See Below Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

See Below - Essay Example Sample Population: 5 medical personnel;10 transcriptionists of different cultures with at least three years of experience in the job; 6 major patients in the hospitals who know that their record of health developments is actually noted through transcriptioning The implications of this purposed research will prove or disprove the theory that transcription errors effect the patients length of stay. This could give significant documentation that computer entery orders are essential for optimal care. The collected for this study will be presented through a chart review. If a patient has a length of stay (LOS) longer than the admitting diagnosis DRG allows then that chart will be reviewed. Looking for medical transcription errors. If a second diagnosis was found during the stay the DRG allowance of LOS will determine if that chart will need to be review. (IE if a patient is dx with pneumonia the LOS is 3 days and they are in for 10 days. The initial review is looking for a secondary diagnosis if none then a complete chart review would take place.) FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE'S theory on the level of satisfaction that the patients receive based from the service of the nurses and medical per

Response Mc Graw-Hill Essay Example for Free

Response Mc Graw-Hill Essay With respect to the topic about the role of perception in a conflict, I am going to relate this to my personal conflict with a neighbor in the community that I live. I experience this conflict when our neighbor reprimanded my brother in a humiliating twice in different times for the reason that the latter used to play his radio component in high volume. Considering the distance of our houses, my mother believed that there was really no disturbance that was created by my brother. However, the said neighbor is still angry with us and tried to spread the issue around the neighborhood. That made my family more angry against our neighbor and we even showed disgust with him. As such, there are two things that are important for the same, and these include communication behaviors and the perceptions of these behaviors ( Hocker and Wilmot, 2001, p. 26). In addition to that, the way a conflict is characterized metaphorically creates a certain perception of what can happen, what will happen, what should happen and with what kind of feeling actions might take place (17). For instance, my perception with the conflict that I was involved was that, the constant show of utter disrespect my neighbor has shown me by wearing an angry face everytime I am around means that he disliked my presence. It may happen that I will do the same to my neighbor as a counter-reaction or maybe I will create a bad impression on him in my mind. I can detect that there are so many factors affecting my perceptions. The fact that I am also a guy, I hated my neighbor so much and his family background and cultural display are another factors of the conflict. Actually, my neighbor is a foreigner, particularly a Chinese. We have different cultural orientations and perceptions. He hates noise around him and knowing my brother who loves listening to loud music, they would really end up enemies by conflicting needs and likes. I am really affected to this conflict because it is a matter that affects my whole family. Reference Hocker, J. and Wilmot, W. (2001). Interpersonal Conflict. USA: Mc Graw-Hill.

Central Australian Food and Clothing Essay -- Culture Australia Essays

Central Australian Food and Clothing Weather and climate are immensely influential forces in every society, and central Australia demonstrates this nicely. Throughout history, the influence of weather has been evident. The aborigines, European settlers and modern Australians all had or have to negotiate the impacts of weather in their daily lives. The respective cultures of the aborigines and the Europeans are products of weather and worked together to create modern society in Australia. The modern culture has been produced by a combination of cultural and climatic forces and has changed over time as the different groups within it influenced each other. The cultural aspects that I will focus on in this paper are food and clothing. Both have been carefully shaped by cultural and climatic aspects over time, and demonstrate how the aborigines and European settlers influenced each other. In Australia the food commonly eaten today is a mixture of indigenous Australian food, food that was brought there by settlers in the 1800s, and food brought over by immigrants from Germany, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Israel, and Southeast Asia (Avameg 2007). Before British colonization, the Aborigines mostly ate meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and roots. Grubs, lizards, snakes and moths were an important part of their diets as well. The name for this category of food that is indigenous to Australia is â€Å"bush tucker† or bush food (Australian Government Culture and Recreation Portal 2007). Bush tucker is determined by weather and climate. The climate in a certain area dictates what can grow and live there. The aborigines eat whatever bush food is readily available in the area that they inhabit. An important staple for central Australian aborigines... ...ynergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-3010.1997.tb01069.x>. Lister, P.R., P. Holford, T. Haigh, and D.A. Morrison. 1996. Acacia in Australia: Ethnobotany and potential food crop. p. 228-236. In: J. Janick (ed.), Progress in new crops. ASHS Press, Alexandria, VA. November 25, 2007. . Martinez, Julia. â€Å"When wages were clothes: dressing down Aboriginal workers in the Northern Territory.† University of Wollongong and Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. 2005. November 27, 2007. . â€Å"Modern Australian fashion textiles.†October 12, 2007. Australian Government Culture and Recreation Portal. November 25, 2007. .

