Amazon's success factors 1: Amazon's investment strategy
In June 5438+February 2009, the new york Times interviewed Jeff, CEO of Amazon. Bezos asked. Exactly, what is your ultimate goal? Bezos responded: We want to be the largest supplier of goods in the world. The Amazon River is the largest river in the world, so we are the largest supplier of goods in the world. ? When asked? How long does it take to convert paper books into corresponding digital forms? When, Jeff? Bezos replied:? When the Kindle was released two years ago, we only had 90,000 books, but today we have more than 350,000 books. We are adding thousands of books every week. Our goal is to make every book, every version, no matter what language, can be converted into the corresponding digital form within 60 seconds. ?
? Are traditional book publishers afraid? Peter, former CEO of Random House? Olson said,? The world they are familiar with, printed paper books, street bookstores with brick-concrete structure and the whole physical circulation system are all at the forefront of radical changes. ?
In 2005, within a month, Amazon acquired BookSurge, which provides on-demand printing services, and Mobipod, an e-book company. These acquisitions have released a clear message that Amazon's investment in digital and traditional book publishing is focused on the future book publishing model. Looking back now, which two emerging publishing trends have experienced rapid growth in the past five years?
Amazon's investment history spans many industries, but a large part of its acquisitions and investments are used to build technical infrastructure to support their book business. Among Amazon's numerous acquisitions, the acquisitions listed in the table below are directly related to the book business.
As can be seen from the following table, Amazon's investment objects and methods all show considerable complexity and diversity, revealing its rational and shrewd investment strategy. If you like, Amazon has enough resources to merge and kill a competitor, or prevent a company from being merged by its own competitors. The acquired company may lose its independence and become a vassal, or it may continue to operate as an independent company, which depends entirely on Amazon's decision. Therefore, we can speculate that this steady growth trend of mergers and acquisitions will continue.
Amazon has also invested in many other aspects, such as developing technologies that are conducive to attracting customers and improving the user experience of obtaining products or services from Amazon.com. It is not only a B2C model, but also a model associated with B2B, such as cloud computing services. They are building an omni-directional, horizontal and vertical online shopping platform. They not only make money by selling goods directly to consumers, but also help other enterprises sell goods to their consumers. Recently, they also provide commodity supply support to chain stores to earn income. These are not to be underestimated.
Historically, M&A strategy usually has two purposes: acquiring technology and acquiring customers. Except those mergers and acquisitions in the early stage of enterprise development, most of the investment purposes are technology and customer resources. Amazon promotes its business transformation by purchasing technology, and then obtains the corresponding customer relationship. They also buy customer platforms to accelerate their market penetration. Audible and Mobipod are good examples of platform acquisition. Both companies have technologies that can create customers for Amazon's e-commerce transformation, not to mention key investment strategies involving key channel partners and publishers.
Factor 2 of Amazon's success: Amazon's corporate culture strategy
Amazon describes their corporate goals as:? We serve three basic customer groups wholeheartedly: consumer customers, manufacturer customers and developer customers, and we strive to become the most customer-oriented enterprise in the world. ?
Jeff. Bezos designed a concise four-step strategy for Amazon:
First, pay attention to customers: start with customers, then develop products and service plans and listen to customers' needs.
Unlike most traditional publishers, Amazon no longer focuses on maintaining the status quo of the printed book industry. They only focus on what is important to their customers. If customers want digital products, they will not shed a tear for the collapse of the printing and publishing dynasty.
For publishers, the lack of close contact with readers and customers is their achilles heel, and only those companies with loyal relationships with retail customers will be in a favorable position in the competition. Amazon has recently been selected as one of the most trusted online retailers by customers, which proves that they have won the favor of customers.
Second, creativity: do not accept either-or thinking. Strive to create solutions to help customers eliminate any restrictions. Different from dynamic technology companies, how to form a cohesive innovation culture is one of the biggest challenges faced by traditional publishers.
Third, consider the long term: if the return on investment will not be seen until 5-7 years later, there is no problem. Don't give in to the pressure of short-term returns. Long-term consideration can provide customers with much better services than short-term consideration, which is the competitive advantage of enterprises.
4. Start from scratch every day: bring new ways to serve customers every day, create and start all over again, and never stop at the laurel tree like WU GANG did.
These strategies are not isolated. When they run through every level of the whole enterprise, there will be a chain reaction and a competitive advantage.
Factor 3 of Amazon's success: Amazon's product strategy
1. e-reader Kindle
Kindle is Amazon's main product strategy, and they have invested heavily in staffing, advertising and market positioning. Amazon is now considered to compete with Apple in many ways. 20 10 In February, Amazon announced the plan to establish a Kindle app store, encouraging developers to develop rich and powerful applications for the Kindle, just as they created for the iPhone and iPad.
Kindle met with obvious market competition on 20 10. Google Editions is an e-bookstore based on the network, with a huge amount of content, perfect infrastructure, strong vision and motivation, and large capital investment. Apple's iBookstore is also a digital bookstore that needs to be seriously dealt with. Then there are a lot of existing equipment. Online bookstores and new partners will become a part of the future book market, including printing equipment manufacturers, mobile devices (smart phones), telecom operators, electronic reading equipment and reading software, etc., which are cooperating with related enterprises with future growth space.
Amazon's product strategy is shifting from large publishers to small and medium-sized publishers, and they have done a good job in obtaining the content of large publishers. Now they have realized that the new growth point comes from small and medium-sized publishers. This also happens to complete the mission of Kindle:? Every book, every edition and any language can be read in 60 seconds. ?
2. Direct publishing platform for authors
Another important content of Amazon's product strategy is to face the author directly, which makes the publishing industry deeply worried. The potential result of this strategy is that publishers are marginalized or even abandoned, which is obviously unbearable for them. Amazon's Kindle, POD, electronic bookstore and other products provide a complete publishing platform for the author, as well as the benefits brought by additional income and marketing influence.
Amazon's author-centeredness is reflected in the fact that there are hundreds of pages of specialized writers on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk websites, providing readers with complete bibliographies, recommended works and videos. This gives Amazon the ability to connect the author's works with each other for cross-selling, and at the same time, it can also establish personal contact with the author while serving readers.
3. Expand distribution channels (EDC)
Amazon naming? Create space? The new brand has launched their self-publishing service, and the on-demand printing service (the former book surge company) can be found. Expand the distribution channel (EDC) on the CreateSpace website? It provides the potential for books to spread to a wider audience through more channels, including retailers, bookstores, libraries, academic research institutions, wholesalers and distributors. Through EDC, the author will have the opportunity to distribute his works to thousands of retailers and wholesalers all over the United States. Whether the works are included in EDC or not, all works on CreateSpace can be distributed and disseminated through Amazon.com and various electronic bookstore channels.
Most online retailers, traditional bookstores and libraries look for the books they want through purchasing cooperation with large wholesalers. If a book is not in the purchase list of these wholesalers, even if some readers explicitly request to buy the book, retailers may not have the opportunity to supply this part of readers. Through EDC, this book can be put on the shopping list of these big wholesalers, and then the work will have the opportunity to reach thousands of online retailers, traditional bookstores and libraries.