Capstone Project Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Capstone Project - Research Paper Example However while eBay is a consumer-to-consumer trade platform, Amazon.com relies mainly on the producer-to-consumer trade model and also offers many own products and services. The other two main competitors for Amazon.com from the books/publications field and the multimedia provision field are Barnes & Noble and Netflix respectively. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington and employs more than a hundred thousand people. The company was founded by Jeff Bezos who remains its chairman, president and chief executive officer. Vision and Mission The self-stated mission of the company is to â€Å"be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavour to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.† And while there is no articulate vision, given by the shareholders or founder of the company, to be followed by the staff, there are several references in the official publically available d ocuments of the company to the drive towards technological innovation. There is no doubt that of all the businesses aiming or claiming to provide customers a wide variety of choice of products or services, Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, is the truest to its mission statement. While it started off as an online bookstore, Amazon.com soon started offering multimedia products such as videos, films and music and later on got into the markets of various consumer products such as software, video games, electrical appliances, garments, cutlery, decoration items, sports goods and eatables etc. In the present day, Amazon.com offers many products and services of its own such as the market leading e-book reader (Kindle) and cloud networking services. The focus on customary offerings of Amazon.com can also be realized by the fact that the company operates specialized websites in Japan, Canada, United States, India, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Mexico, France, Australi a, Brazil, China and Spain and has plans for such websites in Sweden, Holland and Poland as well. E-commerce is a an extension of physical trade over the internet and e-commerce companies such as Amazon.com do not reflect the kind of technological innovation that is generally appreciated of a web-based enterprise such as an internet social network. That is because the focus is still on trading of tangible goods and hence the trading represents the area of business rather than technology or the internet which is just a conduit for the trade. Neither Amazon.com’s strategies nor its staff are known to be technologically advanced or innovative in the contemporary sense. Similarly while the focus on low pricing is highlighted by the mission statement of Amazon.com, just as it is in the written objectives of innumerable businesses, there is no special initiative that offers a cost advantage to customers or targets the lower classes of consumers other than the need-based policy of c ompetitive pricing. There is however a recently launched program that incorporates the ideas of both innovation and financial advantage for the customers called the â€Å"Subscribe & Save† program. The subscription offered by the program is open to consumers in most of Amazon.com’s operating regions and includes all household and other bulk-purchasable goods. Through this program consumers are offered up to a fifteen percent discount and free