Project Risk Management

Project risk management is aimed a avoiding bad surprises once we start executing the project plan. During the creation of the project plan, we identify risk, analyses them and plan our action to avoid the risk, transfer it or implement a contingency plan if the risk occurs. After we have planned our risk management process for the project, we begin by identifying the risks that the project faces. It's important to remember that these risks can be adverse to the project in the sense of causing it to finish late or cost more.Risk can also be positive or favorable in that is may let us deliver what's expected for less cost and finish early. We do the risk identification process with the project manager, project sponsor, stakeholders and team members. Risk quantification is the process of evaluating the risks that have been identified and developing the data that will be needed for making decisions The objective of quantification is to establish a way of arranging the risks in the order of importance. In most projects there will not be enough time or money to take action against every risk that is identified.Risk response development involves defining enhancement steps for opportunities and responses to threats. These generally fall into three categories †¢ Avoidance – eliminating a specific threat, usually by eliminating the cause †¢ Mitigation – reducing the expected monetary value of a risk event by reducing the probability of occurrence, reduce the risk event value, or both. †¢ Acceptance – accepting the consequences. Risk response control is the process by which risks are kept in the forefront of management discussions and thus, reviewed on a cyclic basis.Items that the risk register will hold in order to monitor and drive this process will include: †¢ Outstanding action; †¢ Action owner; †¢ Action issue date; †¢ Action status; †¢ Action response; and †¢ Action close-out date. The Risk Control Group will monitor the progress of the implementation of the agreed risk control measures. This will ensure that all risk control measures are incorporated efficiently and that any variations in the measure or any changes to the risk profile are identified and appropriate action is taken. The Risk Register will be a dynamic, growing document and will be updated, amended and revised on a regular basis.

Appearance vs. Reality †Comparative Essay Essay

It is all about Looking Good: A Comparison between The Role of Appearance vs. Reality In Macbeth and Frankenstein.  Macbeth is one of the works of playwright William Shakespeare and it is considered one of his most powerful tragedies. It tells the story of a good warrior, Macbeth, who turns bad because of ambition and greed. It is a classic tale of biting more than one can chew. A few centuries later, an author named Mary Shelley wrote a gothic novel, Frankenstein, about a young scientist named Victor Frankenstein who creates a being and abandons it. The creature tries to be accepted by both society and his creator. Although these two texts are of different genres and eras, with Shakespeare’s play showing strong themes of ambition and corruption and Shelley’s novel showing themes of justice, madness and the sublime, both authors use the theme of appearance vs. reality. They use this to show how human judgment is based solely on appearances, how an individual can chang e because of this judgment and how appearance plays a role in determining one’s place in society. It is human nature to judge others on their outward looks. People depend mostly on their visual senses as the strongest point of judgment. For example, in the play Macbeth, Macbeth and his wife deceive the king with their actions and words to make him feel welcome while they are actually planning his murder. (Macbeth I. v). They know that people judge on appearance and decide to use it to their advantage. They act how they want people to see them, as loyal subjects of the king as opposed to deceitful, cunning and ambitious people which was what they really were. As said by Lady Macbeth, â€Å"to [deceive] the time, look like the time.† (Macbeth I. v.70-71). As vision is the primary sense of man, the basis of human judgment is the shape, colour or texture of the overall outward appearance. This determines if something is good or bad. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s creation had yellow skin, watery eyes and straight black lips. He was not what was considered beautiful (Shelley, 58). The creature looked ugly and vile, and ugly and vile is not considered good so it was judged as bad. Eventually, appearance catches up with reality and an individual could change or become what others think they are because of how they look. The judgment dished out by people can be harmful to both the individual being judged and the ones doing the judging. It can lead to one building up different feelings inside of them. In Macbeth’s case, it led to overconfidence. He started out good; he was a brave and loyal warrior for his country (Macbeth I. ii.30-45). Then he committed a murder to satisfy his ambition to become king (II. ii) and he got away with it because no one could guess from the way he acts the bad intentions he has or the crime he has committed. He goes on killing and still no can tell because everyone keeps judging based on what they see on the outside. Macbeth reaches a point where he decides to let â€Å"the very firstlings of [his] heart be the very firstlings of [his] hand† (IV. i.161-162). By this time, Macbeth has turned into a tyrant and this is harmful to both him and the people of Scotland. Likewise, the judgment dished out for Frankenstein’s creation had a detrimental effect. He was initially compassionate and thoughtful until his naà ¯ve view of humans was destroyed by the unjust cruelty he faced (â€Å"Frankenstein- The Theme of Appearance.