The Zappos Experience 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage and WOW
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Culture Club Zappos Has a Unique Approach to Building Customer Loyalty: It Starts Internally, by Focusing on the Company’S Culture, Which Is Defined by Its Employees
CultuRe CluB Zappos has a unique approach to building customer loyalty: it starts internally, by focusing on the company’s culture, which is defined by its employees. Jennifer Lowney learned more from Zappos’ Robert Richman Early in its 12-year history, Zappos.com, one of America’s leading online apparel and footwear retailers, made a decision that its business and its brand would be defined by superior customer service. In Zappos’ lingo, it would deliver “WOW through service.” But unlike many other companies which view customer service through the lens of returns policies, loyalty programs or discounts, Zappos believes that its culture is the foundation for its brand and commercial success. In his book, Delivering Happiness, A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, Tony Hsieh, the CEO says, “We thought that if we got the culture right, then building our brand to be about the very best customer service would happen naturally, on its own.” Honest communication Zappos, which had annual sales in excess of $1bn in 2010 when it was acquired by Amazon for $1.2bn, set out to translate that core belief into successful commercial reality. While culture and values are routinely defined by the corporate communications teams at many companies, Zappos involved the entire company in the process of defining its values. Five years into its existence, Zappos used that input to create a “culture book” – first used as an orientation tool but now available to anyone who wants one, inside the company or out – to provide employees with a forum to articulate their views about what Zappos’ culture means to them. -
Track Package
4/12/2016 Track Package All Hello, Brad 0 Departments Shopping History Brad's Amazon.com Today's Deals Your Account Prime Lists Cart Your Account › Your Orders › Order Details › Track Package Track Package Delivered Thursday Your package was left in the mailbox. 5 Delivered on Apr 7 Ordered Shipped 6260 DERBY DR, FREDERICK Apr 5 Apr 6 Your package was left in the mailbox. Get shipment updates with the free Amazon app Shipment details Latest update: Thursday, Apr 7 Send a download link to your email Please enter your email SSuebnmdit Your package was left in the mailbox. 3:07 PM Frederick, MD, US Prefer to get text messages instead? Carrier: USPS, Tracking #: 9374889678090017614247 Show more View order details Recommended for You Based on PNY Turbo 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive P Page 1 of 8 FD32GTBO... PNY Attaché 16GB USB SanDisk Ultra CZ48 32GB Gigabyte LGA 1150 Intel Kingston Digital 16GB 100 2.0 Flash Drive P USB 3.0 Flash Drive Z97N IWiFiBluetooth G3 USB 3.0 DataTraveler FD16GATT03GE Transfer Speeds Up To… HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 (DT100G3/16GB) 3,627 1,005 Mini ITX DDR3… 722 $4.99 $10.99 66 $5.49 $145.12 Your Recently Viewed Items and Featured Recommendations Inspired by your browsing history Page 1 of 9 https://www.amazon.com/gp/youraccount/shiptrack/ref=oh_aui_st_v2_btn?ie=UTF8&itemId=rillpqhqnnppp&orderId=11054802255103452&packageI… 1/2 4/12/2016 Track Package Importer520 Gold Plated Plugable UD3900 USB 3.0 AmazonBasics DVI to DVI Acer S0 S240HL Abd 24" HDMI Female to DVID Universal Docking Station Cable 9.8 Feet -
Amazon's Antitrust Paradox
LINA M. KHAN Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox abstract. Amazon is the titan of twenty-first century commerce. In addition to being a re- tailer, it is now a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer, and a leading host of cloud server space. Although Amazon has clocked staggering growth, it generates meager profits, choosing to price below-cost and ex- pand widely instead. Through this strategy, the company has positioned itself at the center of e- commerce and now serves as essential infrastructure for a host of other businesses that depend upon it. Elements of the firm’s structure and conduct pose anticompetitive concerns—yet it has escaped antitrust scrutiny. This Note argues that the current framework in antitrust—specifically its pegging competi- tion to “consumer welfare,” defined as short-term price effects—is unequipped to capture the ar- chitecture of market power in the modern economy. We cannot cognize the potential harms to competition posed by Amazon’s dominance if we measure competition primarily through price and output. Specifically, current doctrine underappreciates the risk of predatory pricing and how integration across distinct business lines may prove anticompetitive. These concerns are height- ened in the context of online platforms for two reasons. First, the economics of platform markets create incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits, a strategy that investors have re- warded. Under these conditions, predatory pricing becomes highly rational—even as existing doctrine treats it as irrational and therefore implausible. -
Book Review: Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh I Have Been Learning About Tony Hsieh and His Enthusiastic Embrace O
