Amazon.Com - Project Paper Essay Example for Free

Amazon.Com Project Paper Essay Amazon.com is obsessed with fervour to serve consumer and shareholder alike. Since its inception over fifteen years ago, Amazon.com has steadily grown from a burgeoning â€Å"dot-com† corporation into a multinational monster, a king in the domain of internet retail. It targets two goals: the satisfaction of a customer and efficient corporate growth. Its marketing strategies are near-legendary, and budding business should take a page – or several chapters – from Amazon.com’s proven marketing manual. Amazon.com History Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO, dreamed about books. In 1994, he created Amazon.com, Inc., which he labelled as â€Å"Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.† The ecommerce company went online in 1995 and soon expanded into other media, including DVDs, VHS, CDs, MP3s, and eventually a wide range of other products, including toys, electronics, furniture and apparel. As such, the tagline soon changed to â€Å"Earth’s Largest Selection.† But books were only the beginning of Bezo’s up-and-coming enterprise. Amazon.com went public in 1997. In the first shareholder letter, Bezos penned the fundamental foundation for Amazon.com’s success: â€Å"Start with customers and work backwards †¦ Listen to customers, but don’t just listen to customers – also invent on their behalf †¦ Obsess over customers.† This policy was backed by a startling business philosophy – Bezos planned on operating at a loss for 4-5 years. It was not until 2001 that Amazon.com posted a net profit at a minuscule one-cent per share. Yet, despite its bizarre business strategy, Amazon.com claimed over 1.4 million customers after only two years of being online. Now, 45 million satisfied customers shop at Amazon.com for everything from books (most popular) to fashion apparel to fine jewellery to Christmas toys. It has one of the most recognized brand names in the world and garners an estimated 50% of its sales from overseas consumers. Surviving the dot-com bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Amazon weathered the e-storms and now thrives in the retail marketplace, challenging vending giants like Wal-Mart and Target. Focused on technological innovation and entered on customer fulfilment, Amazon.com proceeds into the next decade with a profit firmly in one hand, and the capacity to blow it out of the water in the other hand. Amazon.com’s Business Philosophy Despite its massive growth, Amazon.com remains unremittingly focused on the consumer. Out of 452 company goals in 2009, 360 directly affected customer experience. Amazon.com’s self-proclaimed mission statement is: â€Å"We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for three primary customer sets: consumer customers, seller customers and developer customers.† Vision Amazon’s vision is to be Earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online. Mission The company’s six core values: customer obsession, ownership, bias for action, frugality, high hiring bar, and innovation. Motto The company motto: ‘Work Hard, Have Fun, and Make History’. Question 1 Amazon currently operates in two markets: the business-to-business (offering Internet retailing services) and consumer markets (retailing consumer goods). Identify the characteristics of the two types of buyers and markets. Amazon is an online bookstore that trades books from numerous originators including Wrox, O’Reilly, Premier Press, and so on. In this case, the publishers have the option of either developing their own site or exhibiting their books on the Amazon site (www.amazon.com), or both. The publishers usually prefer to display their books on www.amazon.com at it gives them a larger audience. Currently, to do this, the publishers want to deal with Amazon, involving seller and buyer, is the B2B model. Amazon derives about 40% of its sales from affiliate marketing called Amazon Associates and third-party sellers who sell products on Amazon. Associates receive a commission for referring customers to Amazon by placing links on their websites to Amazon, if the referral results in a sale. Worldwide, Amazon has over 900,000 members in its affiliate programs. Amazon reported over 1.3 million sellers sold products through Amazons World Wide Web sites in 2007. Amazon sellers do not have to maintain separate payment accounts; all payments are handled by Amazon. Associates can access the Amazon catalogue directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service. A new affiliate product, aStore, allows Associates to embed a subset of Amazon products within another website, or linked to another website. In June 2010, Amazon Seller Product Suggestions was launched (rumoured to be internally called Project Genesis) to provide more transparency to sellers by recommending specific products to third-party sellers to sell on Amazon. Products recommended are based on customers browsing history. Characteristic of B2B Amazon uses B2B by providing the opportunity to purchase and sell all types of products via the internet. It allows for relationships to be established in order to complete sales and business transactions. Additionally, providing email address and having personalized memberships are methods for dispensing sale ads and providing discount coupons is a use of the internet by Amazon. Rather than producing time-intensive and costly physical copies for each consumer, a central server or email list can serve as an efficient method for distributing necessary information to the general public The characteristic of B2B is a long-term: Usually involves negotiations and contractual commitments between long-term trading partners (E.g. Suppliers, manufacturers). Thus, also generates high sales revenue and volume. Significant characteristic is relationship driven not product driven. The BCB model enhances maximization of the value of the relationship and bonding. Buyers and sellers work more closely together and build long-term relationships. Thus rational buying decision is based on business value. The sales cycle in the B2B world is often much longer and more complex. It mainly maximizes on the value of relationships. Amazon focuses on maintaining communication and building relationships. Marketing activities involving lead generation that can be nurtured during the sales cycle can be used to attain this goal. B2B features a multi-step buying process that needs more than one person to decide on the purchase thus B2B companies employ marketing to educate its target audience. Take for example in an email campaign, objective of Amazon is to drive prospects to the