† 1). The creature was good but was never given the chance to so much as speak before he was turned away because of the way he looked (Shelley, 108). Eventually, he becomes threatening and malicious because of the hurtful treatment he had to bear (Shelley 148). Wrong judgment can have an effect, as shown in both Macbeth and the creature’s situation. The one difference is that Macbeth was already ambitious but got worse while in the creature’s case, he completely turned around and went from good to bad. In both cases, each individual’s place in society was affected. People are ranked into categories in society. It creates a social hierarchy where everyone knows their place and who they should associate with. There are ways to determine this and appearance plays a role. For example, if there was no predetermined idea of how good things should look and instead morals, intelligence and compassion was emphasized more than one’s outward appearance, Frankenstein’s creature would never have suffered isolation because of his unattractiveness (â€Å"Frankenstein- The Theme of Appearance.† 1). His place in society is at the very bottom because he has no one else who is willing to be associated with him and no one else who is like him. In Macbeth’s case, he was aiming for the highest rank; Kingship. In his time, a  king is considered closest to God and therefore the highest position in social hierarchy. Macbeth kills the king to become king and because no one judged him as capable of committing such an act, but instead judged him on how he appeared to be a loyal subject of the king, he attained the highest position in society. The theme of things not always being as they should be has been used throughout the history of literature. This is shown by Shakespeare and Shelley who wrote in completely different contexts and centuries. They show how judging based on appearances can have an effect on the individual, how the visual sense is man’s strongest sense so judgment is instinctively based on appearances and how the way one looks puts them in their place in society. The prejudice of looking good meaning being good and looking bad meaning being bad has been around for a while and will probably be around for as long as humans are able to see. Works Cited. â€Å"Frankenstein – Theme of Appearance.† 1999. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. 2nd ed. Ken Roy. Toronto: Nelson, 2001. Print. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. New York: Penguin, 1992. Print.

The Colony I Would Live In

The Colony I Would Live In During the late 1200's early 1600's Europeans first started bring settlers over to America.In1585, Sir Walter Raleigh decided to settle in America. An attempt which failed. As settlers kept coming over, there became thirteen colonies. These colonies were divided into sections. New England which was: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. The Middle Colonies which were: Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. Last but not least, Southern Colonies consisted of: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Out of these thirteen colonies, I'd want to live in the Massachusetts, a colony in the New England section.Massachusetts was a great colony to live in. After all, you are guinea pigs. The people who sailed on the Mayflower were very lucky. Even though most of them died, the survivors must be strong enough to do anything. Massachusetts was a very important colony and is one of the most outstanding of the thirteen.English: This is a pa inting of Simon Bradstreet, w...New England has bad soil, and long winters, which made it hard to make a lot of money off of farming. Therefore, New Englanders made grain mills and sawmills. New England were very good shipbuilders and had good trade with other countries. In Massachusetts, the fish industry really helped boost their economy. On the other hand, the Southern Colonies made a lot of money from farming, like growing rice, tobacco, and cattle. The Middle Colonies grew wheat. I don't think farming in a very good way to make money, because it requires a lot of laborious tasks.The fact that New England didn't need so much land for farming helped it become a tight knit community. They had a village school, a village church and a town hall. Within three years, the Pennsylvania colony's (part of the Middle Colonies) population had gone from zero...

Amazon Strategic Analysis Essays

Amazon Strategic Analysis Essays Amazon Strategic Analysis Essay Amazon Strategic Analysis Essay The overview of Amazon. com Amazon. com is an e-commerce company from America. The company was found by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and was one of the first major companies to sell goods on the Internet. It began as a solely online bookstore. With years of successful development its main business diversified into many other products and services in a wide range. Today Amazon. com has become one of the biggest online retailers and web services provider in the world. The chart below shows the financial performance of Amazon in recent years.From 2007 to 2011, the revenue increased dramatically in contrast with the net income. According the latest data revealed, by the end of 2012, Amazon’s revenue was over 61 billion US dollars. Under the strategy of internalization Amazon. com has developed separate websites for Canada, UK, Germany, France, China and so on. It also has many customer service centers and fulfillment warehouses in many countries. Figure 1 [pic] Source from: http://healthcare. globaldata. com/expertinsightdetails. aspx? prid=985 This report is divided into a few sections.The first section is to analyze Amazon’s strategic position through a deep research of its external environment. In this section, approaches like PESTLE and Porter’s Five Force Model are deployed to find out Amazon’s competitive environment. The second section is to investigate the internal environment of the company. The SWOT analysis tool will be used to present a clear picture of the company and its performance. The third section introduces the business model of Amazon and shows how the company performed in recent years and gets the strategic position of the company.In the last section, all these analysis above are used to evaluate the suitability of Amazon’s corporate strategy, some real business cases and literature reviews are involved to get best criteria. The main purpose of this report is construct a link between the business environment and the strategy employed. To avoid the confusions brought from multiple markets and segments, in this report the strategy we analyzed will be in a corporate level. Considering the access to information and case timeliness, the time frame will be focus on 2007 to 2012. 