After reading the case study, how would "Porters 5 forces" be applied?

Challenges for Amazon remained: Amazon developed very quickly into a major player in the online retail market, yet challenges 1. From its inception, Amazon was not required to collect state or local sales or use taxes, an exemption upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, in 2012, states began to con- sider superseding the Supreme Court decision. "If the states were to prevail, Amazon would be forced to collect sales and use tax, creating administrative burdens for it, and putting it at a competitive disadvantage if similar obligations are not imposed on all of its online competitors, potentially decreasing its future sales." Massachusetts and other states were motivated both by the desire (to tap into new sources of revenues for their state budgets and to protect local retailers. In 2012, reports had it that Amazon was making deals to collect sales tax in all 50 states, so that they could open warehouses near population centers and provide same-day deliv ery, a major shift in its business model that would ratchet up competition with big box stores like Best Buy and Target as well as local retailers. However, there were no guar- antees of the profitability of same-day delivery, given the added warehouse and delivery costs. 2. With the new social trend of "buying local," Amazon faced the threat of some regular consumers preferring to buy from their local stores rather than from an online retailer. 17 3. Amazon always had to grapple with the threat of customer preference for instant gratifi cation, the customer's desire to get a product immediately in the store, rather than waiting several days for the product to be shipped to them. 4. Breaches of security from outside parties trying to gain access to its information or data were a continual threat for Amazon. As of 2012, Amazon had systems and processes in place that were designed to counter such attempts; however, failure to maintain these systems or processes could be detrimental to the operations of the company. 5. As more media products were sold in digital formats, Amazon's relatively low-cost phys- ical warehouses and distribution capabilities no longer provided the same competitive advantages. In addition, Amazon had felt that its worldwide free shipping offers and Amazon Prime were effective worldwide marketing tools, and intended to offer them indefinitely, yet it began to suffer from soaring shipping expenses cutting into profits. In quarter three of 2011, Amazon's shipping fees generated $360 million in revenue, which was dwarfed by $918 million in shipping expenses. 6. Amazon had to contend with absorbing losses from its unsuccessful ventures such as its A9 search engine, Amazon Auctions, and Unbox, Amazon's original video-on-demand service. 7. Recent hires from Microsoft, Robert Williams, former senior program manager, and Brandon Watson, head of Windows Phone development prompted speculation that Amazon was developing a smartphone, possibly a Kindle-branded device. Bloomberg reported that Amazon had gone so far as to strike a manufacturing deal with Foxconn, the controversial Taiwanese company responsible for assembling Apple's iPhone and Google Android devices. Amazon has not commented on the reports. A smartphone would have given Amazon another mobile device to sell, but some analysts felt it wouldn't have made sense for Amazon to enter into the already crowded smartphone arena. "Since tablets skew more heavily toward media consumption than smartphones, they are a natural fit for Amazon's commerce and media platform," said Baird & Co. analyst Colin Sebastian, in a research note. "In contrast, smartphones require specialized