Amazon Company
Discuss about the Management Information System And Decision Support System.
Amazon is an American cloud computing and electronic company founded on 5th July 1994 by Jeff Bezos based in Seattle, Washington. When ranged according to market capitalization and revenue, Amazon becomes the largest internet retailer. Amazon.com website was initially an online bookstore, it expanded its commodities to video games, furniture, electronics, audiobook downloads and streaming, MP3 streaming and downloads, video downloads and streaming, jewelry and food (Wikipedia, 2018). It has separate retail websites for France, Italy, Spain, Australia, and Mexico including other countries in different regions. It generated a revenue of $ 117.7 billion the last year 2017.
The bargaining power of Amazon customers is generally very big. Depending on the services being offered and the nature of the product, the extent of bargaining power differs among the customer groups. Amazon buyers purchasing from the marketplace have the highest ability bargain since they can switch to competition or substitute services and products. As a result of stiff completion in the marketplace, customers’ ability to switch to an alternative website. Moreover, consumers of Amazon Web Services (AWS) have less bargaining power in relation to those who are in the marketplace because they cannot switch prices to another service provider Sellers on the marketplace as a group of Amazon customers do not have a strong bargaining power due to the absence of an alternative to Amazon. (Research Methodology, 2017).
New retail business joining the online market is significant. Even with the existence of business industry entry barriers including economy of scale and expected retaliation from existing business, financially stronger businesses joining the market may take their competitive advantage on their abilities of the services they offer and their innovative characteristics. In order to minimize the effects of industry entry barriers, creativity and innovation are very crucial aspects to be considered at this point. The threat of new entrants can be accelerated by lack of changing costs for the consumers. Consequently, new market entrants will benefit from existing courier services for the purposes of distribution of products.
There are various types of direct and indirect alternatives for many of the products and services available on Amazon. Traditional physical stores serve as a direct substitution. Other direct substitutions to Amazon are seen in instances of some websites that provide sales of given products such as electronic products from newegg.com and emusic.com for music and Barnes and Noble providing literature materials. Indirect substitutions include Catalog-format retail.
Amazon Porter’s Five Forces
Amazon has numerous competitors making very high competition since it deals with numerous range of products and services which are still provided by other companies. Amazon.com is directly in competition with other internet retail websites including eBay and Barnes and Noble.com through its marketplaces such as zShop. (Essay, 2018). Amazon has indirect competitors include organizations that have improved their online stores after they have built traditional stores. Competitors who are not in the same industry of operation at Amazon such as Kohls.com, Walmart.com and Bestbuy.com websites also sell a lot of similar products at Amazon.com
Efficient product positioning requires a vivid comprehension of buyers’ preferences and choice so that the best communication links are chosen and the important information will reach the intended customers. Product positioning begins with describing a particular point of the market segments to aim at. The best approach to it is to be more specific. Vendors also have to understand buyers’ needs, more specifically related to the products and services they offer, to apparently express value as a segment of their commercializing program.
Marketers of a business should consider competitive atmosphere while they are looking at the positioning elements of their marketing strategies. Efficient positioning explains to customers the reason as to why this company’s product and services be taken into consideration over other competitive alternatives according to what the company already knows about the customer preference. Effective marketing strategies evidently identify the way services or products is distinct from companies’ products and services and in what ways (Chron, 2018). The business must be specific on what they want to offer away from what other competitors do and to understand the specific considerations and preferences of their customers.
Product positioning facilitate marketer’s opinion to notice how their offerings are dissimilar from others that consumers have to select from. Through markets, this has to reach the intended group. To perform this efficiently, they should select communication networks that aim to link with their acknowledged target audiences at times when they will be most interested in these messages.
Product lifecycle is an important tool used by marketers to estimate and determine the stage of a product in its life while Boston Group Portfolio Matrix is a way of nearing and examining business marketing and business growth. The principal guiding rule of the Boston Consultative group’s strategy is that experience in a market share leading to minimizing production costs and maximizing the business profits (Proctor,2014).
Sub-division of the Product life cycle into four stages in accordance with sales and time whereas the corporate organization is grouped into four sections from the market sharing and expected growth rate.
Importance of product position analysis
The Boston group portfolio matrix can approximately predict business overall general business running conditions however the product lifecycle can reflect the performance of a particular product in the market. .
Product lifecycle majorly studies the utilization of the product marketing strategy but on the other hand, the BCG matrix primarily investigates the use of corporate resources and allocation of this resources.
In terms of reflection, the Boston Consultative Group matrix can reflect a form of diverse business situations, but the product lifecycle cannot reflect all businesses and product in the curve (Christopher, 2016).
The Boston consultative group network basically focuses on the component and utilization of the corporate properties while the product lifecycle, for the most part, studies the utilization of the item advertising methodology.
