Amazon.com is an American electronic commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. It was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet (Wikipedia, 2004). As a founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos is a pioneer in e-commerce (Saunders, 2001, pp. 1-26). In 1994, the early year of the mainstream internet, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com. At the moment, he had a far-sight into the growing of a business on the Web, including the pitfalls on the trail to profitability (Saunders, 2001, pp. 1-26). Bezos saw the potential of the internet; while the largest brick-and mortar bookstore might sell upwards of 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could sell many times more (Wikipedia, 2004). So, Bezos started his aspiration, he launched Amazon.com Inc. on Web in June 1995 and it began service in the following month. The company was originally incorporated in 1994 in the state of Washington and was reincorporated in 1996 in Delaware (Wikipedia, 2004). Amazon.com had its initial public offering (In financial market terminology, IPO is the initial sale of the common shares of a corporation to the public) on May 15, 1997, trading on the NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, the world’s first electronic stock market) stock exchange under the symbol AMZN (Wikipedia, 2004).
When Amazon.com first entered the market, it had no big rivals and there were no dominant traditional players. The number one supplier, Barnes & Noble, had only about one-tenth of market share and no online presence (Saunders, 2001, pp. 1-26). While there was now a bevy of booksellers on the net, including book behemoth, Barnes & Noble and the second largest bookseller, Borders, Amazon.com still had the advantage of being there first. But as it had moved into new product lines like CDs, video games, pet supplies, computer software, electronics, and provides services like auctions and greeting cards, it had found itself up agaisnt dominant players in their markets, either offline, online or both (Saunders, 2001, pp. 1-26). In the start of 1999, Amazon.com evolved into the largest e-tailer with the “world’s widest selection� and in the mid-2001, Amazon.com owned $19 billion market value through carrying out its sagacious investment and partnership, and also its successful business strategies (Saunders, 2001, pp. 1-26). “When something is growing that fast, every second counts�, Bezos said (Saunders, 2001, pp. 1-26). So, in 1999, Amazon.com invested in HomeGrocer.com and DrugStore.com to expand its market share. Then, in a same year, Amazon.com partnered with Sotheby’s to launch Sothebys.amazon.com, bringing authenticated art and collectibles to purchase via auction. In 2001, it partnered with Borders.com to support its sales initiative (Saunders, 2001, pp. 1-26). Now, Amazon also owned Alexa Internet, Accept.com, Exchange.com, a9.com (This search engine was allowing users to search within the text of books as well as searching for text on the Web), and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) (Wikipedia, 2004).
Amazon.com could rapidly go up to be the Web’s largest and most influential retailer because Bezos had his own business strategies. “It is easy to come up with ideas but the hard part is putting them to work� Bezos indicated (Saunders, 2001, pp. 1-26). But, Bezos could fulfill his business strategies, which are including building a happy working team, branding the site, keeping customers by offering values, setting up a distribution network, growing strategic alliances as well as acquisitions and so on (Saunders, R. 2001, pp. 1-26). These business strategies had earned Amazon its leading-edge status as a website and had yet to prove the profitability (Saunders, 2001, pp. 1-26).
1. A9.com
2. Alexa.com
3. NASDAQ
4. Internet Movie Database
1. Wikipedia (2004), retrieved October 27, 2004, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com
2. Saunders, R. (2001) Business The Amazon.com, UK: Capstone Publishing Limited, ISBN 184112155X
3. Spector, R. (2000) Amazon.com: Get Big Fast, New York: Harper Collins, ISBN 073226796X
Jason Er 12:28, 9 Sep 2004 (EST)
