Amazon.com Inc. is one of the world’s biggest online retailers. It has earned a reputation in being able to deliver good quality products at fair prices across the globe. It is a United States of America based organization dealing in electronics, e-commerce, and furniture, among other products. The organization has several groups of stakeholders, including customers, employees, the community, suppliers, and investors, among others. It has a corporate social responsibility to all the stakeholders. The purpose of this research paper is to explore the corporate communications functions of Amazon regarding how it relates to the customers, employees, and the community, and to provide recommendations on possible improvement opportunities.
Company Overview
Amazon is an international online retailing company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It deals in a variety of retail products, including cloud computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and digital streaming. For this reason, Amazon.com is considered as one of the top four technology companies in the world (Aversa, Furnari, & Haefliger, 2015). Currently, the company has many organs such as the Amazon Music, Audible subsidiaries, and Amazon Prime Video through which it distributes music, audiobook, downloads, and streaming. It also has a publishing arm for a television studio and film production ("Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more," n.d.). The organization is also famous as a producer and supplier of consumer electronics such as fire tables and echo devices.
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The history of Amazon.com dates back to the 5th of July 1994. Jeff Benzos started the organization as an online bookstore located in Bellevue, Washington. Later on, the store expanded its line of products to include electronics, video games, jewelry, food, toys, apparel, software, and furniture (Sorescu, 2017). This means that the company expanded to start retailing almost all products from different sectors. Venturing into the wide variety resulted in its expansion, and 2015; Amazon became the United States’ most valuable retailer, surpassing Walmart. Another remarkable development occurred in 2017 when it obtained Whole Foods Market at a market valuation of $ 13.4 billion. The acquisition improved the organization’s presence in the brick and mortar retail industry (Smith & Linden, 2017).
Reputation
Amazon is currently among the top global retailers due to its size, service delivery, and stakeholder reports. The founder, Jeff Benzos, says that the organization’s great reputation is due to its commitment to delivering great service. According to a statement by Robert Fronk, the senior vice president of Nielson Reputation Management and Public Affairs, almost all Amazon service reviewers give the company the highest possible ratings (McAuley & Yang, 2016). The respondents say that the company has a trusted and admired leadership and employees who are willing to engage with customers for best service delivery emotionally. The company also offers a variety of high-quality products at the best prices. Amazon has also earned a good reputation through its involvement in community services. Some of the community activities include environmental initiatives, eliminating plastic bags, and promoting good fishing practices, among many others.
Corporate Communication Functions
Customer Relations
At Amazon, customers are given the highest priority in all activities, including communications. Customers from the most regarded stakeholder group at the company. In its e-commerce business, the organization’s leadership considers consumers as the primary determinant of success because they directly affect company revenues (Aversa et al., 2015). The prioritization of this stakeholder group is in agreement with the company’s mission and vision statements. What customers demand from business organizations and other service providers include fair prices, security during online transactions, timely deliveries, convenience, and listening ear to their complaints. Amazon has technology-based communication and service delivery systems, which ensure that consumer interests are met (Sorescu, 2017). For example, there are advanced information and communications technologies that make online transactions efficient and secure (Smith & Linden, 2017). Employees are also trained to handle the consumers efficiently by relying on technology and ensuring that all the concerns are addressed to the customers’ satisfaction.
Generalist standard call flow (Smith & Linden, 2017)
Employee Relations
Employees are the most valuable assets at Amazon. The company understands that employees are significant in determining organizational performance and other policies. Amazon has a structure that identifies and works on the interests of these stakeholder groups. The demands of all employees can be broadly classified into career development and competitive compensation. They also need enabling working environments to improve their customer service. The company’s compensation system rewards IT personnel highly because of their direct involvement in the process of developing and maintaining the organization’s e-commerce business assets (Opitz, Chaudhri, & Wang, 2018). They also offer promotions into leadership and management positions due to continuous global expansions.
Employee Relations (Opitz, Chaudhri, & Wang, 2018)
Community Relations
Business organizations have the responsibility of providing community services to maintain a good reputation and to help in improving society. The community services can be participation towards development projects, helping to solve problems, or promoting the health of community members through environmental conservation (Chomos & Miller, 2015). Amazon has a community support arm known as the Amazon Smile. Through this organ, various community services are planned, funded, and carried out. For example, there is a percentage of Amazon revenues which are donated to charitable organizations. The company also partners with other organizations such as the Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) to advocate for the clean energy business.
Community Relations (Chomos & Miller, 2015)
Recommendations
Amazon.com Inc. already has good corporate communication systems to relate and communicate with its stakeholders. However, there are still complaints about the organization’s operations, meaning that there is room for improvement. The company needs to improve how it responds to stakeholders on labor issues and compensations to warehouse workers (Patrutiu, 2016). There was a recent concern on how Amazon leadership has grown unresponsive to labor issues raised by the stakeholders. All parties associated with the organization need to get timely information on the company matters.
The second area of improvement is compensation to warehouse workers. The business’ operation model allows them to do faster deliveries than its competitors and to charge low prices. However, it comes at a cost that is seemingly paid by the warehouse workers. The company values IT personnel more and compensates them highly. This trend should be extended to the warehouse workers to get the fair compensation that reflects the efforts they put (Opitz et al., 2018).
References
Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/
Aversa, P., Furnari, S., & Haefliger, S. (2015). Business model configurations and performance: A qualitative comparative analysis in Formula One racing, 2005–2013. Industrial and Corporate Change , 24 (3), 655-676.
Chomos, J. C., & Miller, M. K. (2015). Understanding how individual differences are related to community sentiment toward safe haven laws using a student sample. In Handbook of community sentiment (pp. 83-97). Springer, New York, NY.
McAuley, J., & Yang, A. (2016, April). Addressing complex and subjective product-related queries with customer reviews. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on World Wide Web (pp. 625-635). International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee.
Opitz, M., Chaudhri, V., & Wang, Y. (2018). Employee social-mediated crisis communication as opportunity or threat? Corporate Communications: An International Journal , 23 (1), 66-83.
Patrutiu-Baltes, L. (2016). The Impact of Digitalization on Business Communication. SEA–Practical Application of Science , 4 (11), 319-325.
Smith, B., & Linden, G. (2017). Two decades of recommender systems at Amazon. com. Ieee internet computing , 21 (3), 12-18.
Sorescu, A. (2017). Data‐driven business model innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management , 34 (5), 691-696.
