Amazon Will Grow Quickly Through Innovation And Bold Planning
5 April, 2017 / Articles
Innovation and growth are the Amazon’s main objectives. After delivering $136 billion in sales in fiscal 2016, an increase of 27.1% over $107 billion the previous year, it seems very attainable that Amazon will reach $170 billion next year.
Here are some of the innovations that excite me.
Alexa – The virtual assistant is designed to give customers a better lifestyle experience. It is a digital invention that will read, play music and obey commands. Developers are integrating Alexa to into their products.Cincinnati Airport – The company will invest $1.5 billion to construct and operate an airport in Cincinnati with 40 cargo planes to serve customers faster.
Amazon Go – Introduced in Seattle, it is a new kind of store with no checkout required. Customers take products and go.
Physical Stores — Amazon has opened its fifth physical bookstore in Chicago and there are five more locations. In addition, the online retailer seems to be planning some home stores. Customers want to touch appliances or apparel before buying. Amazon is ready to serve shoppers with their preferences.
Reduced Training Time — AWS (Amazon Web Services) announced three artificial intelligence (AI) services that understand natural languages, turn text into lifelike speech, analyze images and recognize faces, etc. It can significantly reduce training time for many applications.
New Jobs — The company has announced that it will create 100,000 new full-time jobs in the next 18 months in the United States. This suggests that a lot of new ideas will blossom in the near future as the company grows.
It is this last point, the creation of many new jobs, that suggests the company is in fast growth mode for the rest of the decade. This was supported by a Forrester study forecasting online sales will exceed half a trillion dollars by 2020. Amazon, per Forrester, will drive a significant amount of e-commerce growth. The study states that customer-obsessed online retailers will continue to optimize their business since their priorities are merchandising and marketing. There will be more omnichannel efforts to garner incremental sales.
Forrester estimates that the number of U.S. consumers shopping online will increase to 211.0 million in 2021 from 187.5 million in 2016. They will spend $590.7 billion up from $344.6 billion in 2016. Forrester estimates that Amazon’s share of online sales was 51%, including Amazon’s marketplace, in 2014-15.
Customers like to shop on Amazon since they trust the quality and recognize the values being offered. The company is innovative and tests new ideas, be it robotics to speed fulfillment, Kindle or Alexa. The rest of the industry must learn how to evolve in order to remain viable as Amazon continues to meet its objectives to innovate and grow.
The science man and innovator, Fernando Fischmann, founder of Crystal Lagoons, recommends this article.
