Amazon.com: Supply Chain Management

By early 2018, Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. (Amazon), one of the world’s most valuable companies and the largest online retailer in the world, had grown dramatically since its beginnings in 1994. The company that had started as an online bookseller now sold merchandise and digital content in more than 30 categories, including electronics, clothing, books, furniture, and streaming music and video. It sold its own products and listed products for sale by over two million third-party sellers. It provided on-demand cloud-computing services and offered fulfillment and shipping services to businesses, and it had recently entered grocery retailing through its purchase of Whole Foods Market. With 2017 shipping costs that exceeded $21 billion, the company was working to establish greater control over its supply chain network and capabilities. Amazon was selling a huge variety of products in many formats, and the chief executive officer needed to determine how to structure the company’s supply chain in order to support its strategy and growth objectives. What supply chain capabilities would Amazon need as its business model continued to evolve?

This case can be used in an undergraduate or gradutate course on operations management, supply chain management, logistics, business strategy, or marketing. After completing the case, students will be able to <ul><li>assess Amazon’s supply chain, and identify its key competitive advantages;</li><li>quantify Amazon’s ability to generate value from its supply chain;</li><li>identify potential opportunities and challenges for Amazon in improving its supply chain; and</li><li>analyze the effects of the opportunities and challenges facing Amazon on its growth and evolution.</li></ul>

• supply chain management, capabilities