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BUS 599 Assignment

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BUS 599 Assignment
Running Head: Yahoo and Amazon: Building a Competitive Advantage

Assignment 1: Yahoo and Amazon: Building a Competitive Advantage

BUS 599
1. Describe, in brief, the histories of both of Amazon.com and Yahoo.com, and determine the core business of each.

Amazon.com has advertising banners at their partners’ sites like Yahoo, AltaVista and so on. When the potential customer searches for a topic; and clicks on the Amazon.com advertisement alongside the hits for the search, Amazon.com provides the customer books related to his/her search. The customer is offered a valuable experience and information at the web site, at no extra cost. The objective here is to induce the customer to make a purchase by holding his/her attention to the site for a long time. Amazon.com also uses radio and the print media to communicate with customers. The advertisements usually tend to be quite catchy and easily secure the attention of a potential customer.
The increase in visibility that Internet advertising brings can be harnessed to create and maintain a brand image in the minds of consumers. This is o of the reasons that companies like Amazon.com have ne graduated from being obscure virtual businesses to those that score very high in brand-recognition surveys.
One of the main characteristics of branding on the Internet is to provide the customer with significant functionality online. The customer is allowed to do a number of things other than just reading the information on the web site. Amazon.com and its competitors like Barnes and Noble have figured out a way to make customers enjoy the experience o visiting their site and being offered a host of other f services like book recommendations, chat sessions with other readers, authors and so on.

2. Determine the key strategic differences that have impacted the relative success of both Amazon.com and Yahoo.com. Provide two (2) specific examples of such strategic differences to support the response.

As the



References: Jones, G., & George, J. (2011). Essentials of contemporary management (4th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin. ISBN: 9780078137228 French, Kristen. TheStreet.com, 16 February 2002. Retrieved April 26, 2014, from <http://www.thestreet.com/markets/kristenfrench/10009418.html>.  Merrill 201012 IT News "About Borders"  (2012, December 13). Amazon. Retrieved April 26, 2014, from http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/191024/102- 9198783-7296959 Mill

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