Introduction

Amazon is an American multinational technology company based in Seattle, Washington that

focuses in e-commerce, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.
Amazon is the largest e-commerce marketplace and cloud computing platform in the world as
measured by revenue and market capitalization. Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos on
July 5, 1994, and started as an online bookstore but later diversified to
sell video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, audiobook downloads, software,
video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewellery.
The company also owns a publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, a film and television
studio, Amazon Studios, produces consumer electronics lines including Kindle e-
readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, and Echo devices, and is the world's largest provider of cloud
infrastructure services (IaaS and PaaS) through its AWS subsidiary. Amazon has separate
retail websites for some countries and also offers international shipping of some of its
products to certain other countries.[9] 100 million people subscribe to Amazon Prime.
Amazon is the largest Internet Company by revenue in the world. And the second largest
employer in the United States.

HISTORY

Jeff Bezos incorporated Amazon. In May 1997, the organization went public. The company
began selling music and videos in 1998, at which time it began operations internationally by
acquiring online sellers of books in United Kingdom and Germany. The following year, the
organization also sold video games, consumer electronics, home-improvement items,
software, games, and toys in addition to other items.
In 2002, the corporation started Amazon Web Services, which provided data on Web site
popularity, Internet traffic patterns and other statistics for marketers and developers. In 2006,
the organization grew its AWS portfolio when Elastic Compute Cloud , which rents computer
processing power as well as Simple Storage Service , that rents data storage via the Internet,
were made available. That same year, the company started Fulfilment by Amazon which
managed the inventory of individuals and small companies selling their belongings through
the company internet site. In 2012, Amazon bought Kiva Systems to automate its inventory-
management business, purchasing Whole Foods Market supermarket chain five years later in
2017.

Summery
Amazon.com, Inc., incorporated on May 28, 1996, offers a range of products and services
through its Websites. The Company operates through three segments: North America,
International and Amazon Web Services. The Company's products include merchandise and
content that it purchases for resale from vendors and those offered by third-party sellers. It
also manufactures and sells electronic devices. The Company, through its subsidiary, Whole
Foods Market, Inc., offers healthy and organic food and staples across its stores. The
Company also offers a range of products like whole trade bananas, organic avocados, organic
large brown eggs, organic responsibly-farmed salmon and tilapia, organic baby kale and baby
lettuce, animal-welfare-rated 85% lean ground beef, creamy and crunchy almond butter,
organic gala and Fuji apples, organic rotisserie chicken.
The Company's Whole Foods Market healthy and private label products include 365
Everyday Value, Whole Foods Market, Whole Paws and Whole Catch available through
Amazon.com, Amazon Fresh, Prime Pantry and Prime Now. The Company also offers
Amazon Lockers that is available in select Whole Foods Market stores. Customers can have
products shipped from www.Amazon.com to their local Whole Foods Market store for pick
up or send returns back to Amazon during a trip to the store.
The Company's North America segment primarily consists of retail sales of consumer
products and subscriptions through North America-focused Websites, such as
www.amazon.com. The North America segment includes export sales from its North
America-focused Websites. The International segment primarily consists of retail sales of
consumer products and subscriptions through internationally-focused Websites, such as
www.amazon.com.au, www.amazon.com.br, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.fr,
www.amazon.de, www.amazon.in, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.nl,
www.amazon.es and www.amazon.co.uk. The International segment includes export sales
from these internationally-focused Websites.
The Company serves consumers through its retail Websites and focuses on selection, price
and convenience. It designs its Websites to enable hundreds of millions of products to be sold
by them and by third parties across dozens of product categories. The Company allows
customers to access its Websites directly and through its mobile Websites and applications. It
also manufactures and sells electronic devices, including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, and
Fire televisions.
It develops and produces media content. In addition, the Company offers Amazon Prime, an
annual membership program that includes access to unlimited instant streaming of thousands
of movies and television episodes and other benefits. It offers programs that enable sellers to
grow their businesses, sell their products on its Websites and their own branded Websites.

