M2 Assignment-Case Study-Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

M2 Assignment-Case Study-Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

Subject: Business    / Marketing
Question
Instructions for Preparing and Submitting Case Study Analyses
Please follow outline and answer questions presented below:
1. Summarize the company’s marketplace situation.
2. Identify salient problems and issues.
3. Determine key decision-making criteria.
4. Propose alternative solutions to each problem and issue.
5. Recommend solutions using decision criteria and solution rationale. Note: Your analysis must be presented in a professional manner. It will include your name,
course, the title of assignment, professor’s name, date, task, and a list of sources used, if
applicable. It must properly cite sources using the APA format. The paper itself must be typed,
double spaced, with one inch margins. Eleven or twelve point type is preferred. The evaluation
will consider content organization, clarity of writing, vocabulary use, and proper grammar.
M2 Assignment – Case Study: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
This case examines the contest for platform dominance in online commerce and advertising
among four firms collectively valued at $1trillion: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.
Though today each firm has a different set of core competencies and products, their domains
have begun to overlap and it’s likely in the near future they will overlap even more. Facebook,
founded as a social network is now competing with Amazon, originally an online bookseller, in
the gift market, while Google, a company best known for its search engine, now competes with
Apple, once a hardware manufacturer, in the market for mobile phone operating systems. All
four are competing by placing technology bets and marshaling big data insights form the user
data of their customers. Understanding their respective strengths and vulnerabilities is key to
analyzing the future Internet landscape.
Read the case carefully and then respond to the following questions. Consider revenue
from both advertising and e-commerce.
1. Define the contested boundaries among Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.
2. For each contested boundary that you have identified, how is the contest likely to play
out? How many contests give rise to all-or-nothing markets? How many to always-a-share markets? Case PDF
Deighton, John, and Leora Kornfeld. "Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google." Harvard
Business School Case 513-060, January 2013. (Revised December 2013.)
Recommended Reading to Assist Case Analysis:
Recommended: Kill your own business by Deborah Friedell. In London Review of Books
(2013), vol. 35, N 23, pp. 17-19. Available online at:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n23/deborah-friedell/kill-your-own-business Accessed July 22, 2014.