1. 2 Amazon’s business model and primary businessAs the pioneer on the Internet and online retailer, Amazon faced large potential opportunities and rapidly growing markets. In the beginning of 21 century, Amazon joined the booming of Internet industry with other great organizations like Google and Yahoo and launched to a rapidly expanding. Benefits from upsurge of internet sector stocks, Amazon raised a large amount of cash from share market and this ensured its expansion over the world. In addition, compared to traditional retailing, Amazon’s business model had clear competitive advantages, such as more reasonable price, more purchase convenience and larger variety of products.Furthermore, Amazon also clearly secured the first-mover advantage. It has best reputation on the book retailing, mature logistic and supply chain, and large database and so on. In addition, Amazon’s business model was varying diversified due to its media channels; it could easily expand its product ranges to other products. The amazon. com business model assumes that the expanding number of Internet users will create a new mass market with value low prices and convenience. And they will shop for a large number of their needs using the computer. By removing the overheads of a traditional bricks-and-mortar store amazon. om is able to reduce the costing and so charge customers at lower prices. Amazon has three main distinct businesses: Amazon retail; Amazon marketplace and Amazon web services (Edwards, Lisa, 2013). Amazon retail started from online bookstore and then expanded to many other products like electronics. Amazon marketplace is a third-party selling platform which allows individuals to sell goods and services online. Moreover, this online marketplace also has some other functions like fulfillment and Amazon check out, which is similar with the PayPal. Amazon web service is an integration of leveraged technology developed by Amazon.They are mainly based on its online retail platform and offer customers web services like Amazon Cloudwatch and Amazon CloudFront. In the environment analysis (PESTLE and Porter’s Five Forces) we mainly focus on Amazon retail business. Strategic position of Amazon The external environment is referred as the macro-environment. This includes the broad environmental factors which affects organizations at various levels. It is important to consider the potential impact of the external factors on the individual organizations (Johnsonet al, 2006, P65).To have a deeply understanding on Amazon’s strategic position, we firstly analyze its external environment of the company through the PESTEL model. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, his expectation to his company is not just profits. According to the mission statement of the group, customer centric and technological innovation seems to be the priorities of his business. Amazon desires to be Earth’s most customer centric company. And this determines that Amazon’s strategic position will be more concentrate on the growth of the group and enable it to be a great enterprise rather than a money maker. . 1 PESTLE analysis PESTEL analysis is used to identify how future trends in the political, economical, social, technological environments might influence an organization (Johnsonet al, P65). Those drivers of change in these aspects will be found out and their impacts on more than the industry will be identified. Political factors: Promotions from government are essential to the Internet industry. From 21 century, the USA government started high investment to the national infrastructures and this leads to the boom of the development of Internet industry over the world.This stimulates the number of personal computers and connection with networks globally. More and more people around the world today have opportunities to shopping on the internet and spend hours of their daily time on it. The construction of network and increasing transportation between countries means that a consumer from UK could choose purchase goods from an American online retailer. The telecom liberalization promotes faster and better access for national users to websites in other countries. And with the spread of the construction of Internet, more and more consumers from developing countries have chances to browse the Amazon. om and purchase on it. This has positive impacts on Amazon’s globalization and international expansion. However, restrictive policies in some countries may limit the operation of the Amazon especially in international expansion. For example, Google. com is banned in China since governmental decision arguing that it threats the community and national market with inappropriate content. Some region protective polices also pose obstacles for Amazon in its international expansion. These problems need been taken consideration in Amazon’s globalization strategy and should been avoided.Economic factors One significant benefit brought from the economy development is the increasing disposable income in recent decades. Even though the world economy was attacked by the financial crisis and downturn, the developing countries, mainly China and India, provide more potential and real purchasing power for the e-retailing industry. Amazon. com had expanded its business into these two countries with insufficient attention. The strategy direction under this trend is recommended that to put more attention for those growing markets and to adjust their marketing strategies.The fluctuant interest rate is another factor effecting Amazon’s business and profits. Today the credit card use is more and more popular and more acceptable by e-retailing merchants. Meanwhile the installment is welcome to those consumers who