M RahmanStakeholders of Amazon (stakeholder analysis)
This detailed analysis of the stakeholders of Amazon aims to examine both the internal and the external stakeholders of Amazon.com Inc. It also explores how the company communicates with its stakeholders.
Amazon is one of the greatest companies of all time. It is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the USA. Its stakeholders have a varying degree of impact on its strategic and non-strategic decisions. However. their influence is not the same as they do not have the same power and interest in the company.
Internal stakeholders of Amazon
The main internal stakeholders of Amazon are the officers and directors, employees, and shareholders.
Amazon’s officers and directors
Amazon’s top officers are the President, CEO, and the Chairman of the Board, senior vice president, and the chief executive officers of Amazon web services, and worldwide consumers. It also has a number of directors. Jeffrey P. Bezos is the President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of Directors (Amazon, 2023).
Shareholders of Amazon
Shareholders are the most powerful stakeholders of Amazon. They can influence its operations significantly. Jeff Bezos, Vanguard (an investment management company), MacKenzie Bezos (former wife of Jeff Bezos), Fidelity Management & Research Company, and BlackRock Institutional Trust Company are Amazon’s some of the major shareholders.
This demonstrates that Jeff Bezos retains a huge control of the company through his shares and also for the fact that he was its founder. It is worth noting that a group of shareholders has criticised the company for failing to provide its workers with appropriate safety measures at its facilities across the USA (Palmer, 2020).
Amazon’s employees and workers
According to Coppola (2022) over 1.6 million people have worked with Amazon with different capacities. The company hires additional members of staff during the holiday season to keep pace with consumer demands.
Amazon has more employees than Google and eBay. It pays a minimum wage of $15 an hour to all full-time, part-time, temporary, and seasonal employees across the U.S which is higher than the federal minimum wage.
However, Amazon has been accused of paying its delivery workers very poorly. Likewise, safety issues of delivery drivers and many workers at its facilities have drawn widespread criticisms.
External stakeholders of Amazon
Amazon has a number of external stakeholders e.g. customers, online sellers, competitors, local communities, and the government. More than 197 million customers visit its website each month.
Customers of Amazon
Millions of people have Amazon Prime memberships in the USA alone. These customers and their spending online have made what Amazon is today. Amazon takes customers’ complaints very seriously. Any seller may be suspended temporarily following complaints from customers.
Competitors of Amazon
Amazon competes with a number of global giants. Its biggest competitor in e-commerce is eBay. Likewise, in web services industry, it competes with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, and some others.
Amazon’s top competitors in the streaming industry are Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, YouTube, and Apple TV Plus. This shows that Amazon is challenged by a number of big competitors in everything it does.
Millions of sellers are actively selling on Amazon.com. These sellers provide Amazon’s customers with what they look for. Without them, Amazon’s business model is unimaginable and unsustainable.
However, many analysts argue that Amazon does not much favour its small sellers. Therefore, many small sellers go out of the business at a very early age.
How does Amazon communicate with its stakeholders?
Amazon’s website (www.amazon.com) contains a lot of information covering a variety of areas that address stakeholders’ concerns and queries. Jeff Bezos also occasionally writes letters to stakeholders to outline the company’s strategies.
Amazon’s advertising campaigns designed to persuading customers are very extensive. In 2021, its marketing spending was over 32.6 billion dollars, which is lot more than what was spent on the previous year (Coppola, 2022).
Analysing the impact of stakeholders on Amazon
It is clear that each stakeholder has the potential to have some kind of impact on Apple’s success and failure. Shareholders, for example, have the power to appoint and remove directors, which can have a significant impact on its decision-making.
Employees, on the other hand, have a direct impact on the company’s products and services, as they are the ones who design and produce them. In fact, Apple’s design team is well renowned had plays a great role in its success.
Customers, suppliers, communities, and governments can also have a direct impact on Apple’s success and failure. For example, customers can influence its reputation through word-of-mouth, which can have a long-term impact on its success and failure.
Similarly, suppliers can also impact on Apple’s profitability by providing high-quality materials and resources at competitive prices. This shows that it is very important for it to engage with the stakeholders with effective means.
Conclusion
When it comes to Amazon, the list of stakeholders can be overwhelming. To understand Amazon’s stakeholder engagement and management, it is important to identify who those stakeholders are and how they can influence it.
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You may also like reading: SWOT analysis of Amazon and PESTEL analysis of Amazon.
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Competitors of Amazon (Amazon competitor analysis)
Last update: 07 January 2023
References:
Amazon (2023) Our positions, available at: https://www.aboutamazon.com/our-company/our-positions (accessed 07 January 2023)
Coppola, D. (2022) Number of Amazon.com employees, available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-amazon-employees/ (accessed 07 January 2023)
Palmer, A. (2020) Amazon investors want the company to address worker safety at its shareholder meeting, available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/25/amazon-shareholder-meeting-investors-want-worker-safety-disclosures.html (accessed 30 September 2020)
Author: M Rahman
M Rahman writes extensively online and offline with an emphasis on business management, marketing, and tourism. He is a lecturer in Management and Marketing. He holds an MSc in Tourism & Hospitality from the University of Sunderland. Also, graduated from Leeds Metropolitan University with a BA in Business & Management Studies and completed a DTLLS (Diploma in Teaching in the Life-Long Learning Sector) from London South Bank University.
