External & Internal Analysis of Amazon during 1997. Example of a Strategic Management in the New Economy.

"External & Internal Analysis of Amazon during 1997"

Strategic Management in the New Economy

24/09/02

What are the opportunities and threats that Amazon.com faced in 1997?

In all the proceeding cases, we analyzed the various levels of the external environment, moving through the remote, to the industry and finally to the operating environment. Through doing this we saw where Amazon's potential opportunities and threats lay. We also applied Porter's Five Forces to asses the threats in the industry environment.

Opportunity:

The size, speed and growth rate of the Internet. The technology aspects of the remote external environment played a large role in opportunities for Amazon.com at the time of the case study. Firstly, the projections for internet growth, 700 million users by the year 2000 (Pearce, 2000), showed a large potential for more customers for Amazon.com. As the target market increases, so does the number of potential customers. The Internet also provided an opportunity in the form of communication, getting the word of new books to lots readers could be done efficiently and cheaply.

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Third generation Amazon Kindle, showing text from ...

The size of the local book industry and the span of the world wide industry. Economically speaking, since Amazon's first focus was the American where market sales were about $26 billion/year and retailers had accounted for about 40% of the pie, there was ample opportunity for the startup. At the same time, the Internet would give Amazon a global presence and therefore in addition, they could sell to anywhere in the world.

The education of the average internet user and the number of books available. In relation to the internet user, social factors in the remote environment also were a large opportunity for Amazon. Internet users were well-educated, therefore more likely to be interested in literature. There was also ample opportunity in the product Amazon was...