Amazon Corporate Social Responsibility Case Study

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At first, the question concerning the best indicator to distinguish, whether a company is gaining good strategic and financial results or not, has to be clarified.
The best indicators of how well a company’s strategy is working are (1) whether the company is a global, average or below-average performer in the sector and (2) whether the company is achieving its planned results. Being ranked among the top 10 retailers in the National Retail Federation Foundation/American Express Customers’ Choice Awards for two years in a row leads to suggest, that Amazon is an above-average performer in the internet services sector. Amazon’s presence across the world and its revenues for the fiscal year 2012 of $ 61 billion dollars could indicate that the company …show more content…

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to business practices involving initiatives that benefit society. The silent data gathering from small businesses and customers, Amazon is doing day after day, is not exactly a central feature of corporate social responsibility. Moreover, one could argue that Amazon’s data gathering, storage and analytics efforts can be seen as an invasion of privacy. Amazon did not ask customers for the right to gather any information about their buying behavior. In other words, Amazon took ownership of the data of its customer for its own purpose. The purpose of this action might be, to build a monopoly on big data and by doing so, to achieve a sustainable advantage over rivals. From this point of view, Amazon jeopardized the property rights of customers by miming and reselling data without returning any rewards directly to them. This leads to the question, what intention Amazon pursues with this untypical …show more content…

Jeff Bezos could consider involving strategic alliance, or acquisition of a large social media company with numbers of users like Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram. Such a partnership/acquisition would ensure that Amazon achieves even more information about customer’s preferences and behavior. That information would help Amazon to provide an even greater product recommendation and customer service. Furthermore, a higher margin and better profitability can be another positive side effect. One of the biggest cons is that such a strategic alliance/acquisition requires massive amounts of cooperation (between all participants) and capital investment of these participants. With a profit loss of $39 billion dollars in 2012, Amazon may not be in the financial situation for such a partnership/acquisition. An acquisition with another company could cause, that plenty employees could lose their job. If Amazon is doing a cooperative partnership with a bigger company, there is a potential dilution of control and ownership. In addition, there is a high risk if the cultures of the companies may not mesh well or if the other company is facing law infringements regarding data management (e.g. Facebook in Germany). Cooperating with such a firm could have a negative lasting effect on

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