Political And Social Criticism In 1984 - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 8 Words: 2398 Downloads: 2 Date added: 2019/04/10 Category Literature Essay Level High school Tags: 1984 Essay Did you like this example? There must be something in books, something we cant imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. According to Ray Bradbury, You dont stay for nothing. It is curious to think that a single work of art, a single poem, and a single book can radically change the minds of the populace as a whole and yet it has been a recurring theme throughout history. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Political And Social Criticism In 1984" essay for you Create order As a major source of political and social criticism, books have been implemented in criticism of political machines, social injuctices, the greedy and selfish side of human nature that works toward assuming total control. As sometimes a blunt and rude awakening, dystopian novels illustrate, often in exaggerated ways, a fictional reality that disturbingly mimics what has occurred or is occurring in reality and has the potential to prophesied the emergence many different types of societies along with the conflicts between the people and the government. One dystopian writer who was influenced to write a novel criticising the totalitarian regimes of his time, such as Natzi Germani under Hitler and the Soviet Union under Stalin, was the left-wing writer George Orwell. In one of his lesser praised books,1984, argued by critics as being a very underdeveloped story lacking interesting plot points and containing a harshly pessimistic outlook on Londons society, George Orwell warns that a similar society to the socially oppressive, totalitarian society of Oceania could arise if social oppression in the forms of degradation of the self, political greed and extreme patriotism and oppression of the working class through enhancements in technology and erasure of the past continue in his current society. Orwell is well recognized for his inclusion of political and social criticism within his novels and essays. He used real world politics to be able to effectively depict and prophesize human greed for power and need to control people in totality through unquestioning loyalty. The critic Morris Dickstein comments that: Orwells appeal to posterity brings to mind poems like Whitmans Crossing Brooklyn Ferry or Brechts An die Nachgeborenen (To Posterity), which begins, Truly, I live in the dark ages, and ends with an appeal for understanding: Think back on us / With kindness. Winston scribbles in his diary, as Orwell writes the novel, for the future, for the unborn, though he wonders if such communication is really possible, especially under a system that claims it can wipe out any trace of him. (105). It is interesting to note that Orwell, with his lifetime numbered with a severe illness that took hold around the time of his writing 1984, rushed to get his message out to his future audience, in an effort to provide critical insight about political idealisms, such as communism and totalitarianism(Dickstein). Similarly, although he does not know how his message will be sent or received, Winston seems to want to relay a message for the future generation as a warning sign to be cautious with the seemingly desolate direction of total control that is Oceania. His desire is to make sure that his truth is spoken so that the future generation may know and understand the horrible conditions Winston lived in and aspire to change the negligent and oppressive lifestyle the government is forcing their own people to lead. Moreover Dickstein comments that Nineteen Eighty-Four has several minor characters who also serve as emblems of Orwells argument, including Syme, the ideological zealot, and Pa rsons, the slovenly, stupid true believer who is turned in by his own children(104). The unbridled patriotism that the people of Oceania exude, unsurprisingly, backfires when extreme amounts of surveillance come into play. The patriots ignorance and the belief that unquestioning loyalty has the ability to protect the self from perceived unlawfulness are products of the governments want to assume control. Not only is this exaggerated form of patriotism needlessly present in the adults it is also disproportionately apparent in the younger generation because the propaganda in favor of the government was all the children ever even knew. The adults may have grown up in a time where Oceania had not formed yet and so may be less influenced by the propaganda but because the children were born when this government was fully fledged, they are able to be molded in such a way that makes them turn against their own kin for the benefit of the government. As illustrated by the main character Winston, the two minutes Hate was a prime example of this extreme form of patriotism in whi ch: The most horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but it was impossible to avoid joining inA hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against ones own will into a grimacing, screaming lunatichis secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and big brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation(Orwell 15). In his dystopian world, technology,specifically the telescreen, is used as a method for surveilling the populace to keep the people in a state of terror for their livelihood, specifically