AMAZON: WHEN A COMPANY BECOMES A PLATFORM
What is Amazon? How would you define Jeff Bezos’ company that was founded in 1994? It is common view to define Amazon as an online retailer and cloud computing services' company which is heavily investing in increasing the effectiveness of its logistical processes. For Amazon, logistics has become the core of its business: it manages the supply chain from supplier out through a distribution system to the final user. In doing so, Amazon is able to establish a competitive advantage through a superior customer service that is eventually the outcome of flexibility, quickness of delivery and real-time implementation of its inventory system. Simply put, cloud-computing inventory and net-centric supply system helped Amazon to obtain the cost advantages typical of economies of scale: the physical logistics and the e-commerce platform get together to give Amazon full information dominance and situational awareness of the market, therefore minimizing overstocking, understocking and avo