Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an American e-commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. It was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet and was one of the iconic stocks of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. After the bubble burst Amazon faced skepticism about its business model, but it made its first annual profit in 2003.

Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in 1995, Amazon.com began as an online bookstore, though it soon diversified its product lines, adding DVDs, music CDs, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys and more.

Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, China, and Japan. It ships globally on selected products.

Amazon was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos refers to as his "regret minimization framework," i.e. his effort to fend off late-in-life regret for not staking a claim in the Internet gold rush. It is common lore that Bezos wrote its business plan while he and his wife drove a 1988 Chevrolet Blazer from Fort Worth, Texas to Bellevue, Washington.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The company began operating as an online bookstore under the name Cadabra.com (as in abracadabra), a name that Bezos quickly abandoned due to its sounding like cadaver.[2] While the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores and mail-order catalogs for books might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could offer many times more. Bezos renamed his company "Amazon" after the world's most voluminous river. The company was incorporated in 1994 in the state of Washington, began service in July 1995, and was reincorporated in 1996 in Delaware. Amazon.com had its initial public offering on May 15, 1997, trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol AMZN at an IPO price of $18.00 per share (equivalent to $1.50 after three stock splits during the late 1990s).

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual: the company did not expect to turn a profit for four to five years. In retrospect, the strategy was effective. Amazon grew at a steady pace in the late 1990s while many other Internet companies grew at a blindingly fast pace. Amazon's "slow" growth caused a number of its stockholders to complain, saying that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When the Dot-com bubble burst and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered and finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2002: a meager $5 million, just 1 cent per share, on revenues of over $1 billion, but it was important symbolically. The firm has since remained profitable: net income was $35.3 million in 2003, $588.5 million in 2004, $359 million in 2005, and $190 million in 2006 (including a $662 million charge on R&D in 2006). Nevertheless, the firm's cumulative profits remain negative, since the positive performance of recent years is not yet sufficient to wipe out the losses of the past, as of 2005 the accumulated deficit stood at $2.03 billion.

Revenue continued to grow thanks to product diversification and international presence: $3.9 billion in 2002, $5.3 billion in 2003, $6.9 billion in 2004, $8.5 billion in 2005, and $10.7 billion in 2006. On November 21, 2005, Amazon entered the S&P 500 index, replacing the venerable AT&T after it merged with SBC Communications.

Time Magazine named Bezos its 1999 Person of the Year in recognition of the company's success in popularizing online shopping.

Merchant partnerships

The Web sites of Borders (borders.com, borders.co.uk), Waldenbooks (waldenbooks.com), Virgin Megastores (virginmega.com), CDNOW (cdnow.com), and HMV (hmv.com) are powered and hosted by Amazon. Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into one's browser would similarly bring up Amazon.com's Toys & Games tab; however, this relationship was terminated as the result of a lawsuit.

Amazon.com powers and operates retail web sites for Target, the NBA, Sears Canada,Sears UK, Benefit Cosmetics, Bebe Stores, Timex Corporation, Marks & Spencer and Bombay Company.

It also powers, although does not host, AOL's Shop@AOL service. It achieves this via Web Services technology.

Locations

The company's global headquarters is located on Seattle, Washington's Beacon Hill. It has offices throughout other parts of greater Seattle. Amazon has a Canadian site in both English and French, but is prevented from operating any headquarters, servers, fulfillment centres or call centres in Canada due to that country's legal restrictions on foreign-owned booksellers. Instead, Amazon's Canadian site originates in the United States, and Amazon has an agreement with Canada Post to handle distribution within Canada and for the use of the Crown corporation's Mississauga, Ontario shipping facility. In 2002, the Canadian Booksellers Association and Indigo Books and Music sought a court ruling that Amazon's partnership with Canada Post represented an attempt to circumvent Canadian law, but the litigation was dropped in 2004.

Software development centers

The company employs software developers in modest- to large-sized centers across the globe. Locations include Slough, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, India; Kennewick, Washington; Cape Town, South Africa; Iaşi, Romania; Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan (closed in 2005); and Beijing, China.