have less cash. When consumers decide to pay in installment, they usually have to pay extra fees in a fixed interest rate which refer to the current bank rate. Therefore the changing interest rate could obviously influence consumers’ outcome and profits of merchants. For Amazon, the expectation of the future interest rate is an important tool in its products pricing and payment scheme.Exchange rate Since Amazon is a US-based company, if the U. S. dollar weakens against foreign currencies, transactions conducted in foreign currency denominations will increase and inflate revenues, operating expenses, and net income. Moreover, one of Amazon’s corporate strategies are profit from lower pricing and large volume, which means the fluctuation of exchange rate could extremely influence Amazon’s pricing management. Social-cultural factors Figure 2 [pic] Source: gesterling. wordpress. com. From: http://webscience. org/web-observatory/about/tracking-explosive-growth/Data from Webscience. org indicates that growth of internet from 2004, the users internet increased dramatically by over 2 billion and this period is called social web stage. The social web media users including Facebook and Twitters account large amount of the population. This creates a new channel for promotion. It is good news for Amazon to expand their business and develop related marketing promotion through this new channel. Collaborations with these new social web like facebook and twitter means seizing huge potential customers and wider promotion chain.This part will be more detailed introduced in later SWOT analysis sector. Other cultural factors which play significant effects on Amazon’s operation is the habits of shopping online for public. In past, e-business sounds like a high-tech thing and is far away from public consumers. In 1996, the marketing and internet teams from IBM coined the term e-business and defined it as the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) in support of all the activities of business. At beginning this kind of business activities are acceptable in high-tech industries and more popular between companies.With the development of internet and population of personal computer use, today all sectors especially individuals have been the main users in this business activities. The B2C or C2C business models could be seen everywhere in today’s online retailing and the awareness of shopping online is common and usual in our daily lives. Technological factors As mentioned before, from 1990s, the information evolution stimulated the science boom in the internet industry and this changed the communication forms of human beings. There is an increase in broadcasting, information and telecommunication technologies for internet access.Individuals today are more easy to receive information through Internet and they also search things and information on the web. This provides Amazon initials to set up a platform to carry out their business and web services. In addition, the trend of computerized office enables those big groups to seek web services from high-tech companies like IBM and Cisco. Amazon has first move advantages in this area. In 2002, Amazon launched Amazon Web Service (AWC) which provides programmatic access to latent features on its website. The demands of this kind of service help Amazon expand its business from traditional e-retailer to a wider market.And this part will be presented in later SWOT analysis. Environmental factors Power resource shortage It is well known that the global climate crisis has been a serious problem today and one of the most reasons for this problem is pollution from transportations like vehicle and bus. The lack of energy power like petrol and diesel also restricts people’s daily outdoor activities in a certain range. And these problems play positive effects on the e-retailing industry since customers can do purchasing before a computer. They do not need to drive miles to a super market in the town center.The convenience and energy saving makes certain influences when consumers doing a weekend purchasing. Customers are more concerned about whether their orders could arrive safely and timely. Therefore it is important for Amazon to improved their fulfillment center and logistic channel to provide best customer satisfaction and to reinforce their leadership in this industry. Legal factors There is no uniform regulations governing e-commerce in USA and UK but some related regulations like Data Protection Act in UK and Federal Trade Commission in USA may impact potential risk in Amazon’s operations, especially in its AWC web services.The mass surveillance scandal occurred in 2013 which is leaded by CIA and NSA in America. Although this kind of secret surveillance programs are always away from public eyes those international internet companies like Google could be involved in such sensitive cases. Amazon needs be aware of this kind of cases and at least keeps out from an affair. In addition, bad news revealed months before is that for Amazon in its China market is that the Chinese government may take actions to charge e-retailers taxes for their online transactions. China government had no clear tax payment act against the online purchase before.This will obviously influence those e-retailers in China market since they have to pay extra money if they still want a competitive pricing. For Amazon, it has to change its overall marketing strategy to prepare the future. Summary of PESTEL The analysis of PESTLE indicates an increasing and attractive market to be exploited by Amazon. The key drivers of changes enable Amazon to reposition its strategy in different levels. The increasing number of computer users means huge potential customers of its e-retailer business. The use of internet as a social networking channel has created new opportunities to be exploited.The global nature of Amazon’s activities also suggests that strategies developed should comply with the different legal obligations internationally. The possible regulations acted by Chinese government means Amazon has to change marketing strategies in its penetration to this huge market. 