site to learn about their products and services. High expectations for service: Customised services and goods delivery and managing inventory for business partners that extend the supply chain so companies can respond on minute-by-minute basis. Knowledgeable buyers: Suppliers (Amazon associates) and buyers who understand and well-versed in trading in their industry. Involving more buyers, with extensive decision process, the process is more tedious and complex. The buying becoming is more formalised professional purchasing effort. Nevertheless, B2B models always emphasis in educational and awareness building activities to grasp repeat business. Characteristic of B2C The above B2C model reflects an individual consumer transact with business organisation, consumer searches for a book on Amazon site and places an order, if required. The B2C category has expanded greatly in the late 1990s with the growth of public access to the Internet. It largely equates to electronic retailing and its main objective is to aggressively convince prospective buyers to shop. B2C companies, including Amazon employ different marketing campaigns for publicizing their goods and services. This would include coupons, vouchers, email blasts, banner ads, limited edition offers and the likes to entice their target market to buy. These campaigns are much shorter in duration thus the urgent need to secure the customer’s interest very quickly. The B2C model of e-commerce is more prone to security threats because individual consumers provide their credit card and personal information in the site of a business organization. In addition, the consumers might doubt that his/he r information is secured and used effectively by the business organization. This is the main reason why the B2C model is not very widely accepted. Therefore, it becomes very essential for the business organization to provide robust security mechanisms that can be guarantee a consumer for securing his information. Consumer markets are the markets for products and services bought by individuals for their own or family use. B2C sales are more engrossed on a very large market segment; market is the total sales market of consumers. There is very little discrimination or qualification of potential customers. If the product appeals to them, then they are a customer to which Amazon may sell their product. And B2C or businesses that sell consumers more focussed on transactional relationship. However, the traffic volume is very critical due to high volume, low unit value. This characteristic explains that number of customers is many or large target market but limited purchase unit or value. Similar to FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) are products that are sold quickly and at relatively low cost. Nevertheless there is fast repurchase derived or in another words frequent purchases. B2C sales are driven by highlighting the advantages of the product and its usefulness. Depending on how the product is presented to the end user, it may appeal to them based on novelty, ease of use, appearance or price. Usually the aspects of status, desire and price can lead to emotional buying decision. Besides that in B2C, since it is product driven, the product and its features also able to influence customer during the point of sale. B2C characteristic is inclusive a single step buying process, shorter sales cycle. The path to purchase must be short and simple – just a few clicks from email receipt to order confirmation. Any more than a couple of clicks and the customer are likely to abandon the shopping cart. The call to action must be obvious and the offer enticing. Besides that email campaigns often highlight special deals and discount that can be used both online and in store. They can also be informative especially if the aim is to build the brand and enhance customer loyalty. Loyalty is an important aspect in B2C marketing. This proved very true for company like Amazon. They combine good customer service and education on their product and services thus their customers keep coming back. Amazon’s brand identity created through repetition and imagery.

Inclusive Herbaria :: Botany

Inclusive Herbaria IN the earliest days of Systematics more attention was paid to cultivated plants and weeds than to wild species. The great herbals of the sixteenth century were largely given over to field and garden crops and everyday weeds. Until well after the time of Linnaeus, taxonomists included both cultivated plants and wild species in their botanical gardens, in their herbaria and in their writings. Only by slow degrees was there general recognition that the methods which are so effective for the bulk of the world's flora do not yield results of comparable efficiency when applied to cultivated plants and weeds. This perception came into being so gradually, that taxonomy as a whole drifted into its present position without any one taxonomist being aware of the drift and with only a few lone workers (Oakes Ames, L. H. Bailey, O. Stapf, D. Chatterjee) attempting to fight against the current. We now find ourselves in an anomalous position. Ninety-nine per cent of taxonomic effort is devoted to t he plants least interesting and least important to man. Surely matters are out of balance when in many of the world's great herbaria there is not a single taxonomist who is devoting himself to the classification of cultivated plants and when the taxonomy of many of the world's most important genera (Phaseolus, Coffea, Brassica, Cinchona, Hevea, etc.) is so imperfect as to be of little practical use. The gradual decision of orthodox taxonomists to avoid the classification of cultivated plants wherever possible was originally sound. Wild species could efficiently be understood by their methods; cultigens could not. Since the development of the so-called "New Systematics" such avoidance is no longer necessary. The special methods of this modern development in taxonomy are as useful in working out the complicated interrelationships of cultivated plants as they are in determining the course of evolution in natural populations. While it is usually assumed that the New Systematics derived its newness from the introduction of such techniques as cytology and pedigree culture from the experimental sciences, it would be more accurate to ascribe the change to new attitudes. The old taxonomy was satisfied if it discriminated between species; the new, desired to illuminate them as well. It wanted to know not only to which pigeonhole each entity belonged, but what kind of an entity it was. Was it diploid or polyploid, or did it include both diploid and polyploid races?

