Throughout the last decade, Amazon has become one of the most sustainable companies within its industry. One of the major reasons that Amazon has been able to achieve a long term competitive advantage is by offering superior pricing power, capitalizing on a large market share and creating a well-known brand name. Through these achievements Amazon has been able to produce long term advantages that have made it difficult for other companies to duplicate. Amazon has an elite status within itself, throughout out the past decade it has both surpassed bench marks and created new ones. Amazon has set the bar so high that it would be extremely difficult for a company to reproduce their success. Amazon was first developed when e-commerce was in an infancy stage. This gave Amazon the opportunity to create and expand on the platform that we know today. It would prove to be very difficult if a similar firm were to try and duplicate the same success as Amazon. A similar firm would need to develop the credibility and reputation that Amazon has taken years to develop. Then it would need to establish a large client base that can bring together both buyers and sellers. One of the second major tools that a new firm would need to be competitive with Amazon is large amounts of capital. If a firm was to borrow capital the result would cause the company to become highly leveraged, which would mean that the margin of error would have to be very slim. High leverage a slim margin for error, thus in turn reduces pricing power and lowers profit margin. Within the past decade investment capital for online companies has become extinct sense the great boom of the .com era (Smith, 2015). This has left the playing fields wide open for venture capitalist seeking an opportunity for the next big thing. Within this paper we will take a look at how a vast company such as Amazon raises financing for debt, and review risk
References: Amazon.com, Inc. (2014, october 10). Financial and Strategic Analysis Review. Retrieved from Amazon.com, Inc: http://callisto.ggsrv.com/imgsrv/Fetch?banner=4f874577&digest=4f8c317c2ce3be6a85eb173efa90ff7c&contentSet=SWOT&recordID=360812_GDRT27249FSA Lashinsky, A. (2012, NOVEMBER 28). What will Amazon do with. Fortune, 1-5. Smith, L. (2015, January 9). Why Companies Issue Bonds. Retrieved from Investopedia: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062813/why-companies-issue-bonds.asp Sterman, D. (2014, june 14). The Biggest Companies That Don 't Pay Dividends -- But May Be About To. Retrieved January 10, 2015, from Yahoo Finance: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/biggest-companies-dont-pay-dividends-180000561.html