For many, the dot com collapse in the mid nineteen nineties seemed like the end of corporates’ place on the internet. Very few people trusted these new online companies, which led to many promising websites disappearance, but a few Silicon Valley projects that were able to survive greatly shaped the new wave of e-commerce. Following in the footsteps of success stories such as Amazon.com, many companies have reshaped the way they conduct online business and are fighting to stay in front of new technological advancements during this decade of rapid technological change. The history of Amazon’s success, transformation, and creation is a good reference point to a developing problem world-wide, the displacement of jobs due to the internet and other …show more content…
With very humble roots, Amazon.com grew itself from a tiny garage start up in 1994 into a multibillion dollar corporation in just twenty one years. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon transformed a modest book selling website into the largest online retailer of all products which survived a giant collapse in the economy and the dot com bubble, helping Amazon start its own agenda. Amazon was vastly different than many other dot com startups due to its realistic, long term, and growth focused agenda, which greatly differed from the unrealistic, quick online startups whom mostly disappeared during the decade. Amazon has been one of the frontrunners in the new digital world, by displaying a progressive business model that builds for growth, and creating a positive future for …show more content…
Few other companies can compete with Amazon’s ability to use ecommerce to cut costs of manufacturing, selling, holding, and making its products as affordable as possible. This is an attribute that has become increasingly important to American’s as they try to recover the massive loss in average income that accrued during the recession of 2008 and 2009. In a scholarly article written by two University of Chicago economic students, Ethan Lieber and Chad Syverson, in 2011, “Online vs. Offline Competition” there is a comparison made by the competition for book sales with the traditional retail store Barnes & Noble and Amazon’s online book sales. In the article the two writers focus on Amazon’s ability to undercut Barnes & Noble’s costs due to their ability to hold less inventory, buy in bulk if needed, and have a lower employment cost per book sold. This was contributing to Amazon’s lead in book sales, becoming the “World’s Largest Bookseller” and current control of the book sales market. Another huge advantage that Amazon online sales has over retail stores is the absence in income tax due to having buyers adopt these costs while still keeping the price of the product lower. “Only when the online seller “has nexus” in the consumer’s state is the sales tax automatically added to the transaction price by the firm. (16, Lieber, Syverson)” This shows
History”, n.d.). But the unbelievable pace at which Amazon added new products and new customers proved to be a formidable barrier for any competitors. Within the first 10 years Amazon accomplished an unbelievable feat; it had 49 million customers and 6.9 billion dollars in revenue, and it had done so by selling some products at a loss to build market share (Rivlin, 2005). At times it was difficult leveraging so much capital to grow market share, but Jeff Bezos’ focus on the customer and long term growth of the company proved to be the real reason Amazon didn’t fall prey to the .com bust like so many other internet
Amazon was founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos and became one of the first major companies to sell goods over the internet
7.Gregory Wester, Stephen Franco. The Internet Shakeout 1996. Interactive Commerce Research Bulletin. the Yankee Group, Boston, MA. December 1995
Jeff Bezo’s began Amazon in his garage in July 1995 with three Sun workstations setting on wooden doors for tables and extension cords running from everywhere (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Right from the beginning he was a visionary leaving his well paying job as a senior vice president with D. E. Shaw to begin Amazon.com (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Being the visionary that he is he saw an opportunity prompted by the huge growth rate of internet use in a single year and ran with it never looking back. Jeff realized that the internet had “no real commerce to speak of” so he began researching possible businesses (Academy of Achievement, 2010). “After reviewing 20 mail order businesses and deciding which could be conducted more efficiently over the internet than by traditional means he decided on books” (Academy of Achievement, 2010). He thought books were perfect because attempting to send huge catalogs for all the available books would be expensive and cumbersome, but an online resource database that was easy to navigate would provide customers with easy access and a single point from which to shop. “In 30 days, with no press, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries, obviously by the success of Amazon he was right (Academy of Achievement, 2010). In a case study written by Javad Kargar called “Amazon.com in 2003” he stated that “Amazon's online store was a big hit, with about $5 million in the first year of operations” (2004). This huge success so quickly would have confirmed for Jeff that his idea was viable and drove him to continue to strive for more. Jeff Bezo’s charismatic-visionary leadership is the key to his and Amazon’s success.
When the internet first made an appearance in the business world, outside of government and military use, the term dot.com was introduced. The technical term “.com” is defined as a suffix used to describe a company that uses the internet as a primary or only marketplace for transfer of goods and services. It was being used as a suffix to the several existing web addresses. It only took a few months for .com websites to become the dominant form of business transaction (Simpson & Simons, 1998). The phenomenon behind this story lies in the rapid rise and fall of the dot.com companies and the players, events, and mindsets that accompanied the bubble boom and bust (Simpson & Simons, 1998).
