United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, China, and Japan. Since starting out in his garage in Bellevue, Washington, Jeff Bozos has gone on to form one of the greatest commerce sites the internet has ever seen. (Gaelic, 2014) In May 1997, one of the most talked-about technology deals of the year, Amazon went public and began selling shares at $18 each. In June 1998, the Internet retailer chose music for its first category expansion beyond books, promising a vast music selection unmatched by any mall store. In October 1998, the company expanded to Europe by launching new websites in Germany and the United Kingdom.
In January 2000, Amazon unveiled a friendlier logo. Instead of a downward curve underlining ‘Amazon. Com,’ the new logo features an arrow-shaped smile beginning under the ‘a’ and ending with a dimple under the ‘z,’ to emphasize that Amazon offers anything, from A to Z. Amazon began to look more like a technology company, introducing new services for website developers in July 2002. Record holiday sales helped Amazon achieve its first full- year profit. For 2003, Amazon made a profit of $35. 3 million, compared to a loss of $149. 1 million in 2002. Amazon expanded to China in August 2004, reaching deal worth about $75 million to buoys. Mom, an online seller of books, music and videos. (Gaelic, 2014) In November 2007, Bozos unveiled Amazon’s first Kindle e-reader in New York City, hoping to build a market for digital books. The original price is $399. Amazon in November 2009 bought online shoe and apparel retailer Capos. Com in a deal valued at $1. 2 billion. Capos continues to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary with headquarters in Lass Vegas. With its stock above $222 a share in July 2011, Amazon’s total market capitalization broke the $100 billion mark, making it only the second locally based company to do so.
Ending months of speculation, Bozos introduced Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet computer in New York City in September 2011. Priced at $199, the Kindle Fire is predicted to erode the dominance of Apple’s pad. In November 2011, Amazon introduced their own digital-book lending library, offering a free e-book once a month to Kindle device owners who also subscribe to its Amazon Prime program. (Gaelic, 2014) Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Fill. Yahoo provides internet services around the world, including search engine, web portal, Yahoo mail, directory services and more.
The company was incorporated in 1995 and went public in April, 1996 (YAHOO on the NASDAQ). (Restricted, 2012) When Yahoo was originally founded, it was called Jerry Guide to the World Wide Web. When the founders decided to change the company name, they could not get a trademark for the name Yahoo, so they added the exclamation point, thus the trademarked version of the name Yahoo! They renamed it because it was a part of the expansion for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. They picked that name, because they liked what it meant. When the end for 1994 rolled around, Yahoo! Already had one million hits. They finally bought the domain, Yahoo. Com in January 1995 and switched the site to that URL instead of their older one. Fill and Yang noticed that they were on to something and quickly had it incorporated. In April of 1 995, Sequoia Capital’s Michael Morris gave Yang and Fill $3 million to help them in raising capital for their venture. By 1996, they were able to start public trading. (Restricted, 201 2) In the late offs, Yahoo! Became a Web portal. With the growth of Web portals, many companies got absorbed and Yahoo was one of the absorbers.
Yahoo acquired several site including Four 1 1 (They owed rocket mail email service. When Yahoo bought them, they changed it to Yahoo mail. ), Classicism’s (Yahoo changed it to Yahoo Games), Hoyden Entertainment Inc (Originally Yahoo Pager later on, became Yahoo Messenger), GeoCities (It became Yahoo GeoCities. ), groups (Yahoo called Yahoo Groups). (Restricted, 2012) During the dotcom bubble’s highest point, Yahoo! ‘s shares were worth a lot of money. Even though in 2000, at one point Yahoo! ‘s domain was under a distributed denial of service attack, the next day their shares rose.
Also during 2000, eBay and Yahoo! Thought about a 50/50 merger, though they never did happen. Instead 6 years later, they partnered with each other for advertising. The summer of 2006, Google and Yahoo! Both signed an agreement, so Google could stay the default search engine and Yahoo! Could go into BETA. (Restricted, 2012) During the dot. Com bubble burst, Yahoo was one of the few lucky ones, meaning though they lost a lot of money, they didn’t go out of business. In 2002, Yahoo! Wanted to compete with mega internet service provider and web portal AOL.
They partnered with CBS, BET Openwork, and Verizon to offer internet service. Later on in 2002, Yahoo! Started to acquire search engines and left the contract tit Google and started using their own technology in 2004. Also in 2004, Yahoo! Felt threatened by Google’s release of Gamma, so they upgraded all free email accounts to three more Gigabytes then they initially offered. For their paid users, they offered two more Gigabytes. Though later on, they did take the meter out, giving all users unlimited storage. (Restricted, 2012) In 2005, Microsoft and Yahoo! Agreed on allow both of their instant messengers to work together.
