Amazon (company):
The American multinational technology business Amazon.com, Inc. (/admin/AM-on) specializes in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. One of the most valuable brands in the world, it has been called "one of the most significant economic and cultural forces in the globe." Along with Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta, it is one of the Big Five American technological firms.
On July 5, 1994, Jeff Bezos launched Amazon from his garage in Bellevue, Washington. It started out as an online bookstore but has now evolved into many more product categories, earning the nickname "The Everything Store." It has several subsidiaries, including Kuiper Systems (satellite Internet), Amazon Lab126, Zoox (autonomous cars), and Amazon Web Services (cloud computing) (computer hardware R&D). The company also has subsidiaries for Ring, Twitch, IMDb, and Whole Foods. With the $13.4 billion purchase of Whole Foods in August 2017, it significantly expanded its physical retail reach.
With its "aggressive" reinvestment of revenues into capital expenditures and technical innovation, Amazon has built a reputation for upending well-established sectors. By revenue and market share, it will be the biggest online retailer and marketplace, supplier of smart speakers, cloud computing service via AWS, provider of live-streaming service through Twitch, and Internet firm in the world by 2023. With more than 200 million users globally to its premium subscription scheme, Amazon Prime, it eclipsed Walmart in 2021 to become the biggest retailer in the world outside of China. It is the country's second-largest private employer.
Through its Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Twitch, and Audible divisions, Amazon also disseminates a range of digital and streaming material. It produces movies and television shows via Amazon Studios, and since March 2022, it has owned the film and television studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It also publishes books through its publishing division, Amazon Publishing. In particular, Kindle e-readers, Echo gadgets, Fire tablets, and Fire TVs are among the consumer products that it also makes.
Amazon has been under fire for its gathering of consumer data, poisonous workplace environment, tax evasion, and anti-competitive actions.
History:
1994–2006: Early years:
Jeff Bezos launched Amazon on July 5, 1994. Because Microsoft was located nearby, he picked the Seattle location for its wealth of technological expertise.
In May 1997, Amazon went public. In 1998, it started selling music and films. In 2003, it acquired German and British online book retailers to launch its worldwide business. The next year, it started offering software, games, toys, consumer goods, home improvement products, music, and video games.
It introduced Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002, with the intended goal of giving web developers access to APIs so they could create web apps on top of Amazon's e-commerce platform. The Alexa Web Information Service's website popularity statistics and web crawler data were added to AWS in 2004. Later, AWS turned its focus to offering business services, launching Simple Storage Service (S3) in 2006 and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in 2008. These services allowed businesses to hire Amazon for data storage and processing capacity. Amazon also introduced the Fulfillment by Amazon program in 2006, enabling individuals and small businesses (sometimes known as "third-party sellers") to sell goods using Amazon's distribution centers and infrastructure.
2007–present: Growth:
2017 saw Amazon acquire the network of Whole Foods Market stores.
Amazon implemented hazard pay of $2 per hour, modifications to overtime pay, and a policy of unlimited unpaid time off until April 30, 2020, during the COVID-19 epidemic. Both the paid time off policy and the increase in hazard pay were set to expire in June 2020. Along with these temporary sales limitations on non-essential items, Amazon increased employment in the US and Canada by 100,000 people. Despite several COVID-19 instances that were successful, some Amazon employees in the US, France, and Italy challenged the company's choice to "run regular shifts." The business has received legal accusations in Spain for its practices. In an open letter to Bezos in March 2020, many US senators raised worries about worker safety.
Amazon said on February 2, 2021, that Jeff Bezos will resign as CEO and become the executive chair of the board beginning in the third quarter of that year. Former CEO of AWS Andy Jassy now leads Amazon.
Products and services:
Among the many product categories sold on Amazon.com are media (books, movies, music, and software), apparel, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet food, groceries, health and personal care products, industrial & scientific supplies, kitchenware, jewelry, watches, lawn and garden products, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools, automobile products, toys and games, farm supplies, and consulting services. Although some of the Amazon websites allow worldwide delivery, most are country-specific (for instance, amazon.com for the United States and amazon.fr for France).
More than 2 billion people will visit Amazon.com each month by 2022, up from 615 million visits annually in 2008. The e-commerce platform is the fourteenth most popular website worldwide.
The search engine on Amazon generates results in part based on advertising payments.
Merchant partnerships:
In 2000, Toys "R" Us and Amazon agreed to a ten-year deal for $50 million year plus a percentage of sales, as part of which Toys "R" Us would be the service's only supplier of toys and baby items and its website would refer users to Amazon's Toys & Games category. In 2004, Toys "R" Us filed a lawsuit against Amazon, alleging that due to a perceived lack of diversity in its inventory, Amazon had willfully let third parties sell goods on the site in areas where Toys "R" Us had been given exclusivity. Toys "R" Us was granted permission to terminate its contract with Amazon and launch its own independent e-commerce website in 2006 after a judge decided in its favor. Damages of $51 million were eventually granted to the corporation.
Similar terms were agreed upon by Amazon and Borders Group in 2001, under which Amazon would provide Borders.com as a co-branded service. In 2007, Borders terminated the agreement while simultaneously preparing to establish its own internet shop.