Corporate Social Responsibility Essay

Competition is becoming more and more fierce while the market is becoming globalization. With higher consumer sovereignty, customers are no longer satisfied with qualify products and good services. The society concerned more about the business ethic and environmental issues. Companies are expected to act virtuously nowadays. The ideas of Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Citizenship are spreading faster than ever before and become one of the hottest business models in the recent decades. â€Å"Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)† is defined as â€Å"the commitment of business to contribute to sustainable economic development, working with employees, their families, the local community and society at large to improve their quality of life† at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in 2000. The main idea of CSR is that corporations should be responsible to the stakeholders which include the customers, shareholders, suppliers, employees or any other party that may be influenced by the corporate actions. Different organizations may have formed different social responsible programs which can be categorized in four major components: the environment, the community, the work place and the market place. Different companies will emphasize on different aspects to create the social responsible programs. â€Å"Particular CSR initiatives may do good, or harm, or make no difference one way or the other, but it is important to resist the success of the CSR idea. â€Å" (Briggs & Verma, 2006) Mounting evidences show the benefits brought by the CSR Programs. For example, corporations made huge donation to disasters nationwide and to the bottom billions. However, not every CSR Program can be built up successfully. Nestlà © had suffered from a boycott last over 30 years which is the result from its failed CSR Program. Known as the baby killer, Nestlà © is blamed to kill thousands of Babies in the less developed region. They promoted and distributed free instant formula milk powder to replace breastfeeding and led to severe health problems or even death to the babies (Sethi, 1979). The two opposite results of CSR programs bring up queries for CSR programs. Is there a business case for CSR? How can corporations be benefitted from CSR? Theses questions will be discussed in this essay and so as the answers. B. Is there a business case for CSR? â€Å"Corporations are expected to be good citizens† asserted by Briggs and Verma (2006). Customers are demanding more from the corporations. Responsible corporates are required to meet the â€Å"Triple Bottom Lines† which are the economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and social sustainability. Join Elington illustrate the interrelationship of the triple bottom line in 1997, â€Å"Society depends on the economy – and the economy depends on the global ecosystem, whose health represents the ultimate bottom line† (Elkington, 1997). CSR programs can also help the company to achieve sustainable growth which is the ultimate goal for every CSR program. Sustainable development is development to satisfy the needs of present generation without sacrificing the ability of future generations to development (WCED, 1987). Study indicates that sustainable growth and business success cannot be achieved solely by maximising short-term profits, but instead th rough market-oriented and social responsible programs (Neal, 2006). The CSR programs may engage with the following four aspects: the environment, the community, the workplace and the market place (World Business Council, 2000). As the foundation of every human being in the earth, responsible to environment is an essential part of CSR programs. Learnt from the Industrial Revolution when people sacrifice environment for business growth, private organizations today have worked to improve the environment. For example, Toyota has developed the hybrid card models which can use both fuel and electricity as power source. It can help to reduce the air pollution and reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This innovation is also being considered as long-term oriented and sustainable for future development so both the customers and investors are satisfied with it. The second aspect of corporate social responsibility is the community. Corporations have to be responsibility to the local community as they are the essential for the business success. Social responsible firms should hire local labour force in the work place. Corporations often make donation after huge disasters such as earthquake or hurricane. For example, companies had donated over US$547 millions after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Briggs & Verma, 2006). Although some criticize that the corporations are making disasters into opportunities for public relationship, the donation can certainly help the community to rebuilt their home afterward, The third aspect of corporate social responsibility is the workplace. Companies are responsible to ensure the safety and ethnic in the workplace. The employees are generating the profit so the companies should be responsible to them by creating harmless and harmony working environment. For example, Nike, and other American and European sports wear production companies, promise to monitor the working conditions in its supplier factories in less developed countries (Vogel, 2005, 1). Corporations should also be responsible to the market place. Not just manufacturing quality product but also meeting the needs of various customers. For example, although smart phones are becoming popular in recent years, some people with visual disability may not able to use those products without assistant from other