Zappos: Social Responsibility Actions And Initiatives

Zappos Case Study Your name Your Institution of Affiliation May 2, 2018 1 Overview of the company (history, products, services, and SWOT) Zappos is one of the leading online shoe and clothing shop in the world, which is founded by Nick Swinmurn in 1999. During its inception, the company was called Shoesite since selling shoes were the first inspiration of Swinmurn. However, it would only be a few months after this that the company would be called as Zappos, to extend their selections towards other clothing CITATION Blo18 \l 1033 (Bloomberg.com, 2018). Since Amazon acquired it in the year 2009, the company has already extended its selections to all types of clothing and accessories, including designer bags and specialty shoes. And, as of 2010, it is estimated that the net worth of the company is about $780 million. Regarding its SWOT, it could be seen that Zappos’ main strength is regarding Company culture and the personalized customer service that it entails. However, its main weakness is regarding its profitability as it is said that Zappo’s pre-tax net profit is about 3-4% CITATION ari09 \l 1033 (ariozick.com, 2009). As for opportunities and threats, current analysis of the economic situation today shows that these are innovation and security breach, respectively. 1 Explain and evaluate (facts and judgment) the social responsibility actions and initiatives of the company. It is no doubt that Zappos’ Company culture makes it an utmost priority for the employees to focus on providing unique and personalized service for every customer. As stated by Pride and Ferrell (2016), Zappos is an “a large company with a small business feel when it comes to how they treat their customers and how their customers feel about them.” However, what makes it even better is the fact that in giving back to the community, projects oriented in social responsibility never fails to embody these tenets. In assessing this further, a close look into its economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic dimensions is necessitated. Regarding its economic implications, most of Zappos’ CSR events could be argued as critical regarding increasing its value. This is because most of its projects show that the company culture is fun and unique as compared to others. In turn, by manifesting this culture, the employees’ productivity and efficiency of the workplace is increased CITATION Phend \l 1033 (Phegan, n.d.). Aside from this, some of the company’s activities are also geared towards other areas of economic interests such as innovation and human resources. This includes using bitcoins for...