2. 2 Industry and competitive environment analysis - Porter’s Five Forces Model In this section, the operating environment will be taken a closer look at the e-retailer industry, to be more specific, the online bookstore and electronics industry which Amazon is mainly involved.The analysis is based on Michael Porter’s (1980) Five-Force model. Porter’s five forces consist of entry, threat of substitution, bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers and rivalry among current competitors. These five forces jointly determine the intensity of competition within the industry and in turn help firms to set their strategies. We will use the proposed Porter’s five forces model to the state of competition on the e-retailing industry analysis in order to understand the the intensity of competition. Threat of new entrantThreat of new entrants is low. It would be virtually impossible for a new company to reach the magnitude of inventory and status that Amazon. com maintains. Amazon. com has been in the internet marketplace for about thirteen years now- it would be extremely difficult for a start-up company in the industry to raise enough capital to even compete with Amazon. com on a lower level. Figure 3 [pic] Source: gesterling. wordpress. com Although the cost to set up a new online bookstore is not high and more and more big traditional merchants try to enter this market today.To following the trend of shopping online, even those supermarkets like Tesco could set up a similar website to compete with Amazon. However, Amazon has been in the internet marketplace for more than thirteen years and it has extremely built its first move advantages. Few competitors could raise enough capital to even compete with Amazon in a high level. Amazon also built its brand recognition in American and UK markets. Brand Recognition and customer loyalty may also make it difficult for a new entrant to compete.The mature technology platform, long tested web structure, mature supply chain and distribution chain, all of these construct barriers for new entrants to compete with Amazon (Harry M; Cristina L, 2009) . However, in some countries Amazon does not have its first move advantages. For example, in China the Dangdang. com is the first online bookstore and Taobao. com is the biggest online retailer. Amazon is late to enter this big market and lost its competitive advantages. So it is high threats from new entrants for Amazon in Chinese market and other countries which Amazon has not entered in early. Bargaining power of buyersThe bargaining power of buyers is relatively high. Due to thousands of e-retailers existing in the internet, Amazon’s customers have options to compare and choose which one is better. The price of books and electronic products today is transparent on the web. It means the cheaper price you offer, the more preferable customers you own. Fortunately since Amazon does not operate its physical retailers, it has lowered overheads cost and could pass these savings along to customers in the form of lower prices. Moreover, the quality of products is another important factor to affect customers’ purchasing.Thanks to the long-tested operations, Amazon enjoys a better reputation and good recognition in the online book retailing. When sometimes the Amazon’s price is equal to or even higher than other retailers, customer may choose Amazon in consideration of its better reputation. Bargaining power of supplier Amazon. com Inc 2011 Annual report acknowledges the impact the supplier possess, since the company does not have long-term arrangements with most of its suppliers to guarantee availability of merchandise or services. Bargaining power of supplier is relatively high in their electronic business sector.Amazons Low Cost strategy has made it difficult for it to buy electronic products in lower prices from distributors since today more and more brands have set up their own direct sale store online. Threat of product substitute With the population of mobile and high integration of personal terminal devices, customers receive information more easily; this is not a good news for the book sale on Amazon’s online bookstore. Threats from iTunes and iBook also effect e-books and CD/DVD sales in the Kindles. Moreover, physical bookstores have an established brand in their brick and mortar business.Customers may not be satisfied with the shopping experience. In addition, with the technology developing, people’s reading habit may get changed and this could certainly influence Amazon’s traditional book sales. Intensity of competitors Resulted from Amazon’s diversification strategy, its products portfolio is covering many industries like books, electronics and other goods. Therefore Amazon faces high rivalry from competitors in different industries. In the electronic products sector, Amazon does not enjoy a success in the market. The serious problem of privacy leads Amazon’s CD and DVD products’ poor sales.With more and more brands set up their own direct-sale store on the internet, those digital products like PC and camera in Amazon can not keep its price advantage. Figure 4 [pic] Source: gigaom. com , from: http://gigaom. com/2010/09/24/e-book-numbers-hint-at-amazon-domination/ Amazon owns unique competitive advantages in its online bookstore markets especially in the e-book segment. In this sector, Kindle, an electronic reading device developed by Amazon needs to be analyzed. This device was unveiled in 2007 and it enabled customers to download book, magazine, newspaper and blogs.There are over 90 thousand books available in the Kindle in the beginning. By 2008 Kindle became a top selling product in Amazon’s electronic products and over 190 thousand books are available (Gary J. Stockport, 2009). The chart above shows the market share of Kindle in e-book segment. Kindle built a tight connections between readers and Amazon and it provides more potential customers for Amazon retailer. Kindle has been an important tool for Amazon reinforcing its leader position in the online bookstore. 2. 