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Executive Summary
Amazon.com, Inc.
is an American electronic commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. It is America'slargest online retailer, having been founded in 1994, launching online in July 1995 and made its first annualprofit in 2003. It began selling books online, now sells and distributes new and used items in categories such asbooks, health and personal care, music, DVDs, videos, electronics, software, toys, video games, tools andhardware, jewellery and watches, garden, and home furnishings as well as services such as film processing ontheir Web site. Amazon established its first set of international sites in October 1998, being Amazon.co.uk for UK& Ireland, and Amazon.de for Germany. On 15 January 2009, a survey published by Verdict Research found thatAmazon was the UK's favourite music and video retailer, and came third in overall retail rankings
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. Business-rating site Plebble.com
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a real-time index of customer satisfaction levels for organisations
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gave Amazon.co.uka rating of 3.51 at time of writing
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, making it 6
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best in rankings. A news release from Nielsen Online states thatAmazon.co.uk was averaging 15.6 million Unique Britons each month in Q4 2008 (ranked #1),with a year-on-year growth of 18%, retaining the rank #1 position for the last three months in a row
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In their 2007 Annual Report
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Our software engineers, computer scientists, merchandisers, and management team focus on continuous innovation toenhance convenience. We work to earn repeat purchases by providing easy-to-use functionality, fast and reliable fulfilment,timely customer service, feature-rich and authoritative content, and a trusted transaction environment. Key features of our websites include editorial and customer reviews; manufacturer product information; gift guides; Web pages tailored toindividual preferences, such as recommendations and notifications; 1-Click technology; secure payment systems; digital content;searching; browsing; and the ability to view selected interior pages and citations, and search the entire contents of many of the
books we offer with our “Search Inside the Book” feature. Our community of online customers also creates feature
-rich content,including product reviews, online recommendation lists, wish lists, image uploads, video reviews, buying guides, customer discussions, and wedding and baby registries.
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We endeavour to fulfil customer orders quickly and accurately, and to provide intuitive self-service features that assist our customers when they have questions. We communicate our fulfilment promise in several ways, such as presenting up-to-dateinventory availability information, delivery date estimates, and options for expedited delivery, as well as delivery shipment notifications. Customers
can use the “Your Account” website features to track order and shipment status, review estimated
delivery dates, cancel items not yet shipped, change delivery instructions and payment options, combine orders, edit gift options,and return items. Additionally, when customers have questions, we provide an email address and phone number to contact customer service directly and an intuitive click-to-call feature on our help pages so customers can quickly and conveniently speak with a customer service representative.
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Our spending in technology and content will increase as we add computer scientists, software engineers, and employeesinvolved in category expansion, editorial content, buying, merchandising selection, and systems support. We will continue toinvest in several areas of technology and content, including seller platforms, web services, digital initiatives, and expansion of new and existing product categories, as well as in technology infrastructure to enhance the customer experience, improve our process efficiencies and support our infrastructure web services. We believe that advances in technology, specifically the speed and reduced cost of processing power, the improved customer experience of the Internet outside of the workplace throughlower-cost broadband service to the home, and the advances of wireless connectivity, will continue to improve the customer
experience on the Internet and increase its ubiquity in people’s lives. Amazon Web Services provides technology services that
give developers access to technology infrastructure that they can use to enable virtually any type of business. Our challenge will be to continue to build and deploy innovative and efficient software that will best take advantage of continued advances intechnology.
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As at 25-Jan-2009 03:31:24, based on 62 ratings on a scale of -5 to +5
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