Analysis of Amazon 10k

North American, International, and Amazon Web Services

North American, International, and Amazon Web Services are the regions of Amazon reportable accounts. The organization is broken down into four major operational components. Consumers come first, then merchants, then content creators, and ultimately developers and businesses. Since the organization’s founding in 1995, these divisions have established its primary focus.

The way the company interacts with customers

The way the company interacts with customers on its retail website can be used to specifically address the consumer category. The company’s three primary strategic priorities for its customers are selection, cost, and convenience. Third parties, as well as the Amazon Company, sell the products to their consumers through the website. The advent of mobile platforms has enabled the customers to also purchase the products and the organization offers other electronic devices such as the Kindle e-reader, Fire tablets and TVs and also Echo. The organization also runs daily promotions to ensure that the customers gain the best low-priced products ever seen on the globe. Other than consumer efficiency, the organization offers Amazon Prime, a membership application where customers subscribe and get unrestricted free shipping of their products wherever they might be on the planet. Other than digital deliveries, the company runs co-sourced delivery networks which help them to reach out to the customers at the fastest tie possible through their North American and International fulfillments.

Sellers

With regards to sellers, the company offers vendors an opportunity to trade their products through its website and their branded sites. The company only gains a percentage of the fee remitted through customer purchases per each unit.

Developers and Enterprises

For the developers and enterprises, the Amazon Web Services plays a crucial role in enabling them to store, create, and use computers to create databases through the segment. Some of these developers include government agencies, start-ups, and education institutions, among others. The main focus of this segment is service delivery and not any other thing, but it is aimed at ensuring they get the best service than any other place on the planet.

Content creators

The last segment is the content creators who form the main part of the organization’s existence. They are the authors and publishers of the books that are sold through the Kindle Direct publishing. The issuing platform enables the authors to select a 70% royalty option where they can publish their books to the Kindle store alongside Amazon publishing (Amazon.com, 2015). Musicians, filmmakers, and even app developers make a huge chunk of the content creator within Amazon periphery (Amazon.com, 2015).

Process Costing vs Other Costing Techniques

Process costing against other costing techniques such as standard costing and historical costing can be used in two segments mainly customers and content creators. For the customer segment, the company can benefit from process costing by having its products developed and sold through a continuous process (Lodha, 2016). Having the process in place, the organization can ascertain the cost per unit at each process, and this can enable them to have the lowest price for their goods as possible. For the content creator, when a continuous process is made for them to develop and create books, music, apps, and even films, they will be able to know how much their goods are sold per each process, and this will encourage them to create more since they make enough profits.

Other techniques such as historical costs only take place after they have been incurred. There can be a challenge to either the customer or content creator in this regard because they will have no power to control prices and many will depend on history which can sometimes be misleading. There is a limited utility with this approach, and the same can also be applied to standard costing which locates to deviations in cost and analysis performed (Lodha, 2016). Although the company may benefit much more from standard costing through cost deviation analysis, the consumer has less power to this effect and the content creator will depend on the analysis results of management to know the rules of operation.

References

Amazon.com (2015). SEC 10k Annual report.Sec.gov. Retrieved from: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872416000172/amzn- 20151231x10k.htm

Lodha, A. (2016). Methods and techniques of costing. Retrieved from: http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/cost-accounting/methods-and-techniques-of- costing/55231/