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When was Amazon founded?
1994
Who founded Amazon?
Jeff Bezos
When was Alibaba found?
1999
Who founded Alibaba?
Jack Ma
What does AWS stand for?
Amazon Web Services
What are Amazon’s three main segments?
North America, International and AWS
What are Alibaba’s four main segments?
China E-Commerce, International, Cloud and All Others
What are Alibaba’s main revenue sources?
Marketplace, cloud and platform services
What happened to Amazon in China in 2019?
It exited the market.
What is the ultimate core objective of a sustainable global strategy?
A. Maximizing market share in emerging economies through rapid capital expenditure.
B. Keeping the firm's competitive advantage intact over time.
C. Diversifying into non-related tech industries to lower the cost of capital.
D. Re-architecting internal supply chains every 2–3 years to maintain organizational agility.
B. Keeping the firm's competitive advantage intact over time.
What does a sustainable global strategy aim to protect over time?
A competitive advantage
What is the key weakness of Alibaba’s current international strategy?
It has not yet achieved a stable, profitable global position.
What is the key weakness of Amazon’s current strategy?
Its profitability is heavily concentrated in AWS.
What four elements are used to define a sustainable strategy?
Competitive advantage, profitability, efficiency and adaptability
What does Amazon own that helps support its global strategy?
Fulfillment and technology infrastructure
Why does Amazon’s ownership of its fulfillment network support its competitive position?
It gives Amazon greater control over speed, reliability, and customer experience.
Why can Alibaba’s partner-based model be considered both flexible and risky?
It requires less capital but creates greater dependence on external partners.
Why does Amazon’s exit from China demonstrate the importance of adaptability?
Amazon changed its focus after failing to compete effectively with local rivals.
Why can Alibaba’s lower capital requirements be strategically useful?
They allow expansion with less upfront investment.
Why is AWS a concentration risk for Amazon?
A large share of operating profit comes from AWS
If AWS disappeared, what would happen to Amazon’s ability to fund global expansion?
Amazon would have to rely much more on lower-margin retail profits, reducing its financial capacity for expansion.
If Alibaba becomes highly successful in international AI services, what strategic problem could this solve?
It could give Alibaba a second global profit engine beyond international e-commerce
Using all four criteria, explain why the presentation concludes that Amazon is more sustainable today.
Amazon has a proven position, a stable structure, a hard-to-copy profit engine in AWS, and measurable efficiency gains, while Alibaba is still adapting, has less-proven AI commercialization, and faces international profitability and regulatory challenges.
Why might Amazon’s stable three-segment structure become a disadvantage if market conditions change dramatically?
A stable structure can support execution, but it may also need to adapt if the competitive environment changes significantly.
Why does Alibaba face a credibility challenge when entering the global cloud market?
AWS, Azure and Google Cloud already have established customers, experience and trust.