Also in 2005 they launched Yahoo 360 social network to compete with Namespace and Backbone. Yahoo Launches became Yahoo Music. They bought Flicker, blobs, Upcoming. Com, webby and del. CIO. Us in 2006. Determine the key strategic differences that have impacted the relative success of both Amazon. Com and Yahoo. Com. Provide two (2) specific examples of such strategic differences to support the response. Differentiation strategy is a strategy employed by businesses to increase the perceived value of their brand or products as a way to entice buyers to choose their products over similar products offered by their competitors.
Differentiation can be achieved through competitive pricing, enhancements to functional design r features, distribution timing, expanded distribution channels, distributor location, brand reputation, product customization, and enhanced customer support. (Murmur, 2014) Amazon, which emerged from the dot. Com bubble one of the few winners and continued to blaze a trail of impressive growth (from about $4 billion in 2002 to nearly $20 billion in 2008). One of the most unexamined facets of Amazon’s high- profile success is its unabashed embrace of transformational growth in its white space.
Amazon survived the dot. Com bust because it had a viable and innovative business model built around a market-changing customer value proposition ND a radical profit formula, which upended the staid book industry. Then it quickly expanded beyond books to include all sorts of easily shippable consumer goods, growing from its core into near adjacency’s. But Amazon didn’t stop there. Monsoons, 2010) Amazon at its roots is built to transform. When it finds opportunities to serve new customers, or existing customers in new ways, it conceives and builds new business models to exploit them.
Amazon has the unique ability to launch and run entirely new types of businesses while simultaneously extracting value from existing businesses. Amazon’s journey forward will likely be marked by a series of transformations, as it continues to pursue its vision unafraid of white space, business model innovation, or renewal. (Johnson, 2010) Launched in 1994, Yahoo is one of the old dogs of the tech world. In 201 2, former Google Marimbas Mayer came on as CEO and quickly executed several smart strategies that have shaken up Yahoo.
Yahoo leaders have wanted a redesign since 2009. But it never got done, even as Coos came and went. But Mayer did not wait any longer. She launched a redesign of Yahoo’s homepage, logo, and features like Yahoo mail and Flicker. In addition to a redesign, Mayer launched new verticals. At SEC, Yahoo announced a bunch of brand extensions: Yahoo Magazines (built off of Tumbler), Yahoo Tech (one of the new magazines), Yahoo Advertising (unites ads across the Yahoo universe), and the Smart TV app (which connects Yahoo content to your television). Beer, 2014) Mayer sought to make Yahoo a regular habit in consumers’ lives. Behavioral science shows us that 40% of the decisions we make throughout a day aren’t really decisions ? they’re habits. Mayer told Bloomberg her goal for Yahoo as a web destination was to make it a habit: “l think that there’s a real opportunity o help guide people’s daily habits in terms of what content they read. That is something that we are really working on. All of these daily habits ? news, sports, games, finance, search, mail, answers, groups ? these are all things we have been underinvestment in. (Beer, 2014) Compare and contrast the approach to strategic planning that each company has pursued in order to achieve a competitive advantage. Focus specifically on both intended and emergent strategies. Strategic planning is a systematic process of envisioning a desired future, and translating this vision into broadly defined goals or objectives and a sequence of tepees to achieve them. In contrast to long-term planning (which begins with the current status and lays down a path to meet estimated future needs), strategic planning begins with the desired-end and works backward to the current status. Davis, 2012) According to Forbes, of the big tech companies, Amazon is the only one that even has a strategic approach to its business. The other companies in the technology pantheon may make the occasional strategic move, but most of their behavior seems to emerge from internal compromises, sudden impulses, pet projects, competitive anxiety, knee-jerk reactions or unexamined corporate values. This is actually the reason other companies seem so responsive to PR issues: when there isn’t much of a larger game-plan in progress, each move and counter-move ends up being considered in isolation.
The response can be optimally tailored to the immediate situation. With Amazon though, you get the sense that you are watching a chess game unfold, in which Amazon is thinking multiple moves ahead, along several fronts. The opponents seem to fumble, rant and rave, while Amazon continues to systematically dismantle them. (Ray, 2011) When you look at the evolution of the Amazon universe, you can tell that move y move, Amazon looks at the state of play, takes stock of its advantages, and works to make those advantages irresistible.
