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Friday, March 21, 2014

Amazon.com Community Relations



          

After doing research I have discovered that a strong community relations program is not the number one priority for Amazon.com.  There is a community relations page that outlines what they are doing for the local community and almost all of the help they give is in charitable donations and not hands on work.  However, they have been criticized by many Seattle newspapers and nonprofit officials that have said that Amazon is uninvolved in the community.  Amazon’s core mission is to deliver exactly what the customer wants, when they want it, and ultimately satisfy them.  It has nothing to do with giving back or making the world a better place so it is understandable that community relations is lacking.  Amazon has shipping centers all over the world and the website is available to over 220 therefore, the target audience is very large. Although Amazon.com is a Fortune 500 company, it is one of the few companies who are less involved with the community.
  Started in Seattle, a city known for its big-time philanthropy, Amazon has been a small time donor.  Last year Microsoft gave four million dollars, Boeing gave three million dollars, and Nordstrom gave 320,000 dollars, while Amazon gave zero. It was said that many nonprofit officials have a difficult time reaching anyone at Amazon when regarding giving, and business leaders have said there are few times when they have seen Amazon play a role in public issues.  Jan Levy, the executive director of Leadership Tomorrow, which teaches civic leadership skills, talked to several Amazon employees who attended the program but had paid for it themselves.  Jan said “that’s unusual. Most large corporations pay for their participants’ tuition… my colleagues in the nonprofit community have made similar comments about Amazon – they are noticeably absent from civic involvement.” Although Amazon has a very large physical footprint in Seattle, Washington, the community relations is definitely lacking.  
                Not until this past year did an Amazon executive join the boards of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Seattle Association.  This is especially important because the thousands of employees that will now be working in Seattle are going to want the area to be safe and a good place to raise a family. Not only has Amazon not given money or attention to Seattle but it has actually refused to participate in local charities and events.  
 Last summer Jeff Bezos was interviewed by a former city council member who asked him about Amazon’s community involvement.   Bezos responded by saying "our core business activities are probably the most important thing we do to contribute, as well as our employment in the area." This shows that Bezos is not interested in helping the growth of Seattle or donating to charities, only the growth of his business. His thoughts against philanthropies were again brought up in 2010 during an interview with PBS where Bezos expressed doubt that philanthropy was the best way to solve social problems when he said "I'm convinced that in many cases, for-profit models improve the world more than philanthropy models, if they can be made to work." While although this could be true, it has also been proven that a company’s community relations does help a company grow and spread awareness. 
 What Amazon has done is since 2009 is they have given over 80 writers’ groups 25,000 dollar grants and given over 51,000 dollars to the University of Washington.  However, many have said that helping the writers have only helped the growth on Amazon’s publishing business.  Amazon.com does have its own community relations page where it discusses the importance of “going green” and how they have changed the company’s daily tasks to being environmentally aware and cautious. The homepage opens with a statement about how online shopping is already more ecofriendly than shopping elsewhere.  Below that on the webpage are three new, environmentally friendly ways of packaging that they have recently started.  There are illustrations of the packaging and detailed descriptions of the three different types.  Amazon also discusses their program named the Kaizen Program which means “a change for the better” in Japanese. This program is designed to improve the facilities and processes at the packing warehouses all over the world.  There is a long list of locations throughout the world who have adjusted the way they work to be more ecofriendly.   Examples include minimizing electricity usage and designing a more efficient way to load trucks and with more items.  There are also pictures of the packaging and before and after shots with how they improved the factories.
The webpage also mentions the building materials that the headquarters in Seattle is made of.  They stress that they are very environmentally friendly and use sustainable, energy- efficient materials.  On the bottom of the page are a few companies such as USDA Organic, and WaterSense that Amazon users have selected as the best green products that Amazon offers.  This recognizes other company’s hard work and shows they have the same mission as Amazon.com.   
 Amazon also has a link on this webpage to “Amazon in the Community.”  The first statement reads, “at Amazon, if we do our job right, our greatest contribution to the good of society will come from our core business activities: lowering prices, expanding selection, driving convenience, driving frustration-free packaging, creating Kindle, innovating in web services, and other initiatives we'll work hard on in the future.”  This is very different than other company’s community relations pages that talk about how giving back is a duty that must be done.  Underneath that statement there is a long list of local contributions that Amazon has given to in the past years.  All that is stated is the name of the organization and the location.  It does not discuss the amount given.  Therefore, it could be no more than 10 dollars and viewers would never know.  There is also a different tab that talks about the funds that Amazon has provided to disaster relief and individuals over the years. Thousands of dollars have been given almost every year since the company was started.  The amount and name of disaster is given. The last part mentioned is called “supporting the writing community” that was discussed earlier.  There are at least 80 organizations that are mentioned and fully explained that have received grants. There is a statement that says that Amazon is dedicated to helping writers reach their dreams of being published. 
Overall Amazon does do some community relations but they could definitely improve their program and give more to charity.  This would help the overall image of Amazon and put Jeff Bezos and the employees in a better light.  Amazon does not seem to have a great relationship with Seattle because so many other companies do much more.   The website makes viewers think that they are doing a lot to give back and work with locals when many articles from local Seattle newspapers say differently.  As successful as Amazon.com has become and as wonderful as it is, community relations can definitely be improved.  They should create programs that educate individuals to read or use technology.  If their core mission is to make sure the business aspect is done properly then it would be an option for teams to educate entrepreneurs how to start their own business successfully.  There are many options that are available to them that go along with their core mission.

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