amazon case study

Read the case study “Spotify,” found in Part 2 of your textbook.

Review the “Guide to Case Analysis” found on pp. CA1 – CA11 of your textbook. (This guide follows the last case in the textbook.)

Use the Case Study Format as described in the “Guide to Case Analysis” to complete a written case analysis for “Spotify.” Ensure your case analysis is in APA format.

Your case analysis should include the following:
A case analysis overview, including the company’s current situation, most recent strategies, and significant problems/issues confronting management.
The results of your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis of the company.
The results of your financial analysis of the company, using at least three relevant Key Financial Ratios from Table 1 in the “Guide to Case Analysis.”
A detailed description of your recommended strategic changes that address the problems/issues you identified above.
A well-developed action plan for how the company should implement your strategic changes.
You must support your case analysis with at least 3 sources in addition to the textbook. (To locate resources, visit NAU Online Library’s Business Subject Guide.)

n most courses in strategic management, students use cases about actual companies to practice strategic analysis and to gain some experience in the tasks of crafting and implementing strategy. A case sets forth, in a factual manner, the events and organizational circumstances surrounding a particular managerial situation. It puts readers at the scene of the action and familiarizes them with all the relevant circumstances. A case on strategic management can concern a whole industry, a single organization, or some part of an organization; the organization involved can be either profit seeking or not-for-profit. The essence of the student’s role in case analysis is to diagnose and size up the situation described in the case and then to recommend appropriate action steps.
Why Use Cases to Practice Strategic Management?
A student of business with tact
Absorbed many answers he lacked.
But acquiring a job,
He said with a sob,
“How does one fit answer to fact?”
The foregoing limerick was used some years ago by Professor Charles Gragg to characterize the plight of business students who had no exposure to cases.1 The facts are that the mere act of listening to lectures and sound advice about managing does little for anyone’s management skills and that the accumulated managerial wisdom cannot effectively be passed on by lectures and assigned readings alone. If anything had been learned about the practice of management, it is that a storehouse of ready-made textbook answers does not exist. Each managerial situation has unique aspects, requiring its own diagnosis, judgment, and tailor-made actions. Cases provide would-be managers with a valuable way to practice wrestling with the actual problems of actual managers in actual companies.
The case approach to strategic analysis is, first and foremost, an exercise in learning by doing. Because cases provide you with detailed information about conditions and problems of different industries and companies, your task of analyzing company after company and situation after situation has the twin benefit of boosting your analytical skills and exposing you to the ways companies and managers actually do things. Most college students have limited managerial backgrounds and only fragmented knowledge about companies and real-life strategic situations. Cases help substitute for on-the-job experience by (1) giving you broader exposure to a variety of industries, organizations, and strategic problems; (2) forcing you to assume a managerial role (as opposed to that of just an onlooker); (3) providing a test of how to apply the tools and techniques of strategic management; and (4) asking you to come up with pragmatic managerial action plans to deal with the issues at hand.
Objectives of Case Analysis
Using cases to learn about the practice of strategic management is a powerful way for you to accomplish five things:2
Increase your understanding of what managers should and should not do in guiding a business to success.
Build your skills in sizing up company resource strengths and weaknesses and in conducting strategic analysis in a variety of industries and competitive situations.
Get valuable practice in identifying strategic issues that need to be addressed, evaluating strategic alternatives, and formulating workable plans of action.
Enhance your sense of business judgment, as opposed to uncritically accepting the authoritative crutch of the professor or “back-of-the-book” answers.
Gain in-depth exposure to different industries and companies, thereby acquiring something close to actual business experience.
If you understand that these are the objectives of case analysis, you are less likely to be consumed with curiosity about “the answer to the case.” Students who have grown comfortable with and accustomed to textbook statements of fact and definitive lecture notes are often frustrated when discussions about a case do not produce concrete answers. Usually, case discussions produce good arguments for more than one course of action. Differences of opinion nearly always exist. Thus, should a class discussion conclude without a strong, unambiguous consensus on what to do, don’t grumble too much when you are not told what the answer is or what the company actually did. Just remember that in the business world answers don’t come in conclusive black-and-white terms. page CA-3There are nearly always several feasible courses of action and approaches, each of which may work out satisfactorily. Moreover, in the business world, when one elects a particular course of action, there is no peeking at the back of a book to see if you have chosen the best thing to do and no one to turn to for a provably correct answer. The best test of whether management action is “right” or “wrong” is results. If the results of an action turn out to be “good,” the decision to take it may be presumed “right.” If not, then the action chosen was “wrong” in the sense that it didn’t work out.
Hence, the important thing for you to understand about analyzing cases is that the managerial exercise of identifying, diagnosing, and recommending is aimed at building your skills of business judgment. Discovering what the company actually did is no more than frosting on the cake—the actions that company managers actually took may or may not be “right” or best (unless there is accompanying evidence that the results of their actions were highly positive).
The point is this: The purpose of giving you a case assignment is not to cause you to run to the library or surf the Internet to discover what the company actually did but, rather, to enhance your skills in sizing up situations and developing your managerial judgment about what needs to be done and how to do it. The aim of case analysis is for you to become actively engaged in diagnosing the business issues and managerial problems posed in the case, to propose workable solutions, and to explain and defend your assessments—this is how cases provide you with meaningful practice at being a manager.
Preparing a Case for Class Discussion
If this is your first experience with the case method, you may have to reorient your study habits. Unlike lecture courses where you can get by without preparing intensively for each class and where you have latitude to work assigned readings and reviews of lecture notes into your schedule, a case assignment requires conscientious preparation before class. You will not get much out of hearing the class discuss a case you haven’t read, and you certainly won’t be able to contribute anything yourself to the discussion. What you have got to do to get ready for class discussion of a case is to study the case, reflect carefully on the situation presented, and develop some reasoned thoughts. Your goal in preparing the case should be to end up with what you think is a sound, well-supported analysis of the situation and a sound, defensible set of recommendations about which managerial actions need to be taken.
