gave the firm a big boost in terms of sales (Ovide, 2011). The company branded its sells under its private label, and started market auctions. This strategy enabled the company market itself well and ensured its recognition in the market. It opened its own music market store, website service and a grocery store. The company also made some take over’s and acquisition of some companies to enable to deal very well with its increasing demand, alongside opening a film production studio.
The company also introduced fixed price market store that proved to be unique to other competitors. The stores increased sales and profits, eventually making it grow rapidly. These were among strategies that Amazon took to the market and succeeded. The company, which started as an online book store, started to acquire DVD and CD stores. It also started selling computer games, toys, software’s, videos games and furniture. The company was able to set up stores in foreign countries like Europe through its market strategies of take over’s. Consumer satisfaction is the key to any success in the business. Therefore, this implies that the goal of consumer satisfaction should be the most important strategy for any business that wises to attain its set goals and objectives. This is because these loyal customers then pass on the news of quality services to their families and friends. The marketing manager should ensure that the product and service department creates the need for the consumers to try out the various items offered by the company.
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Border Books Company was established in the year 1971 and was so successful at the beginning of its operations. It went as far as operating big stores in Europe and became a leading book seller in the U.K. It had many stores across the U.S. and Europe. The company enjoyed the huge economies of globalization. The company had also many other stores which did not operate on its name (Rich, 2009).
These firms were, however, sold off from the period of 2005. The firm also cut its services with Amazon.com that provided website services. This, however, came to pass slowly, started to sell some of its stores in Europe and eventually ending in chapter 11. Although there are some unavoidable factors that led to the collapse of the company, many are attributed to its internal management. There is a clear indication on the side of the company itself to collapse.
One of the reasons why border books collapsed is its failure to adapt internet trading, as its rival Amazon.com did. The management was reluctant to introduce online selling of books. This gave an advantage to the competitors, and eventually it lost its market share. Another reason is that Borders Books had a big investment in compact discs. This was a major blow, since the compacted discs were replaced with DVDs and eventually iPods and USB devices. The management of border books also failed to pay attention to the branding techniques it used. They remained in the old traditional method of branding, unlike other companies, for example, Amazon.com, which started branding itself in its private label. Lack of sufficient supply chains and bad leases also contributed heavily to its downfall.
It failed to build upon its initial principles of management and work upon the means of improving supply chains. It over relied on its size rather than its quality of service. It failed to retain its large number of customers due to its reluctance to trade via the internet. The management of Amazon.com was so flexible that it adapted to changes in the market environment. This is clearly visible on how it was able to analyze market and come up with the idea of online selling.