Amazon's Current Market Conditions Competitive Analysis
Arash Felfeli, Broderick Day, Jose Villarreal, Justin Rhodes, Nancy Flores, William Rigney
ECO 365
August 10, 2015
Daniel Rowe
Introduction
Understanding how the competitive forces work in a market is very essential id a firm wishes to be an effective competitor with the rollout of new products. In this paper. Learning Team B will perform a competitive market analysis that will determine the product’s potential of success. Out team has selected the Amazon SPARK as the product to use for the purpose of this analysis. The SPARK is Amazon’s foray into the smart watch market and competes directly with AT&T and Google. Before the rollout of this new product, we will analyze the fundamental forces of the market that will ultimately be the determining factor that will influence if this product will succeed in relation to the competition.
Amazon’s History and Product Description
Founded in 1994 and launched from a garage in Bellvue, Washington in 1995 as a book seller, Amazon.com now ranks number 29 on the Fortune 500 list, up from 35 a year ago (Amazon.com, 2015). Amazon offers a variety of products including books, music, games, health and beauty, and electronics. In 2007, Amazon unveiled their version of the tablet, the Kindle. They have since expanded to include the Kindle Fire, HD and HDX, and the Paperwhite. In early 2014, Amazon introduced Fire TV, a device that is designed to compete with Apple TV and Google Chromecast. Later in 2014, Amazon entered the smartphone market with release of the Firephone. The Firephone has been met with limited success, mainly due to working exclusively with only one carrier, AT&T (Rushton, 2015). With the introduction of the SPARK, Amazon hopes to earn a share of the smart watch market. Smart watches on the market today require a smartphone for internet connection, the SPARK will have no such restrictions, it will be a stand- alone device. This type of...