Amway Japan Limited (AJL) must develop a strategy for rebuilding growth after its performance decline in 1997, as well as for delivering growth in both near-term and long-term sales. AJL has experienced a significant decline in net sales, which in turn, impacted net income. Bruce L. Stephens, President of AJL, must figure out a way to reverse this downward slope.

Strengths: -"network marketing"

- low costs

- support staff

The method referred to as "network marketing" serves as a strength to the company because distributors purchase products wholesale from the manufacturer and sells them directly to the end customer, cutting out the cost of the middle man. Independent distributors often sponsored subdistributors, who in turn recruited others to expand their sales network. In cooperation with their suppliers, Amway products are imported from other countries and are developed with the help of other companies, such as Sharp Corporation. This also reduces costs for Amway since they are splitting costs with other companies.

AJL provides distributors with a variety of supports to

Distributor contracts that are not renewed by the end of each year, get erased from CS databases one month after their departure, including all of their buyers and their information. No follow up efforts are made to retain those customers. Customer Service is responsible for taking calls and answering questions about client accounts and without certain information, their jobs become more difficult then they need to be. In order to reduce the number of claims and questions that come in, AJL could further educate its distributors to answer the minor inquiries and know where to send the more complicated ones so as to solve their inefficiency problem.

- growing product dissatisfaction

Amway products are exclusively distributed by AJL, which means that they are not sold by retailers. This limits Amway in sales, in my opinion, because they are not able to cover as much ground as they would if they distributed to major retail stores across the country.

- decreased distributor motivation

Opportunities: - changes in consumer behavior

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Approximate Word count = 1547
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)