Amazon.com is a company that distributes books and most recently music through their website. It was founded by Jeff Bezos and began taking orders in July of 1995. Since then, Amazon has acquired five businesses that range from virtual database technology to videos while expanding to the European market. The business level of Amazon.com is simple: cost leadership. Best selling books are sold at a 30 to 40 percent discount and other books are discounted at 10 percent. At the time of the case, Amazon.com's corporate strategy was single business to dominant business, but has since moved towards unrelated because they are offering more than just books at their website such as kitchen and housewares, toys and games, DVDs, amongst many other goods. Since Amazon.com was relatively new when the case was written, there was little that had been done with acquisitions and restructuring, although they had acquired Bookpages Ltd.,
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos starts his High Order Bi...
English: Amazon warehouse in Glenrothes, Fife; sou...
Amazon hefTelebook Inc., and Internet Movie Database Ltd. in April 1998. Also, Amazon.com signed agreements to acquire Junglee Corp. and PlanetAll. These acquisitions signify Amazon's intent to expand beyond just book selling and into other online sales. Amazon.com has done nothing but increase in size since it began operations in July 1995, doubling in size every 2.4 months with an 838 percent increase in sales form 1996 to 1997. To keep up with this extraordinary growth, Amazon had 800 employees on its payroll as of August 1998.
Amazon.com has plans in the works to capitalize on its increased market share by expansion into European e-commerce with already having 22% of sales from outside the United States. By acquiring previously established global companies, Amazon's expansion into international localities should be smooth. Part of Amazon's cooperative strategy is synergistic strategic alliances through acquiring businesses to expand into new product and market areas. They...