Amazon UK and Islamic Relief UK: Comparative Analysis

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Ownership of Amazon

Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos (the worlds richest man). Jeff Bazos founded Amazon back in 1944 out of his garage in Seattle, he runs Amazon as CEO and owns 11.1% stake. The companies’ intense revenue growth has given its founder Jeff Bazos a phenomenal $93 Billion to his wealth since mid-March, according to analysis from the institute for policy studies and Americans for tax fairness. Back in 2019 Amazon-owned 7 massive international companies such as Audible, Create Space, Good Reads, IMDb, Wholefoods, Woot and Lappos.

Audible

As the largest producer and retailer of audiobooks in the United States, Audible Inc. is one of Amazon’s most well-known businesses. Following a $300 million acquisition in 2008, the company became a subsidiary of Amazon. In addition to selling audiobooks, Audible provides its customers with downloadable audio versions of newspapers, magazines, and radio programs.

CreateSpace

CreateSpace is an Amazon subsidiary that operates in the content publishing and distribution industry. The company offers a self-publishing platform that allows independent filmmakers, musicians, and authors to publish and distribute their work. That makes it much easier for creative professionals to bring their work to market without spending large sums of money. The CreateSpace website also provides a library of free articles on many publishing-related topics.

Good reads

With more than 90 million registered users, Goodreads is a thriving online community of book readers from around the world. The website allows users to discover new titles based on what they have read in the past. It also allows its members to give reviews on books and share their reading lists with others. Many self-published authors use Goodreads as a medium to promote their work and engage with their readers. Goodreads began in 2007, and Amazon purchased the website in 2013.

IMDb

The Internet Movie Database, better known as IMDb, is an online database that provides information on television shows, movies, actors, and producers. Amazon bought the company in 1998 from the founder, Col Needham, who has continued to serve as IMDb’s CEO.

After the acquisition, Amazon used IMDb as a medium to promote some of its movie-related products, including DVDs and videotapes. Ad revenue and strategic licencing deals are both significant contributors to IMDb’s overall income. The company also makes money with its subscription service IMDb Pro, which allows subscribers to network with entertainment professionals. In 2019, IMDb started a free ad-supported streaming video service called Freedive, which has since rebranded to IMDb TV.

Whole foods

Whole Foods was Amazon’s largest buy ever at the time the acquisition took place in 2017. Amazon paid around 13.1billion for the organic food retailer and gained access to its brick and mortar presence. While Whole Foods continues to emphasize the healthy fare that made it successful, Amazon’s acquisition brought some changes. Amazon Lockers began to show up in Whole Foods stores. While the lockers offered Amazon customers a secure place for deliveries, they also got more customers into the stores. More importantly, Whole Foods gives Amazon a way to deliver fresh food, which is an area where Amazon has struggled in the past.

Woot

Amazon acquired the popular online discount retailer Woot in 2010. As its ‘One-Day, One Deal’ slogan suggests, Woot provides its customers with discounted prices on a particular product each day. These products come from a wide range of categories, including consumer electronics, clothing, and even wine.

Zappos

Nick Swinmurn the company owner created Zappos in 1999, he decided to start an online shoe store on his own without spending much money on advertisements, Swinmurn grew his customer base through word-of-mouth. Zappos eventually became one of the world’s largest online shoe retailers. Zappos was purchased by Amazon back in 2009 after the company reached 1 billion in revenues. Since then, both companies have continued to operate as separate entities.

Liability of Amazon UK

The key to Amazon’s strategy to avoid liability is that Amazon does not say that it owns the products manufactured by sellers. Yes, the products are sold via Amazon website, yes, they’re stored in Amazon warehouses and they are packaged in Amazon packaging. And yes, Amazon processes customer’s payments. But for the most part, courts have found Amazon did not own the name of the products that turned out to be defective, meaning Amazon cannot be liable as a seller of those products. Therefore Amazon doesn’t get charged for the defect or gets taken to court because Amazon refuses to pay for that defect.

Judge Diana Motsz from the 6th Circuit mused that the long-standing product liability law does not account for newly ubiquitous Internet retailers like Amazon. ‘It is surely no incident’, Judge Motsz said that Amazon has designed its relationships with third-party sellers to avoid taking title to their products and assuming product liability risk. But she warned the court that ‘considerations of public policy may justify a change in common law’ when old laws seem to appear out-dated.

When you buy a product on Amazon, there’s little guarantee that what you’re getting has been expertly vetted for safety. The Wall Street Journal reported this year that more than 4,000 banned, unsafe, and mislabelled products were on the company’s platform, ranging from faulty motorcycle helmets to magnetic toys labelled as choking hazards.

Those faulty products have resulted in serious, sometimes fatal, injuries, setting loose a tidal wave of liability claims. According to court records viewed by The Verge, Amazon has faced more than 60 federal lawsuits over product liability in the past decade. The suits are a grim catalogue of disaster: some allege that hoverboards purchased through the company burned down properties. A vape pen purchased through the company exploded in a pocket, according to another suit, leaving a 17-year-old with severe burns.