Book Review: Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh I have been learning about Tony Hsieh and his enthusiastic embrace of new ideas for the past few years, but I had never really considered reading this book until it was recently recommended to me. What I did know about his life—that he is an advocate of a flat organizational hierarchy called Holacracy and is dedicated to the creation of a vibrant and dynamic Las Vegas downtown—certainly piqued my curiosity, and made me want to learn more about his philosophy and how he thinks about business. Delivering Happiness does just that. The Making of an Entrepreneur Like a lot of business books written by people that run or have run companies, the author walks us through his early life and first business experiences. These stories set the tone very early with the three characteristics that define Hsieh. One, he is very intelligent, and was put in a position to succeed via traditional path. He went to excellent schools growing up in the Bay Area, studied Computer Science at Harvard, and excelled in these settings. Two, he nevertheless has a real drive for experimentation and has no desire for safety. A prototype of the entrepreneur, Tony was selling a variety of products all throughout his childhood. Worms, buttons, pizza, since pre‐adolescence he’s been creating businesses and making sales, and he has walked away from stability multiple times in favor of the next engaging opportunity. Three, he is radically people‐focused. He has a great curiosity about others, and this combines with his intelligence and entrepreneurial inclinations for a fascinating set of motivations for a business person. -
Tony Hsieh Began Answering a Question About His Future with Zappos
Exchange of Ideas | November/December 2009 | $10.95 U�e HMAGAZINEB A publication of Reveries.com a n d C o o l N e w s o f t h e D a y COVER STORY Happy @Zappos bell rang and applause rippled just as Tony Hsieh began answering a question about his future with Zappos. Either his staff was really A happy with his answer or something else was going on. If his staff could hear him, they probably would have applauded since Tony said he planned to stay with Zappos for many, many years. Some trepidation about that would be understandable, given Amazon’s recent acquisition of the company for $847 million. But they couldn’t hear him and, as it turned out, the commotion was just part of the prevailing élan at Zappos, the online emporium whose fortunes do not depend on selling things so much as spreading happiness from its employees to its customers (see sidebar). It’s hard to imagine anyone happier to fulfill that vision than Tony Hsieh, who, about 10 years ago, sold his first dot-com for $265 million, at age 24. Don’t you hate him already? After that, Tony became a venture capitalist, and at first Zappos was just another of his investments. But he soon saw the company as a platform to deliver extraordinary customer service and became its chief executive. Most famously, Zappos has a 365-day return policy, with free return shipping. But the deeper story is about science — the science of happiness — which infuses the Zappos culture and explains its astonishing success. -
Mutual Funds As Venture Capitalists? Evidence from Unicorns1
Mutual Funds as Venture Capitalists? Evidence from Unicorns1 Sergey Chernenko Josh Lerner Yao Zeng Purdue University Harvard University University of Washington and NBER December 2018 Abstract Using novel contract-level data, we study open-end mutual funds investing in unicorns—highly valued, privately held start-ups—and their association with corporate governance provisions. Larger funds and those with more stable funding are more likely to invest in unicorns. Both mutual fund participation and the mutual fund share of the financing round are strongly correlated with the round’s contractual provisions. Compared to venture capital groups, mutual funds are underrepresented on boards of directors, suggesting less direct monitoring. However, rounds with mutual fund participation have stronger redemption and IPO-related rights, consistent with mutual funds’ liquidity needs and vulnerability to down-valuation IPOs. 1 We thank Francesca Cornelli, Slava Fos, Jesse Fried, Will Gornall, Jarrad Harford, Michelle Lowry, William Mann, John Morley, Ramana Nanda, Clemens Sialm, Morten Sorensen, Ilya Strebulaev, Xiaoyun Yu, and conference and seminar participants at the 2017 LBS Private Equity Symposium, the 2018 NYU/Penn Conference on Law and Finance, the 2017 Southern California Private Equity Conference, the 2018 Stanford Financing of Innovation Summit, the 2018 UNC Private Capital Spring Research Symposium, and the 2018 Western Finance Association meetings. We thank Michael Ostendorff for access to the certificates of incorporation collected by VCExperts. We are grateful to Jennifer Fan for constantly helping us better interpret and code the certificates of incorporation. We thank Quentin Dupont, Luna Qin, Kathleen Ryan, Michael Sibbett, Bingyu Yan, and Wyatt Zimbelman for excellent research assistance. -
Interview with Alfred Lin from Zappos
