Amazon WAAS – Warehouse as a Service

The article “A Rare Peel inside Amazon’s Massive Wish-Fulfilling Machine” demonstrates the efficiency and power that an intelligent warehouse like Amazon’s has. What makes Amazon truly remarkable is that over 40% of their inventory comes from third-party sellers. In 2013, Amazon sold over a billion items on behalf of third party sellers. By creating this selling platform for other sellers, it has allowed Amazon to explore and develop unique solutions in other fields. To name a few: Amazon Prime, Amazon TV, AWS services, amongst others. Amazon’s intelligence in logistics is an advantage that no other tech rival can come close to, as of now. Amazon is increasingly becoming faster and smarter, allowing it to fulfill consumer wishes faster every day. Amazon allows many businesses to save money, due economies of scope. Meaning they can reduce procurement costs for businesses due to their sheer volume of order volume.

Discussion Questions:

1.) What do you think Amazon will do next to enable more sales for small businesses?

2.) How do you think Amazon will enter local markets? Perhaps acquire a company like Postmates? Drones?

3.) Do you think that Amazon will develop its own private shipping service? (Ex. UPS, FedEx)