Amazon

1. INTRODUCTION

We have chosen Amazon as the topics of our project because we thought it could be interesting to learn about the operation of a big company known by almost everyone but which only few people really make out how it performs. We are liable to think that Amazon only sells books online but they sell further more things such as clothes, computers, accessories, food, and furniture aswell. Our objective with this project is to know how they operate and manage to sell all those kind of items all over the world.
Another point we want to focus on is the way they grown up and expanded to new countries (Spain is a clear example). So one of the things we have proposed ourselves is to discover, firstly, how has been possible for Amazon to grow globally as fast as they do in aninnovative market as it is the online shopping, and secondly, how after 15 years on the market they continue innovating and reinventing themselves with new products.
What is what really make them different of the competence? How have they managed to compete with companies as important as Bookty or Círculo de Lectores? How are the employees treated? And how are they motivated? These are only a fewquestions we are going to try to answer about the importance of these factors to the performance of the firm.

* Methodology
To find the information, our principal resource has been the Internet. We tried to send an e-mail to one of the managers, but they answered that there wasn’t anybody available to respond our questions. We have also looked for workers reviews and articles on the newspaperto complement the information we have found.

* Few things we have to know about Amazon
Amazon.com, Inc. was created in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in the state of Washington, (where principal corporate offices are now located in) and reincorporated in 1996 in the state of Delaware. It was one of the first companies to sell books  online but soon diversified into different product lines, offering DVDs, CD’s, electronics, software, video games, furniture, food, clothing, etc.
Amazon.com opened its virtual doors on the World Wide Web in July 1995 with one goal; to turn it into the faster, easy and pleasant way to buy books. After 30 days out “Amazon.com” to the network and with no media promotion, the company was selling books in all 50 states of EEUU and 45 countries. However, the companydid not expect a profit four four to five years. Its slow growth annoyed stockholder complaints that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. But when the “dot-com bubble” burst and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon preserved and finally turned its first profit in 2001.
Nowadays, Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, UnitedKingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, China and a short time ago it arrived in Spain.

They seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for four primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators. In addition, they generate revenue through other marketing and promotional services, such as online advertising, and co-branded credit card agreements.
Amazon. es hasrecently arrived to Spain and it has created an important impact to the country in where the e-commerce is still not successful.

2. HOW THE FIRM IS DESIGNED

Amazon EU SARL is a limited liability company under the Luxembourg law. The company is headed by the CEO Jeffrey Bezos, who controls several Vice Presidents divided into specialized departments. Those departments also control otherdirectors like the Director of the Business development, the Chief Financial Officer, the General Council and Secretary... Moreover Bezos is not the only director of the organization, there are eight directors like Thomas Ryder or John Brown that are involved with the company.  

Therefore, Amazon has a Standard hierarchy and it currently employs more than 56, 200 people around the world in 2011....