Interview with Alfred Lin from Zappos Adrian Bye: Today, I am talking with Alfred. Alfred is the COO of Zappos and we’re going to have, I think, an interesting conversation with Alfred. There’re a couple of topics I’d like to talk with him about. Alfred, thanks for joining us. Alfred Lin: No problem. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Adrian Bye: You want to tell us a little bit about who you are, your background and where you come from? Alfred Lin: Sure. I’m Alfred Lin. I’m currently COO of Zappos.com. We are one of the largest if not the largest retailer of shoes, handbags and apparel on the internet. We really think of ourselves as first and foremost a service company and then a service company that just happens to sell these products. My background – I was born in Taiwan, raised mostly in New York City, went off to college in the Boston Area and came out of the Bay Area for graduate school and then over time, got sucked into a bunch of internet companies. I first met our CEO, Tony Hsieh in college. He was running a pizza business in our dormitory. I used to go down to his pizzeria and basically buy lots of pies, take it upstairs and sold it off by the slice. That’s how we met. After we left college, he came out to the Bay Area and started Link Exchange. I joined about a year after. Seventeen months later after I joined, we sold the company to Microsoft for $265 million and then after that, we raised a small fund from friends and family of Link Exchange, and started investing in a bunch of internet start‐ups. -
100 Books to Inspire Lifelong Learning Natalie Shaak, Drexel University
Hit the Shelf: 100 Books to Inspire Lifelong Learning Natalie Shaak, Drexel University “I read for growth, firmly believing that what you are today and what you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.” – Twila Tharp, ballet dancer and choreographer A good book has the potential not only to educate but also inspire, energize, and open minds. But for many of us in higher education, reading a non-fiction book is not something we have thought about since graduate school. With professional development funds being squeezed, travel to conferences around the country is becoming less of a reality for many of us. Outside of conferences and webinars, many of us are not doing much for our professional and personal development. It is shocking how “what was the last professional/educational book you read?” can stump even the most engaged professional. As an avid reader and book collector, I have looked to the library and the bookstore to fill in the gaps in my personal and professional development. Not a day passes that I do not reference a recent book I have read or share something inspirational from my reading adventures. Whatever your role or career path, there are books out there to educate, inspire, and energize. The key is to be intentional and make your reading matter. Here are some quick tips to make the most of your reading for professional/personal development: • Keep a book (or e-reader) on you all the time. Use a free 10 minutes between meetings, at lunch, during your commute, or waiting to pick up kids as an opportunity to fit in a chapter or two. -
NORTHERN NEWS American Planning Association a Publication of the Northern Section of the California Chapter of APA JULY/AUGUST 2013 Making Great Communities Happen
NORTHERN NEWS American Planning Association A Publication of the Northern Section of the California Chapter of APA JULY/AUGUST 2013 Making Great Communities Happen Local planners assist preservation efforts in Vietnam By Stefan Pellegrini, AICP his past March, I took seven Berkeley students of the Hueˆ is located in central Vietnam and was the capital TCollege of Environmental Design to participate in of the Nguyen´ Dynasty for nearly 150 years in the 19th a two-week design workshop in Hueˆ, Vietnam. It was the and early 20th centuries. Built following Shan-Shui latest in a long series of international´ workshops for me as (http://bit.ly/12F7xXq) Chinese planning principles, a member of the Urban Design faculty at Berkeley. it possesses a collection of monuments along the Huong The workshop was the result of collaboration between the (Perfume) River that is unparalleled in the Asian world, City of Hueˆ and five universities, including Hueˆ University receiving World Heritage designation from UNESCO in of Sciences ´(Vietnam), Waseda University (Japan),´ Grenoble 1993. City officials at the Hueˆ Monuments Conservation School of Architecture and the National University of Land- Center (HMCC, http://bit.ly/17t1tBh´ ) work to preserve scape of Versailles (France), and the University of California, these monuments, including the Citadel at the city’s core, Berkeley. Our colleagues at Waseda, who have been active the Purple Forbidden City palace complex within, and the working in Hueˆ for over a decade to promote good planning collection of imperial tombs upstream along the Huong River. and design, invited´ us to participate. The Citadel has changed little since it was constructed in the 1830s. -
Innovation - Technology & Intellectual Property Hardware • Software • Telecoms • Internet • Media • Ip • Life Sciences
