“Amazon Goes on a Hiring Spree” by Jon Bruner is an overview of the current economic recession and its impact on the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon. In particular, Jon Bruner focuses on the impact of the recession on one company that seems to be able to thrive in the worst times of the business cycle: Amazon. What does Amazon have that other traditional brick-and-mortar businesses do not? How is it able to succeed in the current climate of uncertainty?
In “Amazon Goes On a Hiring Spree”, Jon Bruner provides a clear and concise overview of what is happening with Amazon. While there are many different aspects that make up Amazon’s business model, Jon Bruner takes a broad view of how Amazon has emerged as a leader in e-commerce, especially considering the fact that it has been operating in a period of economic uncertainty for over ten years now.
One aspect that Jon Bruner highlights is the way that Amazon leverages the benefits of being able to offer its customers lower prices when their orders are fulfilled through the company. The lower prices are directly related to the economies of scale that Amazon is able to achieve. Amazon has been able to leverage the power of economies of scale by using economies of liquidity: a large number of capital investments (such as purchasing warehouses and other equipment) at lower costs than the costs of those investments when first made; then investing in lower cost labor and technology and marketing that will help them maintain their lower costs.
In “Amazon Goes On a Hiring Spree”, Jon Bruner also emphasizes the ways that Amazon uses technology to streamline its operations, improving customer service and lowering the costs associated with providing products and services. One example of this is that the company uses electronic order and payment systems that allows its customers to place their orders through its website without leaving their homes. Amazon has also been successful at reducing labor costs by using its network of fulfillment centers to provide faster delivery and higher quality products and services to its customers.
However, one key facet that most of Amazon’s competitors do not address is the company’s ability to adapt to economic uncertainty. If you take a closer look at how Amazon was able to weather the global recession and emerge as an effective and reliable competitor, you will quickly realize that it was only through the use of an effective organizational structure.
In “Amazon Goes On a Hiring Spree”, Joner details how Amazon uses its organizational structure to continually innovate and learn from the changes in the business world. Specifically, the company has implemented several programs in order to gain an edge over its competition through knowledge transfer, which has led to the implementation of many of the new technologies that are so useful in the modern world.
Information technology has provided Amazon with valuable competitive advantages as well, including the ability to deliver its products and services at lower costs and the ability to track customer behavior in order to understand why certain products are selling more or less than others. Amazon has also developed systems that enable it to deliver goods to its customers in a timely manner, reducing their shipping costs. Finally, Amazon has been a pioneer in the development of digital marketing and is now one of the leading providers of e-commerce content in the world.
While the information revolution has given rise to many changes in the way people communicate and interact, the Amazon organization has successfully embraced these changes to remain competitive. As Jon Bruner rightly points out, if an organization is to succeed in the current environment, it needs to adopt and implement new systems and techniques in order to effectively compete. In a world where everyone is looking toward the future, it is important for companies to be able to anticipate change and react to it in a timely manner so that they can become relevant again.
