Amazon.com, Inc. is a company based in Seattle America and specializes in electronic commerce and cloud computing. According to Jones, & Jones, (2013 ), it is the largest online retail market in the world. This is when it is measured by revenue and market capitalization. In terms of sales, it is the second largest after the Alibaba group. It began as an online bookstore then it developed an infrastructure to sell other items such as audiobooks, video downloads, video games, and so many other electronics ( Jones, & Jones, 2013) . The company has an organizational structure that enables it to work, manage and control its operations on the world e-commerce better than most of its competitors such as the Alibaba group which has provided some stiff competition over the years ( Jones, & Jones, 2013) . This essay will provide an internal analysis of Amazon based on the issues pertaining to internal organization environment, sources of revenue, and internal marketing needs.
Internal Organization Environment
Amazon has a corporate structure that is designed to determine how managers of the company can directly or indirectly influence operational activities around the globe. Due to its reputation as the leading online retail business venture, it must continue maintaining a structure that continuously supports the ever expanding market of the world. That is the reason why its evolving corporate structure has been of great benefit to the company especially when it adds more products hence gradually promoting diversity in the company ( Jones, & Jones, 2013) . Besides that, it has a global function based group which gives the company most of its strength. Each function group has a dedicated team together with a senior manager who ensures that things are handled properly ( Jones, & Jones, 2013) . The primary objective for having the function base groups is to enable the company to manage, and facilitate its operations successfully. Some of the major function-based groups within the company are, the CEO’s office, business development department, Amazon Web Services, Finance Department, Internal Consumer Business and the Legal and Secretariat department.
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An innovation that has continuously propelled the company forward is the Two Pizza Rule. This rule states that every team within Amazon must be small enough to be fed enough by two pizzas. This rule has made the company become agile and continue growing while others struggle to grow let alone penetrating the global market ( Jones, & Jones, 2013) . There is another secret source in Amazon which is the service architecture. This secret sauce has eased interaction between team members and especially in the product and engineering departments. The Application Programming Interface (API) made by Amazon promoted chances of getting specific inputs and outputs that are capable of changing over time ( Jones, & Jones, 2013) . Therefore, the interaction between members within the organization means that teams can move faster, innovate and identify more exciting and better projects and opportunities.
Sources of Revenue Related to Financial Performance
Most people have the notion that Amazon only makes money when people buy things online. That is a wrong idea because Amazon has a wide range of revenue sources that are related to financial performances. Research by Kantor & Streitfeld, (2015) shows that sales numbers of the company are growing at a staggering rate. By the end of this year, the company is projected to have sales worth $177 billion which is more than the previous year’s $136 billion ( Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015) . A breakdown of Amazon’s sources of revenue related to financial performance is through Amazon Web Services (AWS), adverts, Retail third-party sellers, Retail products and other services such as co-branded credit card agreements. In 2016, retail products accounted for 67% of the total revenue, Retail third-party sellers 16.9%, Amazon Web Services 9%, subscriptions 4.7% and finally adverts and other co-branded credit cards accounted for 2.2% of the total revenue ( Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015) . It is also imperative to note that Amazon has maintained its tradition of spending a lot more to make a little.
Internal Marketing Needs
Even though Amazon has strengths in its internal organization that benefits the firm, there are several weaknesses that they experience as well. It is not a secret that Amazon is racing to diversify itself too much that there is a sense of lacking a well-paved direction ( Stigler, 2018) . From the mission statement, “we seek to be the Earth’s Most customer centric compact for three primary customer sets: consumer customers, seller customer and developer customers” people can understand that the focus of the company is only on three primary customers. The problem is that it does not distinguish the type of business or industry they are mostly concentrated (Stigler, 2018 ) .
Furthermore, Amazon offers free shipping on the majority of its product to all countries around the world. In the current slow economy, there are chances that they can jeopardize their financial position shortly. Besides the company having a diverse culture, the website they have created lack this critical feature which has been a tradition ( Stigler, 2018) . For instance, the website does not have different language versions. Therefore, non-English speakers may find it hard to understand.
References
Jones, G. R., & Jones, G. R. (2013). Organizational theory, design, and change . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Kantor, J., & Streitfeld, D. (2015). Inside Amazon: Wrestling big ideas in a bruising workplace. New York Times , 15 , 74-80.
Stigler, M. (2018). Amazon Web Services. In Beginning Serverless Computing (pp. 41-81). Apress, Berkeley, CA.