the telescreen, which is able to receive and transmit any sounds above a whisper to the thought police. This essentially gives rise to the effect of people believing that their every actions and thoughts can and will be heard and if anything goes against the belief system that the Party offers, the consequences are severe, in the form of torture and death. As an effect this causes the to be docile and unquestioning complacency of the populace. As the critic John David Frodsham pointed out how the system of surveillance to beget loyalty in 1984 mimics reality. As one observer commented, as late as 1975: China is an immense bar racks living in a permanent state of terror and fear. The Maoist way of life is based on surveillance of the citizenry. Several houses make up a cell whose members are required to report their thoughts and actions to each other. . . The individual has no right to personal life. . . where he goes, what he talks about, what he eats, what he reads, what he listens to on the radio, all this is immediately learned by those around him and reported to the neighborhood revolutionary committee !Thanks to the bao-jia (mutual surveillance) system, Maos China did not need the telescreen. Thought-control had been achieved without elaborate technology (144). With effectively little to no privacy, the government of Oceania, as well as China in the Maoist way of life, have efficiently stripped the populace of their identities and amassed control through surveillance (Frodsham). Likewise the fear factor in 1984 of being reported by someone or overheard by the Thought Police allows Oceanas government to effectively assume control. To the people of Oceania the thought of being taken away to never be seen or heard of again and to have their entire life uprooted has effectively made the masses complacent and docile enough to not utter a single word against the government and to foolishly believe the propaganda that is being spread to further elicit complacency. Frodsham continues to explain that For Orwell, Nature was essentially good and technology essentially evil. Technology in 1984 is used to enslave men, not liberate them(142). It is interesting to note that many technologies are in current use that help the government surveil and keep their people in line so utter chaos does not ensue. However, the extent of which the novel uses technologies such as the speakwrite and telescreen as a form of control is quite literally frightening as one misspoken word or action could get one killed. The extreme misuse technology in the novel is, quite literally, evil in the sense that, technology is innovative and meant to help one live a more comfortable life, but is rather used to constrain people into a very limited form of living where fear prevails and peace of mind does not. In the novel, OBrien explains that:The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. (1984, 175). The power that OBrien is illustrating is in and of itself desolate. It is a power that provides for no security or peace of mind for the people as a whole but rather illustrates the burning desire of the few who are in power to gain more and more power, of course without second thought of the consequences and without second thought for the wellbeing of the people. The greed that is illustrated in O Briens explanation as claimed by critic H. Mark Roelofs, stems from the knowledge that, power of this order cannot be possessed by a single individual except in and for the perpetuation of myth, to wit, the myth of Big Brother. In fact, toted power can be possessed only by a class, or a party representing a class(23). In essence, having power of that extent possibly be held in the hands of one individual. However brainwashing the population into believing that there exists someone in the right who is all seeing and all controlling, Big Brother, and symbolically having someone who is trying to overthrow this myth of Big Brother who is in the wrong, as demonstrated by the enemy of Oceania, Emmanuel Goldstein, essentially makes the people ideologically complacent to the control of Oceanias Party. As further explained by the critic Roelofs, In consequence, their power could be taken to the ultimate pitch total power is more like an absolute perversion of love(23). As a result of the Partys lust for power and greed combined with an overall lack of concern over the well being of the population as a whole, people like Obrien, who find those going against the societal norms to completely and utterly destroy the thi nking, conscious and rational mind, essentially the self, allow for a almost mindless and unquestioning loyalty to the Party to be instigated. Furthermore, in the novel Obrien exclaims If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever (178). Essentially, the Party has created a government without freedom, a grim reality that is substantially hopeless for the populace. There seems to be an overall lack of compassion, gratitude, and true criticism of the power hungry government that stems from rational thought based on the idea that government is meant to protect the wellbeing of the people. Roelofs claims that, It must always be noted that party members love (i.e., merge themselves with) the Party, and that the populace and Winston Smith in particular- must love Big Brother (23). Because the people have been conditioned to such an extent to believe that they must love Big Brother, they