people. By introducing the Voiceover application, customers with visual disability can use the smart phone or other devices created by Apple easily. Besides the positive point of view, there have always been criticisms of CSR ever since it was invented. In 1970, the Nobel Price winner, Friedman wrote â€Å"The Social Responsibility of Business is to increase its Profits† and the three main arguments he stated in his article have become the foundation for the criticisms against CSR. In his first argument, Friedman claimed that only human beings have a moral responsibility for their actions (Friedman, 1970). As a collected entity, companies do not have the responsibility of the decision made by the management. However, corporations act like human in many ways. For examples, in legal terms, corporations are consisted as an artificial person whose behavior is decided by the corporate internal decision structure and the organizational culture. Many corporations are acting progressively to create a public perception of good citizenship to gain positive image and competitive advantages from the society (Brigs and Verma, 2006). In the following article, Friedman pointed out that the government, instead of the private business section, should be responsible to solve the social issues and problems (Friedman, 1970). Later scholars support his argument that with huge amount of tax collected by the government, the responsibility of social support should be transferred to the government and the public sectors. However, in some cases, government may not be able to take the responsibility due to insufficient funds or malfunction of government agent. Geoge Kell, executive head of the United Nations’s Global Compact Office, indicated that â€Å"So long as government fail to do their part and so long as business goes global, CSR helps fill an important void† (Brigs and Verma, 2006). The last argument of Friedman is that the managers should be responsible for the interest of shareholders (Friedman, 1970). Charring out CSR programs may increase the cost and weaken the company’s performance. In which way, the interests of the shareholders are harmed (Henderson, 2001). This argument is proven wrong by the countless successful business cases of CSR programs. C. How can corporations be benefited from the CSR programs? 1. CSR can help the corporates to increase the profits. Corporations can be benefited from the CSR programs in many aspects. Since the most important goal for the company is maximise its profit, scholars and managers are working to figure out how CSR programs will influence the company’s profitability. Companies generally increase their profitability by two means: Cut cost and Differentiation (Porter, 1985). An effective CSR Programs can help the corporations to achieve both points. Cost reduction can be achieved by CSR Programs directly or indirectly. The direct way is to reduce the cost by using the raw material or energy in a more efficient way. For example, by reducing the packaging, companies can cut the unit cost of product and protect the environment by producing less waste at the same time (Welford, 2000). The other way is to reducing the indirect cost such as the employee training cost, the management cost. For example, the employee caring programs can lower the employee turnover rate and reducing the hiring and training cost for new employees. By this mean, the employees are more satisfied to the companies and will be less likely to resign and have better performance in the workplace. Google has been paid attention to this issue. The company created the â€Å"best† working environment in the world and create the most satisfied. The CSR program successes in increasing ability to attract and retain employees and reducing operating cost. Another way to increase profitability is differentiation. By using differentiation strategy, the products can be outstanding among the competitors (Welford, 2000). Corporates have been using CSR programs as differentiation points long ago and achieve positive result. Take the Body Shop as an example. They differentiate their products from the other skin care products by using all natural ingredients and making statements such as â€Å"no animal test† and â€Å"support community fair trade†. By building such social and environmental responsibility image, the Body Shop successfully build up its brand image and reputation and create the customer loyalty. 2. CSR can enhance brand competitiveness. Today’s companies can no longer afford to ignore CSR. More and more corporates build up their own CSR programs to enhance their brand competitiveness by enhancing the image and reputation of the corporates. Firstly, customers nowadays focus more on the image and reputation of the brands. They demand more than quality product and nice services. According to the research conducted by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton, 79% of Americans take corporate citizenship into account when makings purchase decision (Briggs and Verma, 2006). Corporate Social Responsibility Programs can help the corporate to gain the public trust and support which will enhance the brand competitiveness. Customer sovereignty has further supported the ideas that with high degree of freedom and information, customers can make their choices among different brands. The brand with better image or reputation will be more likely to win in the industry. Secondly, Corporate Citizenship is demanded by the government. Especially for some sensitive business that companies need to maintain nice relationship with the government. For example, Casino Industry in Las Vegas and Macao are expected to make large donation to the â€Å"responsible gambling program† or the charity funds. By making