So irresistible that other players are forced to treat them as constraints and a cost of doing business rather than things to be countered. You can tell that there is very calculated timing behind every move. Certain moves are only attempted when the opposition is sufficiently weakened. (Ray, 2011) Yahoo’s 201 1 three-year strategy plan included a focus on personalization, mobile, social, improving Yahoo’s advertising tech platforms, and more. The enterprise of goals, called “Five Strategic Elements” were: 1) Infuse deep personalization using science and data into every consumer and advertising experience we build. ) Delight our customers with best-in-class products, iterating frequently for constant improvement. 3) Build for connected devices first with localized, in-context, multi-screen experiences in mind. 4) Power real social relationships with features that enable few conversations around content. 5) Build a digital media ecosystem that creates a premium marketplace for advertising and content and distributes Yahoo! Experiences across the Web. (Swisher , 2012) In 2012, Yahoo CEO Marimbas Mayer was reported to have said that she emphasized user growth, ad sales, and attracting better talent.
She appeared to be focusing on streamlining Yahoo’s operations. Business Insider said the company will only work on projects that can reach 1 00 million users or $100 million in revenue. (Samuels, 2012) Analyze the manner in which each compass distinctive competencies help to shape the strategies that each company pursues. Provide a rationale to support the response. A distinctive competency is a competency unique to a business organization, a competency superior in some aspect than the competencies of other organizations, which enables the production of a unique value proposition in the function of the business.
A distinctive competency is the basis for the development of an unassailable competitive advantage. The uniqueness differentiates this competency from all others, whether a core competency or simply a competency. (Koran, 1999) Yahoo’s CEO, Marimbas Mayer, has stated that she wants the company to focus on four “CSS:” culture, company goals, calibration and compensation. She’d also like Yahoo to focus on its core competencies (two bonus “Co’s”). Everyone also needs to move faster and get past Yahoo’s old “consensus culture” (two negative Co’s”). Mayer would also like Yahoo to become part of people’s daily routines.
And it should also focus on mobile! Mainly, though, Yahoo should focus on personalization. It should also add users, and grow usage, and also add advertisers and talent. In summary, culture + company + calibration + compensation – consensus = a daily mobile routine of personalized core competencies increasing users’ usage of talent-built, advertising-driven products. (Tate, 201 2) According to sources at California State Universities Center for Entrepreneurship, Amazon’s core competency used to be in e-commerce. But they have moved to come a content provider as well. Those are two core competencies that have little in common.
Couple that with becoming a hardware provider and industrial equipment provider, and the result is significant lack of clarity as to what Amazon does well, which could be a sign of trouble ahead for the firm. (Technician, 2012) Recommend one (1 ) functional level strategy for each company which prescribes the essential ways in which each may achieve superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and customer responsiveness. Provide a rationale to support the response. The management of a business relies on both a solid hard skill set and the effective use of soft skills.
The strategic decisions an organization makes concerning its operations and its framework of goals combine both hard and soft skills. Two management theories operational level strategy and functional level strategy have emerged to explain the ways organizations make decisions. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. (Bradley, 2008) Functional level strategy is a response to operational level strategy. It advocates for the business to see its management decisions as specific to a functional area of the organization, such as marketing, human resources, finance, information management and public relations.
The advantages of this are that employees and resources can be assigned to the tasks that best suit their skills and interests. If you have an employee with expertise in HRS, for instance, it makes logical sense to assign her to the human resources function instead of the finance division. Functional level strategy aims to see people and resources as an end in themselves, not a means to an end. (Bradley, 2008) Functional level strategy is quite useful from the standpoint of valuing the innate worth of the people and resources with an organization, but there are some disadvantages that are particularly evident in smaller businesses.
Oftentimes, small businesses combine several functions into one or a few departments. A business might not have enough staff or resources to separate HRS, technology, finance and other departments from one another. All of these functions might be performed by a few or even just one person. In these cases, functional level strategy is more difficult to employ because the tasks and strategies a business undertakes begin to look more like operations than they do functions. A good business manager can employ operational level strategy where it is appropriate and use functional level strategies where they fit in best. Bradley, 2008) An example of functional level strategy is finding and retaining the best people. Amazon attributes most of their success to hiring only intelligent, motivated job candidates. Amazon is an example off company that used its core competency in new information technology to successfully launch a combined differentiated and low-cost business level strategy that has upset the dual competitive environment that had co-existed before Amazon entered the retail booksellers domain.
