Bezos’ baby: Amazon, the e-Tailer.
Amazon is a huge transnational cooperation, with a wide geographical reach with several business around the world. The company epitomises globalisation (where people, culture, goods and information transfer between countries with few barriers). Originally what was created by Jeff Bezos in 1994, as a marketplace to sell books, has now expanded into a digital umbrella for both physical and digital products. Selling almost everything you can imagine, Amazon is the product of the digital age. Performing as the world’s e-Tailer. They diversified their product range in order to future-proof sales — if one product fails, thousands will succeed.
Information technology and digital communications spread ideas/products quickly, and influences how people consume goods and services. Amazon has been able to successfully capitalise on the rapid development of technology for decades. Reshaping the entire retail industry surely has mixed consequences?
As Dave spoke on his lecture on the Internet of Things (IoT), the industrial/internet revolution spurred the IoT, a collision of variables, people data and machinery. Amazon is the umbrella for technological industry concentrated on all aspects of daily life in attempts to go more sustainable and convenient for consumers. Continually, even their own products characteristics integrate well into a modern home environment, such as Echo. On the flip side, this presents issues of security because of hacking. There have been reports about sinister problems with Alexa which provides skepticism about the future for the product.
There is a mixed bag of consequences for innovation culture. Technological advancements have created opportunities that are very beneficial for Amazon. Amazon products are cheaper than in shops because of their low-operating costs because of machinery robotics/sensors (who communicate with each other to perform once manual jobs), and bulk buying (economies of scale — expanding their capacity) in a race to deliver goods. Robotics are a substitute for costly workers, as they have higher productivity rates. Although this removes certain jobs for humans, the ones that remain work with machines in ‘carefully coordinated harmony’. Although, admitting there are challenges as machines sometimes malfunction or break, but are easily replaced.
A by-product of smart technologies is that automated systems put people out of jobs. As robotisation completely removes the human element. However, my peers contradicted this and said it could be interpreted as an opportunity for worker’s to increase their skill level, as it removes people from less traditional handling distribution. Amazon is set to invest $700 million retraining a third of their workers by 2025 in the US, as new technologies threatens roles, and they want them to acquire new skills. Showing that they care about the social/economic-being of their workforce, and that it isn’t all just about profit.
On the other hand, there is also evidence of Amazon exploiting their workforce in the developing world. Which begs the question — Is your Amazon product worth the human cost. In 2017, Amazon signed a deal with Foxconn to increase hardware production in China. It created more production lines and 15,000 jobs. The con however, is breaching human rights. These people are underpaid and exhausted due to facing 60-hour weeks. If that wasn’t bad enough in 2019, there was accusations of Amazon using child labor. With growing demand for goods, brings greater cost — evident as exploitation of human beings, children even. The challenge presented is unfair and inhumane.
This technological shift has had dubious challenges for both people and environment. Amazon is at the front line of a ‘race to the bottom’ approach to deliver cheap goods quickly — this presents a challenge as access to cheap goods removes the value of things. Products are so accessible for consumers in the 21st century, that it has enabled a ‘throw-away society’ — with people too often only using items as single-use. — Almost 30% of what’s purchased on Amazon a year will be thrown away in a year — and that figure excludes packaging. This accompanied with the fact that Amazon emissions mirror the amount as some small nations in 2018, put things in perspective about the consequences of environmental degradation, outweighing the opportunities presented by technological advancements.
On the other hand, Amazon’s quick delivery times through ‘Prime’, utilise the brand’s global connections. Through discussing this with my peers, we came up with the idea that Amazon seems to operate in a world without borders. The data never sleeps, Amazon ships 1,111 packages every minute (2018). Communication technology revolutionised the market through Harvey’s idea of time-space compression (the internet, social networks, websites etc.) implying that there is a shrinking world of connections. Furthermore, the shortcomings of less jobs in the company for people in production (because of robot technology), are somewhat made up for with delivery. This shows the opportunity for people have great access to goods speedily and readily.
Amazon is an ambidextrous organisation, constantly innovating to fill consumer desires as well as facilitating the idea of new ones. Amazon set the scene, as the pioneer for the e-market. The industry is a competitive and cruel one with vast opportunities for success as well as challenges. These go hand-in-hand. Amazon attempts to tackle the effects of robotization by investing back into the workers that allowed Bezos to become the richest man in the world. There will always be environmental issues with a market this big, and one fears this will only get worse with further technological development and slacking ethos of the global population. Amazon is a self-perpetuating beast, and nothing can stop it, we and them, can only mitigate the fallout.