3 Internal environment analysis- SWOT Strengths Cost leadership strategy. Amazon has mature systems to control its cost and o deliver customers lower prices with better quality than competitors do. No overhead cost of physical retailer and high bargaining power to suppliers enables Amazon to maintain price advantages against competitors. Efficient logistics and distribution. Amazon has a number of fulfillment warehouses in each market it operates. The warehouses are geographically spread in each country so the goods could be dispatched faster and with lower cost. Advanced technology. Amazon invests lot of money in technology development including long tested platform and superior web services for customers. Weaknesses No physical store.Although this could brings less cost, no physical store may caused Amazon to lose a number of customers who prefer doing shopping in physical stores. The large budget on RD program and platform running. It needs a lot of money to keep the running of Amazon’s platform. And some of high technology results can not achieve to be profitable in the short term. Opportunities Amazon marketplace payment system. The payment system provides Amazon a fixed financial tool and cash to expand its business. Access to more brands and products. Amazon could benefit from a wide range of products and brands through its marketplace and online retailer platform.Increasing services and product portfolio through acquisitions. Amazon expands its business through acquisitions to other industries. The skills and business acquired from alliance help Amazon reach a diversification goal. The mature logistics and distribution channel. The construction of its own logistics and distribution channels not only builds an efficient shipping but also provides opportunities to easier access to other industries. Rise of social web. The sharply rise of social web like Facebook and Twitter provides Amazon a more efficient media channel to its market promotion. Threats Online transaction fraud.Amazon stores its online shoppers’ personal information, such as bank account details, which might lead to payment fraud. And the Amazon marketplace business could also be maliciously used by some merchants. Negative actions from governments. Governments may set up actions to charge tax for e-retailer merchants, for example in Chinese market. And the e-retailer platform may be used to tax avoidance by some users. Suitability of Amazon’s corporate strategies In this section, the strategic position based on Amazon’s business environment analysis will be deployed to evaluate the suitability of Amazon’s strategy in corporate level.To make objective and rational judgment, some Amazon’s corporate strategies which reflected in its particular business activities will be identified. Corporate-level strategy is concerned with the overall purpose and scope of an organization and how value will be added to the different parts of the organization (Jim Riley, 2011). It means corporate strategies are used to plan the long-term direction for the organization as a whole; it deals with capabilities including financial capital, human resources and RD sources. Amazon states its mission as to be Earth’s most customer centric company.In this section, three main corporate strategies will be described and their suitablilties based on strategic positions will evaluated. If not suitable, some recommendations will be developed. 3. 1 Growth through lower cost structure and lower prices. In a letter to customers Jeff Bezos (CEO and founder of Amazon) states his corporate goals: There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp. Deliver best value to customers is one of the core strategies of Amazon to make it success.Figure 5 [pic] Source: www. amazon. co. uk , from: amazon. co. uk/b? ie=UTF8node=2610308031 The figure above shows Amazon’s core strategy and its business model. The lower prices and better services could be the best feedback to customers and these welfares have to be based on its lower cost structure. Amazon is well known as the cost leadership in the industry and it certainly delivers customers lower price and better service. The goal of cost leadership strategy is to produce products and services with a lower cost than the competitors do.It seems like only a company possessing customer centric could survive in today’s marketing orientation environment in any cases. To reach customers satisfaction, Amazon not only provides lower prices but also pushes off serious of promotion. Kindle is good example welfare bringing benefits to customers. As introduced in the Five Forces analysis before, Kindle brings convenience and benefits for readers around the world and profits Amazon by attracting numbers of potential customers. Another successful tool developed by Amazon is Prime.A brief introduction of Prime is: Paying $79 annually, customers get unlimited movie and TV streaming, one free borrowed e-book per month, and automatic two-day shipping on nearly everything you buy (Amazon. com, 2008). At the beginning, Amazon provided free Prime promotion when purchasing of the company’s bestselling Kindle Fire. And this made the Prime members dramatically increase to 10 million by 2012 (Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP). Prime created a $79 switch costs for customers if they chose to shop elsewhere. Reports from CIRP (2012) also found that, thosePrime members annually spent more than twice as much on average ($1,224) than non-Prime customers ($505). Adding in the $79 membership fee, Prime members brought nearly $800 more in sales per customer to Amazon. And adding cost of those benefits like unlimited movie and TV streaming, Prime members brought far more $79 profits to Amazon and they also benefited from this Prime project. It is a win-win situation for both Amazon and customers. Most Amazon’s promotions are effective and really bring customers benefits. However sometimes wrong forms of promotion could negatively impact a company’s marketing strategy.As analyzed in the PESTLE sector, in some countries where Amazon is late to enter, Amazon’s lower price strategy is not suitable for these markets. Since Amazon does not have its own physical store, it is difficult for Amazon to compete with those local brands. The excessive price strategy might cause a price war, which may result in a cut-throat competition. If Amazon does not have the first move advantage in an international expansion, the better pricing strategy is not simply lower than its competitors. Since Amazon is an international organization over the world, it is easily affected by the fluctuation of the exchange rate.In the PESTLE analysis, it analyses the fluctuation of exchange rate could make Amazon difficult to manage its pricing strategy. The simple lower price strategy is not suitable for today’s changing economic environment and Amazon has to engage for a balance between lower prices and profits in consideration of marketing environment. 