know only how to believe the lies the government is feeding them with a spoon and lack the ability to criticise and provide for intelligent debate that may help improve the well being of the people. Likewise the extreme forms of surveillance make this task quite difficult since so few are willing to stand up for better humane treatment at the expense of their lives. The self is a concept that is constantly being sought after, along with individuality and uniqueness. However, due to the inhumanity and cruelty illustrated throughout the book, the self along with individuality is not something that is considered or even widely sought after. According to the critic Irving Howe, Orwell is trying to present the kind of world in which individuality has become obsolete and personality a crime..and Orwell has imagined a world in which the self, whatever subterranean existence it manages to eke out, is no longer a significant value, not even a value to be violated (195). The very idea of having an identity, within the dystopian society that orwell has created, is seen as being blasphemous. The people are often depicted as robots, doing what the masses do, never stepping out of line for fear of severe judgement, and never once thinking or speaking their minds because they have been conditioned to not think. Therefore because the people are so far gone under the control of the government , none can ever have an original opinion or thought, none can critique, and none can ever be able to contemplate what it is to be human, to have an identity and a sense of self. The horrifying illustration of the older generation not being able to teach the younger generation how to think analytically and always question and have intelligent conversations comes into play through the portrayal of mindlessness throughout the novel. 1984 demonstrates the horrific society in which politics has overridden a persons ability to express themselves freely without fear of reprimands along with society and how it functions as a whole and Howe describes the novel as a profoundly anti-political book, full of hatred for the kind of world in which public claims destroy the possibilities for privacy (196). It should be noted that Orwells intention of the messages in the book are not anti-political in nature but are rather anti- totalitarian in which the entire state is required to have total subservience to a centralized and dictatorial authority. This is shown illustrated to the many instances of a lack of privacy and surveillance taken to extreme levels to garner complete and utter conformity of the people the government serves along with the utter lack of care of the government towards the people they are meant to serve and protect. To further demonstrate the illusion of good living conditions and security, the government has workers such as the main character, Winston, erasing and rewriting history and facts to prevent truth from reaching the public and to spread lies. As illuminated by R. B Reeves: inhabitants of this world (of crowded apartment houses that reek of boiled cabbage, of foul smelling Victory Gin, of Victory Cigarettes that fall apart) cannot know how truly bleak their lives are since they have no means of comparison. All knowledge of the past has been altered; so there is no way of discovering whether life had been better previously(14).

Walt Disney Company A Cartoon Studio - 2215 Words

Walt Disney Company The birth of Walt Disney Company can be traced back in 1923 where it was founded by Walt Elias Disney as a cartoon studio. The company was initiated in California in the summer holidays with its first animation being about Alice Wonderland, which was made in Kansas City (Sanders, 2015). At those days, the company was identified as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. After four years of adhering to only one cartoon, Alice, Walt Disney decided to release new series of cartoons which started with Oswald cartoon or the 928 when Walt Disney decided to change the character of his cartoon series into a mouse which colloquially identified as The Lucky Rabbit (Sanders, 2015). The recognition of the company was realized back in 1 was named as Mickey Mouse. Although Disney received several criticisms from the film distributors concerning his idea on the Mickey Mouse, the cartoon was marked as the international and the moist popular figure of the days by the New York Times Newspaper (Sanders, 2015 ). Most of the film distributors believed that the cartoon series from Disney only had the mediocre ability but not until it was performed in theatres and drew the interests of the audience in large numbers that they realized that it was going far. Citing from the setting background of Walt Disney’s cartoon series, it was marked as the guide to the animator and an orchestra from its musical background. The general development of the company was realized in 1950 when itShow MoreRelatedCasey Blackwell. Spc 1608. Professor Workman. 7 February1234 Words   |  5 PagesWorkman 7 February 2017 Walt Disney Introduction I. Open With Impact A. 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Business Model of Amazon Free Essays