public donation, the firms may be able to build up better image to reduce the resist in the society and the government. Managers continually encounter demands from multiple stakeholder groups to devote resources to corporate social responsibility (McWilliams & Siegel, 2001). Investors consider more about the social responsibility of the invested firms nowadays. Companies cannot managing their impact on society and the environment if engaging in CSR (Brigs & Verma, 2006) D. Conclusion Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming the trend of social public relationship strategies in the recent decades. In this essay, questions of CSR programs have been discussed in many aspects. With thousands of successful cases of corporate citizenship, companies all working hard to catch up with the trend and develop their own CSR programs. Although there are criticisms about the intention and the necessity of corporate social responsibility programs, the effective of CSR programs is ascertained. Later study shows that successful CSR program can benefit the society and the company at the same time. The corporations can enjoy higher profits and better brand competitiveness by setting up CSR programs. Therefore, companies should work with the community to achieve the â€Å"win-win† situation. Bibliography: Briggs, W. & Verma, A. 2006. ‘Sharing the wealth’. Communication world. January – February 2006. pp. 25-28 Freeman, R.E. 1984 ‘Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach’. Marshfield, MA: Pitman Publishing Inc. Friedman, M. 1970 ‘The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits’. The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970 Henderson, D. 2001. ‘The Case Against â€Å"Corporate Social Responsibility†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢. Policy Vol.17 no.2. pp. 28-32. Winter 2001 Neal, A. C. 2007. ‘Corporate Social Responsibility: Governance Gain or Laissez-Faire Figleaf?’. HeinOnline. 2007-2008. pp. 460-474 Robison, M. 2002. ‘RSA Wold Leaders Lecture – Beyond Good Intentions: Corporate Citizenship for a New Century’. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. London, 7 May 2002. Sethi, S. P. 1979. ‘A Conceptual Framework for Environmental Analysis of Social Issues and Evaluation of Busin ess Response Patterns’. The Acdemy of Management Review, Vol.4, No. 1, pp. 63-74 Vogle, D. ‘The Market for Virtue: the Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility’. 2005. Harrisonburg, Virginia WCED. 1987. ‘Our Common Future, World Commission on Environment and Development’. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Welford, R. 2000 ‘Corporate environmental management 3: Towards sustainable development’, London: Earthscan.

Understanding Case in English Grammar

So what is this thing called case in English, anyway? And why is it important? Being pretty clueless about this aspect of grammar is pretty common: When teachers or editors discuss the importance of getting  case  right in English grammar, quizzical looks from listeners are often the result. But not to worry. Heres a simple explanation: Basically, the concept of case in English is the grammatical relationship of nouns and pronouns to other words in a sentence. In English, nouns have only one case inflection: the possessive (or genitive). The case of nouns other than the possessive is sometimes called the common case. Common case nouns are the basic word, such as dog, cat, sunset or water. Pronouns have three case distinctions: Subjective (or nominative)Possessive (or genitive)Objective (or accusative) Examples and Observations on Case Sidney Greenbaum discusses this basic subject of English grammar in Case in The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992). Potentially, countable nouns have four case forms: two singular (child, childs), two plural (children, childrens). In regular nouns, these manifest themselves only in writing, through the apostrophe ( girl, girls, girls, girls), since in speech three of the forms are identical. The genitive [or possessive] case is used in two contexts: dependently, before a noun ( This is Toms/his bat), and independently ( This bat is Toms/his). Most personal pronouns have different forms for the dependent and independent genitive: This is your bat and This bat is yours. The genitive case forms of personal pronouns are often called possessive pronouns. A few pronouns have three cases: subjective or nominative, objective or accusative, and genitive or possessive.Andrea Lunsford gives tips on editing for case in The St. Martins Handbook (2008). In compound structures, make su re pronouns are in the same case they would be in if used alone (Jake and she were living in Spain). When a pronoun follows than or as, complete the sentence mentally. If the pronoun is the subject of an unstated verb, it should be in the subjective case (I like her better than he [likes her]). If it is the object of an unstated verb, it should be in the objective case (I like her better than [I like] him.).Robert Lane Greene talks about the disappearance of case endings in English in his book You Are What You Speak   (2011). While the stickler might see the misuse and gradual disappearance of whom as proof that education and society have been flushed down the toilet, most linguists  -- even though they will almost certainly use whom in their written work themselves -- see the pronouns replacement with who as merely another step in Englishs gradual shedding of case endings. In the era of Beowulf, English nouns had endings that showed what role they played in the sentence, as Lat in did. But nearly all of them disappeared by the time of Shakespeare, and a linguist would see the death of whom as simply the conclusion of the process.