Amazon’s macro-environment is made up of six external factors: political, economic, environmental, technological, social, and legal conditions. These factors are important because they shape how the company operates and you must know each piece to be able to compete within the retail and eCommerce industry. An evolving political factor are the efforts the government has made toward punishing offenders of cyber-crime. This kind of thief wasn’t walking into your store, but hacking into your computer. This type of crime wasn’t possible before the internet. The government has started to take these crimes more serious as technology evolves. Technology is a factor that Amazon.com must invest heavily in. They are reliant on having top of the line technology to survive against cyber-crime and to stay relevant in the tech world. ECommerce is everywhere now and competition is very high. This brings in legal conditions; Amazon must know what laws exist in which countries because they are a
Four years after resigning from New York Investment Bank, Bezos began to establish a company that he had a vision to sell books. He bought and programmed computer software, then opened the company initially in his garage. Jeff Bezos sold his first book via the web in July 1995. When naming the company, he thought about the major river in South America and named it Amazon. By 2000, Amazon became a famous e-commerce website. In 1998, Jeff Bezos decided to diversify the company and sell many other products such as CDs (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2012). Before the next century arrived, other internet stores established to become competitors of Amazon. However, today, Amazon is a top name on the internet that is reputable to sell any type of merchandise on the internet. This paper will further discuss Jeff Bezos and his successful company, Amazon.com by analyzing Bezos’ leadership style, philosophy, the type of company Amazon is, and how this company fits ...
Scenario: Customers rave about the vast selection, fast shipping, and customer review option for each and every product on the Amazon.com website. The Fortune 500 e-commerce website, headquartered in Seattle, Washington, is the largest internet-based retailer in the United States. Customers are well informed about their purchase with customer reviews and Amazon has competitive prices. Amazon is one of the most successful businesses of our era and most valuable retailer of the country (Kantor & Streitfield, 2015). Amazon Prime members, a program with a yearly membership charge, receive special perks such as free shipping, unlimited streaming of television shows and movies, music streaming, downloads of free books, and many other deals and discounts
From the consumer side, Amazon provides services like Amazon Prime, which delivers free two-day shipping on retail purchases, on-demand video streaming and a free access to the Kindle library, everything for an annual
Launched by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com website started in 1995 and is today considered as one of the most prominent retail website on the internet with a record turnover of US$ 14.87 billion in 2007. Jeff Bezos’s intention was to create an internet based company with the most dedicated product portfolio on the internet where customers could find anything they might want. Amazon’s success is based on technology, services and products (Jens et al., 2003).
When Amazon.com first began in 1995, as strictly a book retailer, Bezos knew he had discovered an excellent company. After all, a physical bookstore cannot stock anywhere close to the number of books Amazon can offer online. Within a year, the company had a customer base of approximately 340,000 consumers and daily site visits were huge as well. But Bezos wanted to expand the company to offer music and DVDs, because he realized there was little or no barrier of entry. In the next years Amazon would emerge as a marketplace, expanding the company globally offering products from toys to kitchenware. Because of the relatively cheap prices Amazon was offering and also the growing number of online shoppers, the company was doing tremendous amounts of sales and creating profits.
For our business profile project, we focused on Amazon. Amazon.com Inc. was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. Amazon was first started in Bezos ' garage and has turned into a billion dollar operation over the course of 22 years (Smith). Amazon is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington and has branch locations all over the world. Amazon is most known for their kindle, fast shipping, and selling various products (Smith). With Amazon being such a large corporation professionalism, academics, character, and engagement are crucial parts of the success of the company.
Amazon has recorded a magnificent success in its business throughout the years that it has been in operation. It has attracted almost all people to use it when necessary. Amazon has built its success in business methodically and slowly. Amazon has made much success because of its ability to read market trends and diversify its operations. It started as an online book selling company. However, it changed its operations and started selling other products. Currently, many large retail shops use Amazon to host and power their websites, for instance, sears and virgin megastores. Amazon now attracts over fifty million visitors in a period of one month. Amazon has tried to make their services fit each individual user. It has based its services on the end user. It has shipping discounts, customer product reviews and a credit card with bonuses. It also has prime membership, product forums and 1-click ordering system among other services. The company has tried to make a remarkable experience for customers and visitors (Thomas, 2006).
Amazon is the world’s largest retailer online. Founded in 1994 it has started as an online bookstore but soon expends its catalog with software, video games, electronics, furniture, food, toys etc.
Jeffrey Bezos, the founder and current CEO of Amazon.com, initially started the company as an online bookstore in 1994. Within several months, Amazon spread its operation to all 50 states and abroad. Presently, customers from over 45 countries buy at Amazon. Over a short period of time, the company expanded sales to electronics, video games, software, CDs, DVDs, MP3 downloads, food, furniture, apparel, jewelry, and toys. Today, the company even produces its own products such as the Kindle series. Also, Amazon.com is one of the major providers of cloud computing services. Currently, the company is the largest global online retailer responsible for 20% of online retail market share.