2017 EDITION INNOVATION - TECHNOLOGY & INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY HARDWARE • SOFTWARE • TELECOMS • INTERNET • MEDIA • IP • LIFE SCIENCES Alexander Ramsay Unified Patent Court (UPC) P. 31 Joseph Ferretti INTA & PepsiCo P. 32 Donald Rosenberg Qualcomm P. 37 Thibaud Simphal Uber P. 39 Osvaldo Bruno Cavalcante Caxia P. 54 Jean-Michel Malbrancq GE Healthcare Europe P. 52 Francisco Marín Eureka P. 57 Melissa Yang Tujia P. 47 Karl Iagnemma Nutonomy RANKINGS P. 48 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AMERICAS P.61 EXTERNAL CONTRIBUTORS FROM THE WILD WEST EUROPE P.140 EXPERT VIEWS P.248 ASIA P.231 TO WESTWORLD P.10 Shigeru Miyamoto Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, DIRECTORY Nintendo LEADERS Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, USA, FINANCIAL ADVISORS P.265 THE 50 PEOPLE OF THE YEAR Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, STRATEGY & MANAGEMENT ADVISORS P.267 P. 38 IN IP & IT P.28 Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, PATENT & TRADEMARK ATTORNEYS P.269 Switzerland, Turkey, UK, China, India, Japan LAW FIRMS P.284 JANUARY 25TH, 2018 PARIS - FRANCE Meet, learn & celebrate the best IP & IT professionals, with unique, international awards ceremony, one to one meetings and conferences. 500 HIGH LEVEL ATTENDEES INCLUDING IP DIRECTORS, GENERAL COUNSEL, IP ADVISORS (LAWYERS AND AGENTS) IN-HOUSE AND IT IN-HOUSE LAWYERS EXPECTED SPEAKERS FOR 2018 METTE ANDERSEN, HEAD OF IP, LEGO JEAN-MARC BRUNEL, IP DIRECTOR, SNECMA GROUPE SAFRAN PHILIPPE CASSAGNE, VP IP & LICENSING, GEMALTO DELPHINE DE CHALVRON, GENERAL COUNSEL IP, L’OREAL CHARLOTTA LJUNGDAHL, GROUP IP DIRECTOR, AIR LIQUIDE PHILIPPE LUCET, VP GENERAL COUNSEL R&D AND IP, NESTLE CONTACTS US www.innovation-ip-forum.com INFORMATION & REGISTRATION Justine Testard [email protected] +33 1 45 02 25 88 EDITO JANDIRA SALGADO JEANNE YIZHEN YIN EXECUTIVE EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR & CO-HEAD OF AMERICAS THE FUTURE IS NOW “We are called to be the architects of the future, not its victims.” - Robert Buckminster Fuller A new era that isn’t really new at all New York, May 3rd 1997. -
INTRODUCTION 1 . Bill Bernbach, DDB.Com, -Forget.Html, Retrieved September 19, 2014
NOTES INTRODUCTION 1 . Bill Bernbach, DDB.com, http://www.ddb.com/BillBernbachSaid/Slideshow/we -forget.html , retrieved September 19, 2014. 2 THE VISION 1 . Nike.com, Nike Mission Statement , http://help-en-us.nike.com/app/answers/detail/a _id/113/p/3897 (September 8, 2014). 2 . Quora.com, What Is a Brand?, http://www.quora.com/What-is-a-brand (March 6, 2013). 3 . Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profi ts, Passion, and Purpose (New York: Hachette Book Group, Kindle Edition, 2010), p. 151. 4 . Ibid. p. 154. 5 . Ibid. p. 152. 6 . John Hegarty, Hegarty on Advertising (London: Thames & Hudson, Kindle Edition, 2010), Kindle Locations 874–875. 7 . Scott Goodson, “How to Start a Successful Ad Agency,” Fortune, December 5, 2010 ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2010/12/05/how-to-start-a-successful -ad-agency/2/ ). 3 THE VALUE PROPOSITION OF CULTURE 1 . Kenneth Roman, The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising (New York: Palgrave Macmillan Kindle Edition, 2010), Kindle Locations 3318–3320. 2 . Sean Silvertone, “The Profi t Power of Corporate Culture,” Harvard Business School, September 28, 2011 ( http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6818.html ). 3 . Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, “Creating the Best Workplace on Earth,” Harvard Business Review, May 2013 ( http://hbr.org/2013/05/creating-the-best-workplace -on-earth/ar/pr ). 4 . Leo Burnett, Communications of an Advertising Man: Selections from the Speeches, Articles, Memoranda, and Miscellaneous Writings of Leo Burnett (Chicago: Leo Burnett Privately Printed, 1961), p. 81 4 CULTURE AND VISION 1 . -
Acquisitions: Walmart Vs Amazon Scott Imss
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses Finance 5-2018 Acquisitions: Walmart vs Amazon Scott imsS Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/finnuht Part of the Accounting Commons, Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons, Corporate Finance Commons, E-Commerce Commons, and the Finance and Financial Management Commons Recommended Citation Sims, Scott, "Acquisitions: Walmart vs Amazon" (2018). Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses. 46. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/finnuht/46 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Finance at ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Acquisitions: Walmart vs Amazon by Scott T. Sims Advisor: Dr. Craig Rennie An Honors Thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in Finance and Accounting. Sam M. Walton College of Business University of Arkansas Fayetteville, Arkansas May 11, 2018 1 Executive Summary The retail industry is in the process of undergoing major change. Historically big box brick and mortar strategies have dominated, but this is changing in the age of impatience and instant gratification. As consumers want items more conveniently, online retail has taken hold with no semblance of anticipated decline. At the forefront of this transformation are two industry giants: Walmart and Amazon. Walmart finds itself on the side of brick and mortar with 11,718 physical retail locations worldwide. Amazon is dominating the online retail space with control of a staggering 44% of all US e-commerce sales in 2017.