Opening of the internet to commercial activity, the creation of naming conventions for URLs and the development of a user friendly and free interface i. e. the browser were the three major developments that led to the advent of what is known as â€Å"e-business†. We will write a custom essay sample on Business Model of Amazon or any similar topic only for you Order Now As the economy has moved from agrarian to industrial to information age, the focus of the businessmen or the wealthy and powerful has also shifted in terms of the ways of obtaining wealth or doing business. In the agrarian age there was shortage of land which made ownership of land as the determinant of value. Powerful land barons typically accumulated vast tracts of land and coerced people who were bound to the land and owned by the feudal lord into living on and working it. As economy moved from agrarian to industrial age, physical assets owned by a firm became the determinants of value and shortage of raw-materials led the powerful industrialists to conspire to control the supply of raw materials. In this age, the market could absorb as much product as the industrialists could produce. The current era in which we live has been defined as the information age wherein relationships and intellectual capital are more important than anything else. One is not worried about physical assets anymore. Companies don’t compete with each other over superior products as they are largely commoditized rather compete increasingly on the basis of value added customer services. The economic battles of today are fought over the mind-space of consumers. In the information age power-play customers are not passive participants, in the way that land and raw materials were in the agrarian and industrial ages. In fact, according to Zang Hailing, it is the customers’ time that is in short supply, and therefore for any firm to succeed, emphasis needs to be given to the importance of reducing the customers’ time to adopt a new product. Thus, in a world where technology is changing every day and the transformation of consumers has happened from â€Å"Price Takers† to â€Å"Price Makers† as they are armed with more options and information; the companies that control more and more customer relationships will be the ones that hold the power in an industry and reap the lion’s share of the profits. E-commerce or e-business is an important tool that enables companies to reach out to the global market at low cost and provides abundant information about the consumers’ requirements and preferences easily which was not so easy earlier. Following figure is a glimpse of the promising future that the ecommerce industry holds. The US E-commerce has seen a 40% increase in the sales over the past 5 years as a percentage of the total retail sales in US. Source: http://ycharts. com Now when thinks about e-commerce, the first name that comes to everyone’s mind is that of Amazon. com. Not only most of the people have heard about it but there are many people who have actually used its services. Amazon was not only one of the few of the companies that thrived throughout the period in which many dot-com companies struggled to survive but has been constantly performing exceptionally well in terms of revenue per visitor which is one of the key parameters for any commercial website. Amazon has had one of the fastest growths in the internet’s history with revenues reaching $2, 8 billion in the first five years with Google’s revenue reaching only $15bn in the first five years. Now, just like any other traditional business in order to clearly understand an e-business one needs to have information on the following components: a) Business Strategy which determines the products and service offerings by the firm, the firms targeted customers and the firms value proposition. It also helps firms decide on the choices and the tradeoffs that the firm needs to make. b) Organizational form or structure c) Business processes which refer to the unique ways in which organizations coordinate and organize work activities, information, and knowledge to produce a product or service. ) Value Chain i. e. the sequence of activities that a firm undertakes to create value, including the various steps of the supply chain but also additional activities, such as marketing, sales, and service. e) Core Competencies which are the collective learning’s of the firms and being distinctive create long term competitive advantage for the firm. From the beginning, the focus of Amazon. com has been on offering their customers compelling value. In the current report filing dated 04/13/12, Jeffrey Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon. om writes â€Å"We realized that the Web was, and still is, the World Wide Wait. Therefore, we set out to offer customers something they simply could not get any other way, and began serving them with books. We brought them much more selection than was possible in a physical store (our store would now occupy 6 football fields), and presented it in a useful, easy-to-search, and easy-to-browse format in a store open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. † The Value Proposition offered by Amazon. com is â€Å"earth’s largest selection—24/7, at competitive price. † Amazon. om has continuously focused on improving the shopping experience owing to which they substantially enhanced their stores in 1997. Though they started off with books, they now offer customers gift certificates, 1-ClickSM shopping, and vastly more r eviews, content, browsing options, and recommendation features. The company’s stated goal was to â€Å"be Earth’s most customer centric company for three primary customer sets: consumers, sellers