Assignment Guideline

The purpose of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to demonstrate the knowledge and skills you have learned from this module. There are many, equally valid ways to fulfil the assignment tasks. You will therefore have to make many own choices. You can, for example, choose whether to analyse the strategic position first and then evaluate Amazon’s strategy, or whether to do this in reverse order.
You should not draw only on the printed case study, but you also need to conduct more research into the company, its strategy, and its environment. Internet search, in particular the company website, news articles, and MINTEL reports will be useful. You should also draw on knowledge from other readings, including journal articles.
You have to choose a time frame to focus on. The case study printout gives you some of the information you need to complete the tasks with regard to the time up from 2007 to early 2009, and provides some historical background, but you can get additional information on its earlier and its more recent developments, etc.
You should focus on the corporate level strategy. However, you can mention business level strategy if this serves your argument.
In order to evaluate the strategy, you first have to describe what the strategy is.   To describe the strategy, you should use the information that you get on their particular activities, but you should also analyse their activities in more depth by using strategy concepts, such as the Ansoff matrix, the strategy clock, or Porters generic strategy options. Please note that you do not have to use all of these concepts and you can use other strategy concepts instead.
The evaluation with regard to suitability is particularly demanding, as it requires you to come to your own judgement. You should use only the criterion of ‘suitability’ for your evaluation, not other criteria such as feasibility.   Please provide a definition of suitability in your text. To examine suitability, you will have to...