Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Business Article, Research Paper Example

An article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that Amazon.com (Amazon) has struck a partnership with United States Postal Service (USPS) to deliver packages on Sundays. This is an attempt by Amazon to further strengthen its relationship with the customers. The service will initially run in Los Angeles and New York only and may later expand to other cities such as Dallas, New Orleans, Houston, and Phoenix. Sunday delivery is an attempt by the company to better compete with brick-and-mortar stores. Even though the service may significantly increase the convenience for the customers, it may also result in higher average delivery costs due to low volume (Bensinger).

Even though USPS does make Sunday deliveries on some occasions such as during holidays, this would be the first time for the company to make Sunday deliveries at such a large scale. The deal would also be quite beneficial to USPS who has been struggling with multi-billion dollar losses and looking at ways to reduce costs including ceasing Saturday deliveries. Fortunately, USPS doesn’t expect to hire new workers to provide service to Amazon as it has already been working on creating a more flexible workforce (Bensinger).

Sunday deliveries will not be an entirely new experience for Amazon who already delivers groceries and non-groceries in Los Angeles and Seattle through its own distribution network. The company has also formed partnerships with other organizations such as P&G with the aim to speed up deliveries to customers. Moves like these will also help Amazon increase the appeal of its Amazon Prime shipping program (Bensinger).

There are several concepts covered in the course that would be needed to assess the article. One of the concepts is leadership including leadership styles. Amazon is exploring an idea which is still kind of novel for e-retailers and which even carries risks. Bold decisions like these are usually not made by managers but by leaders and this article does help us better understand the differences between leaders and managers and how even leaders act in different manners due to different leadership styles. This article does give us some clues into the leadership style of Amazon’s upper management, especially its CEO Jeff Bezos.

This article also touches upon the issues of employee motivation. When it comes to employee motivation, the focus in this article is more on USPS rather than Amazon. USPS has been struggling lately and has also been trying to create a more flexible workforce. It may even have to ask its employees to work on Sundays as part of its agreement with Amazon. This article raises the question as to how USPS will motivate its employees who may already be suffering from low morale and their family commitments may also make it difficult to work on Sundays.

The concept of market segmentation would also be needed to assess the article, especially segmentation by lifestyle. It is clear that Amazon is targeting particular customer segments through this service otherwise it would not be going for a service that may increase average costs due to low volume. Only by carefully determining which customer segments are being targeted, we would be able to better understand the rationale behind Sunday delivery service.

We may also need to evaluate this article through marketing strategy as to what customer needs Amazon may be trying to fulfill or how it expects to gain an edge over the competition. An evaluation of Amazon’s marketing strategy may also reveal where Amazon wants to go in the short and long terms and how this initiative makes use of the company’s strengths.

It may also be helpful to assess the article on the financial impact of the decision on both Amazon and USPS. This decision will affect several elements in both company’s financial statements. For example, it will not only affect revenues and profitability but may also have material impact on liquidity and capital investments. For now Amazon may be relying on USPS but it is reasonable to assume that the company may make substantial capital investments as it expands into other cities and take direct control of the distribution network to improve speed and customer service.

This article is a great exercise because it addresses upon numerous concepts studied in the course. These concepts include leadership, strategy development, market segmentation, customer service, and economic and non-economic rationale behind initiatives. This article also reminds us that competitive landscape has been changing at a rapid base and market leaders do not follow norms but break them to gain an edge over the competition. It also reminds us that focus on customers is increasingly becoming more important due to growing competition and it is also important for companies to develop new capabilities to stay ahead of the game. This article also reminds us that the nature of competitors has also changed because competitors are not determined by similar business models or practices or even industries anymore. This article is a good reminder of the need of the companies to be flexible and quickly adapt to changing external environment.

Work Cited

Bensinger, Greg. Amazon to Begin Sunday Deliveries, With Post Office’s Help. 11 November 2013. 11 November 2013 <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304868404579190091121691258 mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews>.