The list goes on: an allegedly faulty ladder bought on Amazon is blamed for a death. Two days after Christmas in 2014, a fire started at a Wyoming home in America, blamed on holiday lights purchased through the company. Firefighters found a man inside, facedown and unconscious, according to court filings. He died that night. The results of the suits have been mixed: Amazon has settled some cases, and successfully defended itself in others, depending on the circumstances. (The company declined to comment for this article.)

Throughout the cases, Amazon has taken advantage of its unusual legal status as half-platform, half-store. If Home Depot sells a defective band saw, the store can be sued alongside the company that made the product in comparison to Amazon who won’t. That liability means conventional retailers have to be careful about the products they stock, making sure every item on store shelves has passed at least the most basic product safety requirements. In America, states have passed different versions of product liability laws, but they all put the burden of fault on more than just the original manufacturer.

But Amazon is more complex as it acts as a direct seller of products, while also providing a platform, called Marketplace, for third parties to sell their products on the online world. Tightly integrated into Amazon’s sales, Marketplace products are often cheaper for consumers, less controlled, and sometimes less reliable than other products and because Amazon is usually seen as a platform for those sales rather than a seller, the company has far less liability for anything that goes wrong. But because the Marketplace is so intertwined with Amazon’s main ‘retail’ store, it’s easy for customers to miss the difference and then when they get a faulty product and try to sue amazon they find themselves in a mess as Amazon won’t be the creator of the products, which is quite unfortunate in my opinion because most consumers are going to see that Amazon is a well known and trusted market place and wouldn’t look twice.

Amazon’s total liabilities from 2006 to 2020. Total liabilities can be defined as the total value of all possible claims against the corporation.

Amazon total liabilities for the quarter ending June 30, 2020, were $184.586B, a 33.48% increase year-over-year.

Amazon total liabilities for 2019 were $163.188B, a 37.02% increase from 2018.

Amazon total liabilities for 2018 were $119.099B, a 14.96% increase from 2017.

Amazon total liabilities for 2017 were $103.601B, a 61.58% increase from 2016.

Purpose of Amazon UK

Amazon UK aims to be Earth’s most customer-centric company. They believe their purpose is to continually raise the bar of the customer experience by using the Internet and technology to help consumers find, discover and buy anything, and empower businesses and content creators to maximise their success.

Amazon UK believes their mission is important for the UK because digital empowerment for customers and businesses improves living standards for people up and down the country and drives Amazon’s economic competitiveness and productivity in a global economy.

Amazon UK wishes to continue to push at the boundaries of how technology – digital infrastructure and services – can improve the customer experience and help make the economies of the countries where Amazon operate more competitive on the global stage.

Scope of Amazon UK

Scope of the business and current products of services provided Amazon has an extremely vast scope of business because it began as an online bookstore, became an online marketplace, and then began creating its technology such as AWS and the Kindle. Another service Amazon provides is a subscription service Amazon Prime. By purchasing a subscription to Amazon Prime, customers can purchase almost anything from Amazon and receive free two-day shipping. Included in the subscription is the popular Amazon Video, which began as a way for customers to stream videos online instead of purchasing them, and has evolved into Amazon creating their content through Amazon Studios. Another revolutionary service offered by Amazon is Prime Now, which allows goods to be purchased and delivered within one hour for $7.99. (Peterson 2015) Customers can also choose to have it delivered within two hours free of charge. Prime Now is currently available for Prime members as long as you live in one of the cities that offer the service. The service began in New York but is constantly expanding to bigger cities. Prime Now is another example of how Amazons trying to take advantage of the burgeoning on-demand market.

Description of the scope of market distribution (are they local, regional, global, etc?)From its inception as an online bookstore, Amazon was able to expand into international markets fairly quickly by acquiring other online bookstores in the United Kingdom and Germany. As Amazon services expanded so have the types of customers desiring to use those services. Amazon is now a global company that has retail websites in the United State, United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, India, China, and Japan. (Amazon.com) While these are the only countries that have Amazon retail websites, many other services are offered throughout the world. For example, Amazon Video is available in over 200 countries and Amazon Kindle is available in over 170 countries. Not only does Amazon operate globally, but it also allows its user to expand their business across the world. Overview of the leadership and management structure and individuals Jeff Bezos is the founder and has been CEO of Amazon since it was created in 1994. He is also listed as the President and Chairman of the board. As the CEO is responsible for choosing the right markets for the company and ensuring the companies resources are being used effectively. As the CEO Bezos is at the top of the management structure for Amazon but he is not the lone decision-maker. Senior Vice President and CFO Brian Olsavsky, Senior Vice President of Business Development Jeffrey Blackburn, CEO Amazon Web Services Andrew Jassey, Worldwide Controller and Principal Accounting Officer Shelley Reynolds, General Counsel and Secretary David Zapolsky, and CEO Worldwide Consumer Jeffrey Wilke follow him.

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