To prepare a case for class discussion, we suggest the following approach:
Skim the case rather quickly to get an overview of the situation it presents. This quick overview should give you the general flavor of the situation and indicate the kinds of issues and problems that you will need to wrestle with. If your instructor has provided you with study questions for the case, now is the time to read them carefully.
Read the case thoroughly to digest the facts and circumstances. On this reading, try to gain full command of the situation presented in the case. Begin to develop some tentative answers to the study questions your instructor has provided. If your instructor has elected not to give you assignment questions, then start forming your own picture of the overall situation being described.
Carefully review all the information presented in the exhibits. Often, there is an important story in the numbers contained in the exhibits. Expect the information in the case exhibits to be crucial enough to materially affect your diagnosis of the situation.
Decide what the strategic issues are. Until you have identified the strategic issues and problems in the case, you don’t know what to analyze, which tools and analytical techniques are called for, or otherwise how to proceed. At times the strategic issues are clear—either being stated in the case or else obvious from reading the case. At other times you will have to dig them out from all the information given; if so, the study questions will guide you.
Start your analysis of the issues with some number crunching. A big majority of strategy cases call for some kind of number crunching—calculating assorted financial ratios to check out the company’s financial condition and recent performance, calculating growth rates of sales or profits or unit volume, checking out profit margins and the makeup of the cost structure, and understanding whatever revenue-cost-profit relationships are present. See Table 1 for a summary of key financial ratios, how they are calculated, and what they show.page CA-4
Apply the concepts and techniques of strategic analysis you have been studying. Strategic analysis is not just a collection of opinions; rather, it entails applying the concepts and analytical tools described in Chapters 1 through 12 to cut beneath the surface and produce sharp insight and understanding. Every case assigned is strategy related and presents you with an opportunity to usefully apply what you have learned. Your instructor is looking for you to demonstrate that you know how and when to use the material presented in the text chapters.
Check out conflicting opinions and make some judgments about the validity of all the data and information provided.Many times cases report views and contradictory opinions (after all, people don’t always agree on things, and different people see the same things in different ways). Forcing you to evaluate the data and information presented in the case helps you develop your powers of inference and judgment. Asking you to resolve conflicting information “comes with the territory” because a great many managerial situations entail opposing points of view, conflicting trends, and sketchy information.
Support your diagnosis and opinions with reasons and evidence. The most important things to prepare for are your answers to the question “Why?” For instance, if after studying the case you are of the opinion that the company’s managers are doing a poor job, then it is your answer to “Why?” that establishes just how good your analysis of the situation is. If your instructor has provided you with specific study questions for the case, by all means prepare answers that include all the reasons and number-crunching evidence you can muster to support your diagnosis. If you are using study questions provided by the instructor, generate at least two pages of notes!
Develop an appropriate action plan and set of recommendations. Diagnosis divorced from corrective action is sterile. The test of a manager is always to convert sound analysis into sound actions—actions that will produce the desired results. Hence, the final and most telling step in preparing a case is to develop an action agenda for management that lays out a set of specific recommendations on what to do. Bear in mind that proposing realistic, workable solutions is far preferable to casually tossing out off-the-top-of-your-head suggestions. Be prepared to argue why your recommendations are more attractive than other courses of action that are open.
As long as you are conscientious in preparing your analysis and recommendations, and have ample reasons, evidence, and arguments to support your views, you shouldn’t fret unduly about whether what you’ve prepared is “the right answer” to the case. In case analysis, there is rarely just one right approach or set of recommendations. Managing companies and crafting and executing strategies are not such exact sciences that there exists a single provably correct analysis and action plan for each strategic situation. Of course, some analyses and action plans are better than others; but, in truth, there’s nearly always more than one good way to analyze a situation and more than one good plan of action.
Participating in Class Discussion of a Case
Classroom discussions of cases are sharply different from attending a lecture class. In a case class, students do most of the talking. The instructor’s role is to solicit student participation, keep the discussion on track, ask “Why?” often, offer alternative views, play the devil’s advocate (if no students jump in to offer opposing views), and otherwise lead the discussion. The students in the class carry the burden for analyzing the situation and for being prepared to present and defend their diagnoses and recommendations. Expect a classroom environment, therefore, that calls for your size-up of the situation, your analysis, what actions you would take, and why you would take them. Do not be dismayed if, as the class discussion unfolds, some insightful things are said by your fellow classmates that you did not think of. It is normal for views and analyses to differ and for the comments of others in the class to expand your own thinking about the case. As the old adage goes, “Two heads are better than one.” So it is to be expected that the class as a whole will do a more penetrating and searching job of case analysis than will any one person working alone. This is the power of group effort, and its virtues are that it will help you see more analytical applications, let you test your analyses and judgments against those of your peers, and force you to wrestle with differences of opinion and approaches.

Criteria
1. The case analysis overview included the company’s current situation, most recent strategies, and significant problems/issues confronting management.
2. The Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis is thorough and relevant.
3. The financial analysis, including at least three Key Financial Ratios, is relevant and accurate.
4. The recommended strategic changes sufficiently address the stated problems/issues and are potentially viable.
5. The action plan is thorough and well developed.
6. The case analysis is effectively organized, logically developed, clearly written with no grammatical/spelling issues, presented in current APA format, and cites 3 credible sources in addition to the textbook.

Last Completed Projects