AMAZON.COM
Amazon.com can be defined as the one company that has been able to use information technology to conquer and dominate its completion. This is attributed the unique and very special way that Amazon decided to carry out its business. When amazon.com first ventures into business they picked the least likely business, the book business. This was at the point where the reading culture in America was at an all time low and people were not as interested in books. On the other hand information technology and the internet had been a phenomenon that was spreading like a bush fire with more and more people subscribing to the internet and internet related services.
How amazon.com used IT to their advantage
The company decided that they would sell books but unlike the typical bookstore, they would do it online. Since its inception, the company has been able to provide billions of books to its worldwide customer base. What amazon.com does is that they provide the information of a particular book; complete with its price as well as the reviews that book has received not only from critics but from customers as well (Narayanan, 2000). To ensure that the customers are happy with the books they have chosen, the company provides a preview of the book that can be accessed online. Once one is satisfied as to the information provided for regarding the book, they are able to pay for the book which amazon.com then delivers to them. This ensures that unlike in a bookstore scenario where the customer has to leave the comfort of his house to buy a book, amazon.com merely delivers the book at ones doorstep with the push of a button. Given the uniqueness of the service that the company was offering it was able to attract a large customer base at a global level for while keeping up with global trends, they had been able to not only attract and keep the interest of the customer but also re-introduce a reading culture that had been dying (Spence & Press, 2000).
Amazon went a step further and provided electronic books popularly known as E-books. This new piece of development ensured that all one had to do was to buy a soft copy of the book they wanted. This they made possible by providing soft copies of as many books as possible even those that had only existed in printed editions only. This capture the interest of the customer due to the fact that owning printed copies of books was becoming a cumbersome procedure. By introducing electronic books, the company ensured that people would have their books in soft copy which would allow them not only to easily carry them anywhere. Also books in this form would help save them from the damage that often came with printed texts including ware and tare as well as dangers of fire and other disasters that are likely to occur to a book.
Recently, amazon.com has taken another technologically innovated step towards widening the gap as far as competition is concerned. The company has introduced a gadget they refer to as ‘KINDLE’ which has kept the company’s customers as well as funs excited. This new technology has best been described as a personal online library. This technology works by enabling one to store millions of e-books in a virtual library that can be accessed by the kindle gadget. Using cloud technology, which is among the latest technological advancements of our time, this new venture allows customers to carry around tones of books in a small tablet like gadget which they can easily access at any time as long as they can access the internet. What is appealing to the customers is the fact that not only can they carry around many books in one convenient portable gadget (Brynjolfsson & Hitt, 2000). But, they do not also have to worry if they lose the gadget in one way or another since their virtual library is online and can easily be accessible from any point where they can access the internet. Since it was launched into the market, the market value of this gadget has been on the higher side, what is however interesting is the fact that despite this the product has and is still being sold at a global level. This just goes to show that the company investment in the use of IT has done well for them.
One can therefore conclude and say that Amazon.com is one company that has been able to actively apply and utilize information technology in their business (Checkland & Holwell, 1997). This has not only set them up as global trendsetters in the bookselling business but has also enabled them create a tremendous gap between themselves and their competitors in the business. Through their ingenious incorporations of IT, they have made the once was tedious process of buying reading and storing books a fun and enjoyable process. Their clever use of IT has earned them respect, admiration and at the end of the day big profits earned from the sale of their products globally.
References
Narayanan, V. K. (2000). Managing technology and innovation for competitive advantage.
Spence, R., & Press, A. (2000). Information visualization.
Brynjolfsson, E., & Hitt, L. M. (2000). Beyond computation: Information technology, organizational transformation and business performance. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14(4), 23-48.
Checkland, P., & Holwell, S. (1997). Information, systems and information systems: making sense of the field.
