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Zappos Case Study

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Zappos Case Study
To understand why Zappos would be a motivating place to work, one must dig deeper into the basics of the company. What are their philosophies? What are their goals? What is their mission? Zappos.com is a fairly new company created in 1999 by a consumer who wasn’t able to find his favorite pair of shoes at the mall. Adding this online shoe company to the other online retailers met the need for online shopping at a time where malls were a thing of the past. Interestingly enough, “this country hasn’t opened up a new one [mall] since 2006, so it’s no surprise that nearly a third of Internet users turn to the web for most of their shopping.” (Donovan, 2013) This new contender to the marketplace soon took off and in 2009 was acquired by Amazon. From start-up company to billion-dollar organization, Zappos has definitely proved that they have what it takes to succeed aligning their mission around, “provid[ing] the best customer service possible.” (Zappos IP, Inc., 2013) In addition, “regardless of our structure, our goal is to position Zappos as the online service leader. If we can get customers to associate the Zappos brand with the absolute best service, then we can expand into other product categories beyond shoes.” (Zappos IP, Inc., 2013)
And many customers agree. “Greetings Heather Wittnebel, Thank you for shopping with Zappos.com! We wanted to let you know that your return is back safe and sound in our warehouse. That trip over the river and through the woods to grandmother 's house went smoothly.” (Personal Email from Zappos.com, 2013) This email was a carefully planned motivational tactic which left the customer happy, “I could tell right away that Zappos was interested in working with the customer, not against.” (Wittnebel, 2013) Zappos is not only delivering a high quality service but the customers are echoing that accomplishment.
That being said, while customer service is their pride, at the heart of Zappos there is a core company philosophy on developing


References: Laura Donovan. (2013). Here’s The Percentage Of Internet Users That Shop Online [INFOGRAPHIC]. [WWW document] URL http://www.thejanedough.com/online-shopping/ Zappos.com http://about.zappos.com/ Zappos.com (2013) Heather Wittnebel. (2013). Hollender, J Bill Taylor. (2008). Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit--And You Should Too. Harvard Business Review. [Online magazine] URL http://blogs.hbr.org/2008/05/why-zappos-pays-new-employees/ Adam Lashinsky Zappos.com (2009. Zappos milestone: Customer Service [WWW Document] URL http://about.zappos.com/ Merriam-Webster, Incorporated Tony Hsieh. (2009). CEO Letter. [WWW document] URL http://blogs.zappos.com/ceoletter Jeff Bezos
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