A collaboration between DC Comics and Amazon.com for exclusive digital rights to several well-known comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Sandman, and Watchmen, was announced on October 18, 2011. Well-known book retailers like Barnes & Noble have taken some titles from their shelves as a result of the cooperation.
Orders will start being delivered on Sundays thanks to a cooperation between Amazon and the US Postal Service, which was announced in November 2013. Due to the enormous volume and difficulty to deliver promptly, the service, which is part of Amazon's normal shipping prices, was first introduced in the metropolitan regions of Los Angeles and New York, with plans to extend into Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, and Phoenix by 2014.
Nike agreed to sell items via Amazon in June 2017 in return for stronger enforcement of anti-counterfeiting laws. This was unsuccessful, and in November 2019, Nike ended the collaboration. Around the same time, businesses like IKEA and Birkenstock ceased selling via Amazon, claiming similar annoyances with unethical business methods and fake items.
In September 2017, Amazon entered a joint venture with one of its vendors, Patni Group-owned Appario Retail, which has the financial year 2017–2018 total revenue of US$ 104.44 million (around 759 crores).
As of October 11, 2017, AmazonFresh offered a variety of items under the Booths brand for delivery to homes in a few locations.
In November 2018, Amazon and Apple Inc. announced a deal for the sale of a limited number of items via the service, through the former and a limited number of Apple Authorized Resellers. As a consequence of this collaboration, starting January 4, 2019, only Apple Authorized Resellers are permitted to sell Apple items on Amazon.
Private-label products:
Diaper wipes, batteries, and phone chargers are just a few of the numerous items that Amazon offers under its own brand names. Since its launch in 2009, the AmazonBasics brand has expanded to include hundreds of product categories, such as smartphone cases, computer mice, batteries, dumbbells, and dog cages. As of 2019, Amazon held 34 private-label brands. The average for other major retailers is 18%, but these brands represent 0.15 percent of Amazon's overall sales.] Presto!, Mama Bear, and Amazon Essentials are a few other Amazon retail brands.
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Third-party sellers:
About 40% of Amazon's 2008 sales came from independent merchants who list goods on the site. A few other significant online retailers offer their goods via Amazon in addition to their own websites. Through Amazon.com, the transactions are processed before being sent to specific vendors for order fulfillment. Amazon also rents space to these shops. Small sellers of new and old items utilize Amazon Marketplace to provide products at a set price.
Affiliate program:
By including links to Amazon on their websites, publishers may register as affiliates and earn a reward for directing users to the retailer if the recommendation results in a sale. In its affiliate programs, Amazon claims to have "over 900,000 members" worldwide. The second most prominent advertising network behind Google Ads, the Amazon Affiliate Program is utilized by 1.2% of all websites as of the middle of 2014. Websites and nonprofits typically utilize it to provide a means for supporters to earn a commission.
Using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service, associates may directly access the Amazon catalog on their websites. AStore, a new affiliate offering, enables Associates to link to or embed a selection of Amazon items on another website. Launched in June 2010, Amazon Seller Product Suggestions let third-party sellers offer certain items on Amazon, increasing transparency for merchants. The recommended products are determined by the consumers' browsing habits.
Product Reviews:
Users may post reviews on each product's web page on Amazon. Reviewers must provide the item a star rating on a scale of one to five. Reviews on Amazon have the choice to display a badge that either shows their genuine identity (depending on verification of a credit card account) or that they are among the most well-liked reviewers. On December 16, 2020, Amazon took away merchants' and customers' ability to leave comments on product reviews and deleted all of the remarks that had previously been made on their websites. The reason Amazon offered for deleting this function was that "the comments section on customer reviews was seldom utilized," according to an email sent to vendors. The two other review response choices are to say if the review was helpful or that it contravenes Amazon regulations (abuse). A review may appear on the product's top page if it receives enough "useful" visits. According to a survey from 2010, Amazon was the single-largest source of online customer evaluations.
Bezos defended the practice by saying that Amazon.com was "taking a new approach... we want to make every book available—the good, the terrible, and the ugly... to set truth free" when publishers questioned him about why Amazon would post critical reviews.
There have been examples of public relations firms writing and posting good evaluations on behalf of their customers as well as authors utilizing aliases to publish critical comments about the work of competitors.
Amazon sales rank:
The popularity of a product sold on any Amazon location is indicated by the Amazon sales rank (ASR). It is an hourly updated relative popularity indicator. In essence, it serves as a "best sellers list" for the millions of things that Amazon stocks. Although the ASR has no direct impact on a product's sales, Amazon uses it to choose which goods to put on its bestsellers lists. Products that are included on these lists get more visibility on the Amazon website, which might enhance sales. Amazon's listings of "movers and shakers" may feature goods in particular that suffer significant leaps (up or down) in their sales rankings; such a listing gives more attention that may improve sales. Amazon does not publicly disclose its real sales data due to competition concerns. However, Amazon has just started providing verified writers with Nielsen BookScan point-of-sale data. Publishers, producers, and marketers have made a lot of assumptions about the ASR, but Amazon itself withholds information on the formula it uses to determine sales rank. Amazon notes that several businesses have examined Amazon sales data to produce sales projections based on the ASR.
