Amazon

Amazon

Introduction

Amazon is a US based multinational e - Commerce Company and its main headquarter in Washington. Amazon is the largest online retailer of the world with its major business is to produce consumer electronics and particularly the online book selling. It is the main provider of cloud computing services in the world.

Amazon is dealing with different retail websites for different countries i.e. Canada, France, United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Japan, Italy and even China as well. There major characteristic is that they provide free online shipping for some products and books in particular. They are planning to launch more websites in different regions as well.

Background of the company

Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos. Amazon was originally an online bookstore. As major bookstores brick and mortar and mail order catalogs could provide up to 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could go much further. Jeff wanted the company's name starts with an A to appear early in alphabetical order. He began to look in the dictionary and stopped on Amazon because it was rather "exotic and different" meaning that the river was considered largest in the world, for he wanted his company to be at that level. Since 2000, the Amazon logo includes an arrow from A to Z forming a smile that symbolizes customer satisfaction. Amazon started its business in July 1995. The first book sold for them was Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies of Douglas Hofstadter and since then their strategies has worked all over in favor of them. The business plan of the original Amazon was not common initially but the company did not expect to become profitable within four or five years. As like initial business the initial growth was very slow that has angered the shareholders who complained that the company is not profitable for them. When the Internet bubble burst and many Internet companies have gone bankrupt, Amazon remained stable and finally realized its first profit in the last quarter of 2001 i.e. 5 million, or 1 percent share, on revenue of over one billion. Profit was though modest, but it was to prove that the slow but sustainable business model could be beneficial. In 1999, the Time magazine has ranked Bezos as Person of the Year , noting that his company helped popularize e - commerce. On May 12, 1997, Barnes & Noble went to court, holding that his claims his bookstore to be "the largest bookstore in the world" was false because it is not even a library but a retailer of books. The case was eventually settled out of the court. Amazon, however, continued to describe them as “the largest bookstore in the world.” Wal-Mart has also initiated legal action, 16 October 1998, accusing Amazon of stealing trade secrets by hiring former executives of Wal-Mart and this case was also settled out of the court.

After Intel, IBM , Google , Microsoft and Apple, Amazon has now published its review of the last quarter of ...