Before starting this activity, read Chapter 2 in the course textbook and go through the Mindtap Guided Case.

Respond to the following:

• Can any firm beat Amazon in the marketplace? If not, why not? If so, how can they best do so? How formidable a competitor is Google for Amazon? Please explain. What are Amazon’s major strengths? Does it have any weaknesses? Please explain. Is Jet.com a potential concern for Amazon? Why or why not?
• Given the importance of understanding the external environment, why do some firms fail to do so? Provide examples of firms that did not understand their external environment. What were the implications of the firm’s failure to understand that environment?

Good afternoon

I don’t see how any firm can beat Amazon in the marketplace. They are on a streak of business luck and any and everyone does business with Amazon from purchasing goods, media services of all types, to Prime membership that is a genius idea in getting items to the consumer within 2 days. They are an extensive competitor. Google is a competitor but also Google has the opportunity to benefit from what Amazon has to offer. Since Google is the major search engine technoligically speaking, it is the search engine that drives alot of business for Amazon. Amazon’s major strengths are their business delivery capacity. We are a want now society and Amazon seems to serve that purpose. Some of the weaknesses would be the Prime price being on the higher end. There are many people that purchase items from Amazon but not enough to satisfy the $99 Prime membership fee. But then there are those of us that order almost every day (that would be me) and Prime assists in the shipping costs of all the items purchased by getting them free and shipped within 2 days. Jet.com could be a potential concern for Amazon because of competitive prices.

The external environment and why firms fail is because of how the business model is set up and how it is established and ran. An example would be how the business doesn’t change its demographics. An example would be Goody’s store. They have high end products and depending where they are located it can make or break the company. It broke the company here where I reside because they are low income families that make up more than 70% of the community and the consumers would rather shop within their means.