Product lines

Amazon has steadily branched into retail sales of music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewellery, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, industrial & scientific supplies, groceries and more.

The company launched Amazon.com Auctions, its own Web auctions service, in March 1999. However it failed to chip away at industry pioneer eBay's juggernaut growth. Amazon Auctions was followed by the launch of a fixed-price marketplace business called zShops in September 1999, and a failed Sotheby's/Amazon partnership called sothebys.amazon.com in November. Although zShops failed to live up to its expectations, it laid the groundwork for the hugely successful Amazon Marketplace service launched in 2001 that let customers sell used books, CDs, DVDs, and other products alongside new items. Amazon Marketplace's main rival today is eBay's half.com service.

Amazon intends to compete with Apple's iTunes Music Store with the launch of its own online music store in May 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Website

A popular feature of Amazon is the ability for users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. As part of their review, users must rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Such rating scales provide a basic idea of the popularity and dependability of a product.

Search Inside the Book is a feature which makes it possible for customers to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the catalog. The feature started out with 120,000 titles (or 33 million pages of text) on October 23, 2003. There are currently about 250,000 books in the program. Amazon has cooperated with around 130 publishers to allow users to perform these searches. To avoid copyright violations, Amazon.com does not return the computer-readable text of the book but rather a picture of the page containing the found excerpt, disables printing of the pages, and puts limits on the number of pages in a book a single user can access. Amazon is planning to launch Search Inside the Book internationally. Additionally, customers can purchase access to read the entire book online via the Amazon Upgrade program, although the selection of books eligible for this service is currently limited.

According to information in Amazon.com discussion forums, Amazon derives about 40% of its sales from affiliates, whom they call "Associates." An Associate is essentially an independent seller or business that receives a commission for referring customers to the Amazon.com site. Associates do this by placing links on their websites to the Amazon homepage or to specific products. If a referral results in a sale, the Associate receives a commission from Amazon. By the end of 2003, Amazon had signed up almost one million Associates. Associates can access the Amazon catalog directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service. Amazon was the first online business to set up an Associates program. The idea has since been copied by many other online businesses. AStore is a new Associates product that gives the power to create a professional online store, in minutes and without the need for programming skills, that can be embedded within or linked to from your website.

Acquisitions and spinoffs

Amazon bought the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) in April 1998, a move that upset a number of its longtime users; the transformation of IMDb from a public-domain, nonprofit site to a commercial venture was seen as a slap in the face to many Web users. However, the IMDb has continued to grow and prosper.

Amazon bought Cambridge, Massachusetts-based PlanetAll in August 1998 for 800,000 shares of Amazon stock. PlanetAll operated a Web-based address book, calendar, and reminder service. In the same deal, Amazon acquired Sunnyvale-based Junglee.com, an XML-based data mining startup for 1.6 million shares of Amazon stock. The two deals together were valued at about $280 million at the time. Most staff of both firms were absorbed by Amazon in early 1999. These employees went on to build community-focused features for the Amazon Web site, including Amazon.com Auctions, Amazon.com Marketplace, Friends & Favorites, and Purchase Circles.

In June 1999, Amazon bought Alexa Internet, Accept.com, and Exchange.com in a set of stock deals worth approximately $645 million.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2004, Amazon purchased Joyo.com, a Chinese e-commerce Web site. It also debuted A9.com, a company focused on researching, and building innovative technology. One of the technologies A9.com was working on was a search engine with a "Search Inside the Book" feature allowing users to search within the text of books as well as searching for text on the Web. Another A9.com technology was its "Find It on the Block" feature allowing users to find not just the phone number, address, map, and directions for a business; but to see a picture of it, and all the businesses and shops on that same street.

In March 2005, Amazon acquired BookSurge, a print on demand company and Mobipocket.com, an eBook software company.

Amazon spinoffs include search technology company A9.com and shoe and handbag store Endless.com.

     Article

Contend from Wikipedia