and developers. † It targeted its first set of customers through its initial retail model where it sold only books. It offered the perfect combination of low prices, large selection and convenience or customer experience. The digital media allowed limitless inventory, boosted customer care and allowed higher margins and hence lowest prices. In 15 years Amazon went from 1 category to 16 main categories of books. Amazon began with books and needed to grow big fast. From 1995-1998, Amazon moved from books to music and again through the same combination moved to become the biggest seller of music in just 120 days! Amazon moved on develop its own digital driven supply chain and distribution network by hiring from the expert: Wal-Mart. Amazon accelerated development through its strategy of â€Å"Build, buy, partner† a) Build: Amazon keeps on creating new categories. For example, Amazon kicked off a new service by the name MyHabit. com in May 2011 that made fashion available to consumers directly from designers and boutique brands. b) Buy: When there is a lot of competition in any area and the competitors have a strong hold, Amazon believes in buying out the incumbent. Few of the acquisitions made by Amazon include Internet Movie Database  (IMDb), Zappos (an online shoe and apparel retailer) etc. ) Partner: Amazon has also entered into a lot of merchant partnerships. It offers its technological service and ecommerce expertise to third- parties. For example in October 2011, Amazon. com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Sandman, and Watchmen. As mentioned before as well, Amazon want to be the â€Å"wo rld’s most customer-centric† company, and so their focus is on the â€Å"Customer Service†. It ensures customer loyalty through three main approaches: a) Recurring usage b) Seamless Integration c) Lock-in The following table tells us how Amazon uses all above mentioned approaches for its both customers: Sellers and consumers. | Sellers| Consumers| Recurring Usage| a. Developed a customer base close to 615mn users that can’t be ignored by sellers b. Ensures profit through optimized and reliable technology c. Developed a trusted Brand name| a. Created an ecosystem through Kindle b. Stores user’s media library c. Offers personalization to customers d. Gives special offers everyday| Seamless Integration| a. Monitors sellers rating ratings posted by consumers and expels sellers with bad ratings b. Offers Fulfillment by Amazon service(FBA) which allows third party sellers to use Amazon’s large warehouse and distribution network| a. For customers, all the sellers are highly commoditized and invisible. They buy it because of the Amazons brand value b. Get benefitted by Amazon Prime and free super saver shipping| Lock-in| a. By controlling or owning the customer accounts b. High level of infrastructure development required to ensure same level of customer service as offered by Amazon| a. By providing digital content that works only on Kindle b. Amazon Prime Program which requires annual subscription| | c. | c. | Amazon developed a value chain of itself for internal appraisal so as to identify its strengths and weaknesses that would help it add value and maintain a competitive advantage. Amazon uses the value chain model from Michael Porter’s book, â€Å"Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. † The first table represents the Primary activities of Amazon which are needed to produce a product or services for the end customers. Inbound logistics| Operations| Outbound logistics| Marketing ; Sales| Service| Avoids the overhead and large amounts of inventory carrying cost because it orders the books from the distributors. Easy and fast payment systems. Online customer systems and feedback. | Operates a number of transportation hubs that they refer to as injection points. Injection point locations are located in heavily customer concentrated areas. | Customer tracking  is an Amazon stronghold through which it provides personalized customers’ exper ience| Free return policy within 30 days. Uses marketplace to increase channel and range of goods through 3rd parties and customers. Highly reduced returns to suppliers (such as unsold books and media) due to available accurate forecasting technology | Customized buyer experience| Ability to aggregate orders bound for specific locations. | Interactive shipping and parceling price calculations. Free delivery based on single transaction spends. | Price comparison of new products with used products in marketplace shops. | Efficiently gathering information about customer experiences to inform service inputs and inventory controls. | 24 hour warehouse operations to meet customer demands. |   Utilizes the capabilities of its supply chain partners to deliver orders directly to ustomers which bypass the Amazon. com internal distribution center network|   Discounts and price reductions made available with suggested product mixes. Similar products recommended to customers interactively. | Offers customers gift certificates, 1-Click SM shopping, and vastly more reviews, content, browsing options, and recommendation features. | The next table gives information about the various support activities performed by Amazon which help to facilitate or assist its primary activities. | Value Creation| Cost Reduction| Firm Infrastructure| Huge central customer data warehouse available to all business units. Amazon’s single technology platform with