Supply chain amazon case study

Q2. Read the Case, “Amazon Supply Chain,” and address the following questions, 5-7 sentences each question separately does not need to be in essay:

Is Amazon a retailer, a logistics company, or a technology company? Explain.
How is Amazon’s supply chain different from that of traditional brick-and-mortar retailers?
What are the key advantages to the structure of Amazon’s supply chain and the company’s management of its supply chain operations? Support your analysis with data from the case.
What are the challenges Amazon faces, and what are the implications for its supply chain?
As Jeff Bezos, what steps would you take to improve Amazon’s supply chain? Why? Please, ground your response to this question in specific operations and supply chain management concepts and strategies.
W18451 AMAZON.COM: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT1 Ken Mark wrote this case under the supervision of Professor P. Fraser Johnson solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality. This publication may not be transmitted, photocopied, digitized or otherwise reproduced in any form or by any means without the permission of the copyright holder. Reproduction of this material is not covered under authorization by any reproduction rights organization. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, contact Ivey Publishing, Ivey Business School, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, N6G 0N1; (t) 519.661.3208; (e) cases@ivey.ca; www.iveycases.com. Copyright © 2018, Ivey Business School Foundation Version: 2018-11-06 On January 31, 2018, the market capitalization of Amazon.Com Inc. (Amazon) hit $702 billion, the highest level ever.2 When its fourth-quarter results were released on February 1, 2018, Amazon showed a 30-per-cent increase in revenues, to $60.5 billion for the quarter, and net income for the quarter had increased by 150 per cent, to $1.9 billion. 3 From its start as a venture looking to build “earth’s largest bookstore” in 1994, Amazon was now one of the most valuable companies in the world, and founder Jeff Bezos was the richest person on earth. In 2018, Amazon had an online store that sold its own products and listed products for sale by more than two million third-party sellers. 4 Since its founding, Amazon had added more than 30 store categories, ranging from electronics to furniture, selling millions of different products and making an estimated 1.2 billion domestic customer shipments in 2017. 5 Amazon Web Services, the company’s on-demand cloudcomputing service, generated $17.5 billion in sales in 2017. Amazon Prime Video had become a leader in video-streaming services, with original-content series and movies that rivalled the offerings of Netflix. Its Echo devices, powered by the artificial-intelligence assistant Alexa, had more than 30,000 skills and could be used to control smart-home devices. The popular Kindle e-reader boosted sales of Amazon ebooks. Amazon had increased its number of brick-and-mortar stores with the acquisition of Whole Foods Market (Whole Foods) in 2017. It had also opened AmazonFresh and Amazon Go grocery stores, as well as Amazon bookstores. With total shipping costs that exceeded $21 billion in the most recent fiscal year, 6 the company was taking steps to gain greater control of its supply chain—a strategy that could eventually put Amazon in direct competition with United Parcel Service of America Inc. (UPS) and Federal Express Corporation (FedEx). In recent years, it had expanded into ocean freight forwarding, opened an air cargo hub, built a truck fleet, and established a parcel delivery network.