Similarities between Management Information System (MIS) and Decision Support System (DSS)
MIS is an information system that collects related information, summarizes and organizes it in a way that can be used by the business executive making of decisions, it is a computer-based system that has four crucial constituents, that is, data collection, entry of information, data transformation and information usage. DSS is a user-friendly computer system that can be accessed easily and simple operation by the people who are not interactive to the computer.
Decision support system is crucial in running of the business for it is consist of MIS which supports a number of ways for retrieval and comprehension of information. Consequently, allows diverse ways of access to information especially by the management.
During the communication, they provide commands that are easy to understand since they are user-friendly containing both internal and external information database making the management effective in terms of decision making.
The main aim of the MIS is on the structured functions and routine decision in an organization but for DSS, it focuses majorly on subtasks demanding the managerial judgment.
MIS emphasizes storage of data and efficiency while DSS does majorly does data manipulation and emphasizes the business strategies.
In DSS managers have to clearly understand the nature of the decision and the environment of decision making while MIS does not require a complete understanding of the type of the decision. MIS most depend on the computer skilled people but DSS relies on managerial judgments from the managers. Management Information System and Decision Support System to help Zylite group achieve its goals (Ada & Ghaffarzadeh, 2017).
In this case, a MIS financial system will provide financial data for Zylite Group manager to come up with business decisions on activities in the business. This help to incorporate data from different sources, pive simple access to monetary data in the outlined shape, Enable budgetary examination utilizing simple to-utilize devices and Compare notable and current financial related activities.
Difference between Product Lifecycle and Boston Group Portfolio Matrix
Considering Zylite Group, a financial MIS will have some of the subsystems to evaluate costs, revenues, profits analysis and auditing organs for both internal and outside reasons plus frameworks to do funds management. Having a financial MIS will likewise be utilized to produce players reports, for example external stakeholders.
A marketing MIS will promote Zylite Group operations throughout the many activities of advertising departments. Moreover, subsystems in this type of information system are marketing research, promotion of products and services, and product pushing, development of products and delivery, pricing and sales analysis. The main uses of a marketing MIS are to generate sales reports for the Zylite Group. These reports are produced on a regular basis, such as by week, month and another particular period. These sales reports enable managers to identify the most performing aspects and the least performing.
DSS is very important in doing stock evaluation present and ready for sale in the company including the jewelry. This will enable Zyline Group to make more profit by using DSS to enumerate its properties.
Decision support techniques will be used to analyze sales data and make expected trends on the market while monitors existing trends. Planners will make a substantial DSS resources in order to increase sales (Strauss & Frost, 2016).
Feasibility report addressing the issues that must be considered before the adoption of an e-commerce approach.
As planned by the Zylite group to introduce an e-commerce system to enable the company to expand its market. The company has to consider economic, technical and social feasibility. The report is to address considerations by the Zylite company executive prior adoption of the e-commerce system.
Through technical feasibility, the e-commerce to be adopted should be able to process a reasonable number of transaction in a given time limit, capable to withstand a large number of customers that are expected to use the system and the e-commerce system should connect customer located in different regions.
The adoption of e-commerce system will require skills and expertise that may not be available in the Zylite Group, it will not cost too much to acquire such experts.
Economic feasibility for this particular group states that it will be beneficial to introduce the system for it will help the marketers to predict the business trends and aspects which promotes to strategic planning (Tsekouropoulos, Andreopoulou & Misso, 2015).
In conclusion, e-commerce system will not only improve the sales of the business but also access to international market, therefore, it will have lowered the operational cost.
References
McDonald, M., & Wilson, H. (2016). Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to profit from them. John Wiley & Sons.
Turban, E., King, D., Lee, J. K., Liang, T. P., & Turban, D. C. (2015). Implementing EC Systems: From Justification to Successful Performance. In Electronic Commerce (pp. 645-687). Springer, Cham.
Proctor, T. (2014). Strategic marketing: an introduction. Routledge.
Christopher, M. (2016). Logistics & supply chain management. Pearson UK.
Ada, ?., & Ghaffarzadeh, M. (2017). Decision making based on management information system and decision support system. TRANS Asian Journal of Marketing & Management Research (TAJMMR), 6(1), 25-38.
Strauss, J., & Frost, R. D. (2016). E-marketing: Instructor’s Review Copy. Routledge.
Tsekouropoulos, G., Andreopoulou, Z. S., & Misso, R. (2015). 5. Green business, Integrated marketing communications and green marketing strategy for sustainability. GOingREEN. A collaborative platform for the Excellences of Campania Region: A collaborative platform for the Excellences of Campania Region, 1, 123.
Chron : The Importance of Product Positioning to the Marketing Plan. Retrieved fromhttps://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-product-positioning-marketing-plan-24275.html