Question

The four pillars of Amazon’s business model were low prices, wide selection, convenience and customer services. Besides for e-commerce business, do you think these pillars can applicable for other non e-commerce industry? Please share your analysis.

Answer 1

The four pillars of Amazon’s business model can be applied to other non-e-commerce industries, and one of the examples of such industries is the self-service outlets.

Self-services outlets refer to the stores that provide a variety of products and a single place with the alternatives of each of the products. Such outlets can follow Amazon’s business model based on four pillars, such as:

1. They provide low-priced products due to high product lines as some products give a higher margin than other products, so the low price of one product can be compensated with other products.
2. Allow wide selection from the various alternatives, for example, clothes from the different brands available at the same place, soap of different companies are available from which consumers can choose.
3. Such outlets are accessible in the market as these stores are open in the different markets as a franchisee of a single company, which makes it convenient for the people to get all the products at a nearby market place.
4. They provide unique and appropriate customer services as it maintains the quality of the products and updates them time to time to remove the expired products. It also maintains the separate shelves for the products so that customers can find the products easily.

Hence, the four pillars of Amazon’s business model can be used in non e-commerce industry as well.