3. 2 Technological innovation strategies Figure 6 [pic] Source: www. atkearney. com From: atkearney. com/paper/-/asset_publisher/dVxv4Hz2h8bS/content/finding-what-every-ict-services-provider-craves-healthy-profits/1019 [pic] Source: William Blair; The Economist.From: economist. com/node/21530980/print When Bezos was asked by the question what is the main difference between conventional retail and his business, the answer was the most important thing in retail is location and in his business is technology’. Amazon believed technology could help to offer better customer experience, to improve efficiency, to ultimately lower operating costs and enables the company to offer lower prices to customers. And they did continually invest on the technology innovation. From 2007 to 2009, it spent a number of major technological achievements on Kindle and AWC development.The figure 6 indirectly indicates the increasing spend in IT industry. For Internet companies, advanced technology is the core competitiveness. In the previous PESTLE analysis, Amazon’s strategic position on the technological factor determines that it can not fall behind those competitors like Google and Apple in the intensive competitive environment. Falling behind means you have to be eliminated, an old adage that said. Science and technology constitutes a primary productive force in 21 century, especially for those internet companies (Teece, David J, 2010).The most disruptive technological innovations by Amazon could be the Amazon Web Service (AWC). One of the most important products in AWC is Amazon’s cloud. And a number of big technology companies including Google and IBM have already embraced the cloud computing revolution. However, Amazon is commonly regarded as being the most popular and more commercialized than any of its competitor’s offerings (Gary J. Stockport, 2009). In a recent research, Barb Darrow (2013) suggests that Amazon’s cloud is bigger, more profitable than we think. Figure 7 [pic] From: slashgear. om/apple-icloud-vs-google-music-beta-vs-amazon-cloud-drive-07157822/ Figure 7 shows the total cloud market share is estimated to be $820 billion in 2014 and this number will steady increase in future. Figure 8 indicates that the gross profit of AWS could be $14. 8 billion in 2012, which accounts for a large proportion in Amazon’s overall profits. AWC is not only a strategic weapon that gives Amazon competitive advantages but also creates real income for the group. Good performance of Amazon’s technological achievement ensures its suitability in its technological innovation strategy. Figure 8 pic] From:http://seekingalpha. com/article/964201-amazons-stock-price-is-benefiting-from-irrational-exuberance 3. 3 Diversification and Marketing development strategies Amazon engages to offer customers all goods and services to meet their demands. Reviewing Amazon’s history, it started from an online bookseller to a diversified international organization and has been the largest e-retailer on the Internet today. The development of this great company is accompanied by the diversification of its product line and the strategy of diversification has been a core driver of its future directions.In this section, three types of diversification strategy of Amazon will be analyzed and evaluated in considering its strategic positions. There are millions of items sold in Amazon category ranging from books, electronics and so on. According to the PESTLE analysis and Five Forces Model, the complete retail goods line not only attracts millions of customers every year but also provides Amazon competitive advantages in a intensive rivalry. Research from Tommy D (2009) suggests that customer prefer to choose e-retailer that could provide more items since its convenience and reliability.In addition, the increasing products of books and video reinforce Amazon’s leader position in the online bookstore market and build brand recognition and customers loyalty. With the increasing numbers of brands sales in Amazon retail, it is easier for Amazon’s access more brands and this could increases its bargaining power against supplier, which means lower cost and lower prices for customers. Despite from Amazon retail, the diversification strategies are implemented in Amazon’s other related industries, for example, the fulfillment warehousing and payment system. The fulfillment and warehousing help Amazon construct ts complete logistics and distribution channel. The development of Amazon’s warehousing locations makes it easier to access to the express industry, which is an opportunity to enter other industries (Yogeshn, 2010). The payment system of Amazon Marketplace and Amazon retail could be a powerful financial tool which provides not only sustainable cash but also other hidden benefits. It is suggested that Amazon should pay more attention on its payment system. Its main competitor in US market, e-bay, developed pay-pal as a important payment tool in American customers’ daily purchasing activities.To achieve its diversification strategy, Amazon also did a lot of acquisitions and alliances. Over the 2007 to early 2009 period, strategically aligned acquisitions and alliances remained a key way for Amazon to pursue technology development. Through new skills and expertise from acquisitions, Amaz