How Amazon Changed The Face Of Business
How Amazon Changed the Face of Business
In 1995, Amazon.com sold its first book, “Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought” and started a revolution in the book and media selling industry. Against all odds, the company began to grow, relying largely on word-of-mouth advertising, and a very charismatic leader. They went public in May of 1997, and opened their first international sites for the United Kingdom and Germany in October of 1998 (Amazon.com, 2008). The traditional “brick and mortar” booksellers saw their profits begin to be eaten away, and realized that they had to evolve if they wanted to compete in this new environment.
Affiliations and increasing Internet profiles
One of the largest advantages that Amazon.com has over other booksellers is the lack of overhead for maintaining physical locations, other than their corporate offices and several “Fulfillment Centers” scattered across the world. They do not have to worry about storage for books that take longer to move, as most of those books are housed with the distributors, and shipped directly from ther. If a customer has an issue at all, they call the customer service line 24 hours a day, and get immediate assistance. Using the actual storefront as the “first employee” to cover several traditional positions, Amazon could use 30 people to do the work of 300. The brick and mortar booksellers simply could not compete on that scale, and they began to adapt in several ways to survive.
Barnes and Noble claims to be the first bookseller in America to have ever advertised on television, so it stands to reason that they would be the first to dive into the Internet market after Amazon (Barnes and Noble [B&N], 2008). They opened their own website in May of 1997 (as Amazon was going public), and proceeded to make their reputation on the vast storehouses of books that they owned for their physical locations. Borders...
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