services being incrementally distributed to other worldwide locations, reduces costs by leveraging investments | Human Resource Management| Amazon. com has a great training for its employees resulting in talented, smart and hard working group. Offers employees unique benefits such as medical, paid time off and stock grants and relocation allowances and hence attract highly skilled workers| Amazon utilizes independent contractors and temporary personnel to supplement their workforce, particularly on a seasonal basis. Although Amazon has works councils and statutory employee representation obligations in certain countries, Amazon’s employees are not represented by a labor union| Technology Development| High investments in technology development (e. g. , Kindle) to best leverage digital products. Innovations such as personalized recommendations, one-click ordering, and search inside the book are all Amazon. com innovations. Highly customized software applications that support their supply chain business model. For example, Amazon. om is linked into Ingram’s systems to see Ingram inventory levels when deciding whether to use Ingram to drop ship an order to a customer | Building an IT strategy, IT infrastructure and Data Centre on Linux open source software thus reducing cost of technology development. Renting computing resources to other companies reduce total cost of ownership Using standard hardware systems from HP to reduce cost of maintenance and compatibility| Procurement| Utilize s a Sales and Operations (SOP) planning process to determine forecasts for each roduct that it stores in its distribution center inventoryUses the strategic business unit – Booksurge to keep a rich inventory of digital copies of books so as to make this readily available for customers through print-on-demand and reduce the time of delivery | Specially built distribution Centers, warehouses and fulfillment Centers to increase the speed of order processing thus avoiding transaction costs of contracting out| In addition to the business strategies the value chain components mentioned above, the success of Amazon. om can be attributed to the entrepreneurial spirit of its founder chief executive officer Jeff Bezos and the strong inclination of the firm towards bringing about innovation in the business model. Let us discuss both factors one by one. Entrepreneurial Spirit of Jeff Bezos: Jeff Bezos can be regarded as the forward-looking CEO responsible for the success of Amazon. com. He has not only efficiently managed the present but through his long term vision always taken steps to create the future. The computer science and electrical engineering graduate from Princeton University moved to Seattle after resigning as a Senior Vice-President at D. E. Shaw, a Wall Street investment bank. At the time Bezos didn’t know much about the Internet but he came across a statistic that the Internet was growing at 2300%, which convinced him that it was a large growth opportunity. Without knowing anything more, he plunged into the world of e-commerce with no prior retailing experience. It was his decision to locate the company in Seattle because it had a large pool of technical talent and since it was close to one of the largest book wholesalers located in Rosenburg, Oregon. Moreover, the sales tax laws for online retailers state that one has to charge sales tax in the state in which one is incorporated. Therefore it was logical to locate in a small state. Under his guidance and logical thinking Amazon. com quickly became the leader in e-commerce. Operating 24 hours a day, the site was user-friendly and encouraged browsers to post their own reviews of books and offering discounts, personalized recommendations, and searches for out-of-print books. In June 1998 it began selling CDs, and later that year it added videos. In 1999 Bezos, looking at the future trends, added auctions to the site and invested in other virtual stores. The success of Amazon. com encouraged other retailers, including major book chains, to establish online stores. As more companies battled for Internet dollars, Bezos saw the need to diversify, and by 2005 Amazon. com offered a vast array of products, including consumer electronics, apparel, and hardware. And with the Jeff Bezos vision to make every book ever in print in any language available to the consumer in 60 seconds, Amazon launched the handheld device called Kindle in 2007. Bezos is the quintessential dot-com icon. He proved to the business world that the Internet was about more than knowledge. He proved that it is possible to overcome fears about purchasing online, to drive down transaction costs, and to build an international e-commerce business over the Internet. He had the courage to attempt something that people doubted could be done. . At the age of 35, Jeff Bezos was picked as the 1999 Time person of the year. Describing why it chose Bezos, Time magazine said, â€Å"Bezos’  vision  of the online retailing universe was so complete, his Amazon. om site so elegant and appealing that it became from Day One the point of reference for anyone who had anything to sell online. † Innovation in the Business Model: Amazon survived the dot-com bust because it had a viable and innovative  business model  built around a market-changing customer value proposition and a radical profit formula and over it has been able to sustain its position as the leader in e-commerce by bringing about continuous innovations in its business model. Let us look at some of the different dimensions wherein Amazon. om has been able to bring about business innovation. a) Offerings: By offering a handheld device dedicated to reading, Kindle, Amazon. com revolutionized the books industry. By creating a product like Kindle, the created a perfect, integrated and streamlined customer experience. b) Platform: With Amazon Web Services, Fulfillment By Amazon, and Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon is creating powerful self-service platforms that allow thousands of people to boldly experiment and accomplish things that would otherwise be impossible or impractical. ) Customers: In 2002 Amazon launched a web services platform and identified a new area of potential growth by finding another new customer—the IT community. Serving this new customer’s needs required different processes, different resources, and a different profit formulaâ€⠀in short, another  new business model. d) Customer Experience: 1-Click combined with Gift-Click and Wish List made Amazon. com the most convenient, easiest-to-use shopping destination the holiday season. Wish List allows customers to post the gifts they’d most like to receive from family and friends, while Gift-Click allows customers to send gifts easily by entering just the e-mail addresses of their recipients. e) Value Capture: By opening up its storefront to other retailers that were essentially competitors, Amazon transformed its business from direct sales to a sales-and-service model, aggregating many sellers under one virtual roof and receiving commissions from the other companies’ sales. ) Supply Chain: Fulfillment by Amazon service (FBA) by Amazon is a classic example of innovating business model through supply chain. FBA allows third party sellers to use Amazon’s large warehouse and distribution network and in the last quarter of 2011, shipped tens of millions of items on behalf of sellers. When sellers use FBA, their items become eligible for Amazon Prime, for Super Saver Shipping, and for Amazon returns processing and customer service. From the above discussion of Amazon’s business strategy, value chain analysis and the success factors we can conclude that Amazon has a robust Business model. Amazon’s business model fends off all the four threats. It has the costly-to-imitate financial and technological resources, it has developed protection against holdup by seamlessly vertically integrating its both the customers i. e. the sellers and the consumers. Reduced slack by locking-in the customers and the sellers and fights substitution through innovation in business model. How to cite Business Model of Amazon, Essay examples

Difference between a manager and a leader free essay sample

Manager A manager is the person responsible for controlling or administering an organization or group of staff[1]. Leader A leader is the person who leads or commands a group, organization or country[2]. Difference between a manager and a leader There is a clear distinction between being a leader and a manager. Understanding the difference is important for the success as an individual or a business. Leadership and management are often used interchangeably. Leadership is an essential asset a manager should possess. A leader sets directions or visions for a group that they follow while a manager controls or directs people/resources in a group according to established principles or values. The difference between a manager and a leader is that a leader has social influence in which the person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task. On the other hand, a manager controls an institution, business, or of a part, division, or phase of it. We will write a custom essay sample on Difference between a manager and a leader or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Leadership and management is not the same thing but are they are necessarily linked, and complementary. The main difference or variation between a manager and a leader is a manager usually obtains and directs resources to achieve an objective whereas a leader uses his visionary skills to set direction that a group follows. Managers usually rule while leaders are usually followed. A Leader possesses a natural set of talents that inspire people to follow, to be loyal, and to produce. Managers do not have specific leadership qualities and talents or that does not be given guidance to draw them out sometimes work much harder than their subordinates to produce results for the company. Managers and leaders are often referred to synonymously, but only leaders allow their employees to solve problems with their own insight. The truth of the matter is this: Every leader may not be a manager, but every manager should be a leader. It’s easy to see that leadership and management aren’t the same thing, but a manager who lacks effective leadership traits will drive a business into the ground. Manager or leader? Why? Upon studying the qualities and knowing the difference, I have realized that I want to be a leader since I want to lead, inspire and leave a mark in the hearts and minds of people for the good when I depart from this life. I wouldnt like to simply follow the instructions, rather understand the need of situation and act accordingly which when explained or said by the leader, we will feel like doing it. I feel this would be the case of others and so I want to be a leader.