Growth enablers and barriers

Amazon considered shipping costs to be a growth blocker, or as Wee describes it,
an invisible asymptote for growth. People hate paying for shipping costs, so Amazon decided
to get rid of them. At first, solving this looked prohibitively expensive.
First, Amazon tried to appease customers' distaste for shipping fees with "Super Saver
Shipping". Amazon introduced Super Saver Shipping in January 2002 for orders over $99. If
you placed an order of $99 or more, you received free shipping. In the span of a few months,
that number dropped to $49 and then to $25. Eventually this led to the launch of Amazon
Prime in 2005, making all shipping "free". Members pay $79 per year for free, unlimited two-
day shipping on eligible purchases. While a program like Amazon Prime doesn't actually
make shipping free, it feels free to the customer, which effectively eliminates the barrier for
growth.
The impact on Amazon's growth was tremendous. Today, Amazon Prime provides Amazon
an economic moat, or a sustainable competitive advantage – it isn't easy for other retailers to
compete from a sheer economic and logistical standpoint.
 Amazon's growth was shipping times. People don't like having to wait for days to receive
their Amazon purchase. Several years ago, I was talking to Werner Vogel’s, Amazon's global
CTO, and asked him where most commerce investments were going. He responded that
reducing shipping times was more strategic than making improvements to the commerce
backend or website. As Wee points out in his blog, Amazon has been working on reducing
shipping times for over a decade. First by building a higher density network of distribution
centres, and more recently through delivery from local Whole Foods stores, self-service
lockers at Whole Foods, predictive or anticipatory shipping, drone delivery, and more.
Slowly, but certainly, Amazon is building out its own end-to-end delivery network with one
primary objective: reducing shipping times.

Limitations of Amazon
 Take the time to correctly identify your long-term blockers for growth.
 Removing these long-term blockers for growth may look impossible at first.
 Removing these long-term blockers requires creativity, innovation, patience,
persistence and aggressive capital allocation. It can take many initiatives and many
years to eliminate them.
 Overcoming these obstacles can be a powerful strategy that can unlock unbelievable
growth.

Finance
Amazon.com is primarily a retail site with a sales revenue model; Amazon takes a
small percentage of the sale price of each item that is sold through its website while
also allowing companies to advertise their products by paying to be listed as featured
products.
As of 2018, Amazon.com is ranked 8th on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest
United States corporations by total revenue. For the fiscal year 2017, Amazon
reported earnings of US $3.03 billion, with an annual revenue of US $177.866 billion,
an increase of 30.8% over the previous fiscal cycle. Since 2007 sales increased from
14.835 billion to 177.866 billion, thanks to continued business expansion.
Amazon's market capitalization was valued at over US $803 billion in early
November 2018.

Revenue
 2014 total revenue $88,988
 2015 total revenue $107,006
 2016 total revenue $135,987
 2017 total revenue $177,866
Sales and use taxes
Amazon’s state sales tax collection policy has changed over the years since it did not collect
any sales taxes in its early years. In the U.S. state and local sales taxes are levied by state and
local governments, not at the federal level. In most countries where Amazon operates, a sales
tax or value added tax is uniform throughout the country, and Amazon is obliged to collect it
from all customers. Proponents of forcing Amazon.com to collect sales tax at least in states
where it maintains a physical presence argue the corporation wields an anti-competitive
advantage over storefront businesses forced to collect sales tax.

Product and services

 Amazon Fresh
 Amazon Prime
 Amazon Web Services
 Alexa
 App store
 Amazon Drive
 Echo
 Kindle
 Fire tablets
 Fire TV
 Video
 Kindle Store
 Music
 Music Unlimited
 Amazon Digital Game Store
 Amazon Studios
 Amazon Wireless

Amazon Market Share In India

Amazon India is currently worth $16 billion and has the same 30% market share as local
competitor Flipkart, according to a new report from Citi.
India is a massive market with huge opportunities for ecommerce retail. The country has 1.3
billion people, and while only about 6% of the adult population have credit cards, that is
growing at 25% annually. India has 480 million internet users, and that's growing at 25% as
well.

Amazon entered the India space in 2013, and has yet to turn a profit. But it's captured about
30% of the Indian ecommerce market, and is poised to grow that 23% annually until 2027.
That would mean Amazon India would reach $70 billion in gross merchandise volume and
$11 billion in revenue.
Amazon India is currently in second place at about $5 billion in GMV, according to Citi's
estimates. Currently Flipkart, with its subsidiary Mantra, have achieved $7.5 billion in annual
GMV. With Walmart's $16 billion investment and perhaps some retail expertise, although it's
not clear that U.S. retail experience translates to predominantly mobile-only India the
company is well positioned to grow fast, especially with expansion into groceries.

Merchant partnerships
In 2001, Amazon entered into a similar agreement with Borders Group, under which
Amazon would co-manage Borders.com as a co-branded service. Borders pulled out of the
arrangement in 2007, with plans to also launch its own online store.
On October 18, 2011, Amazon.com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the
exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green
Lantern, The Sandman, and Watchmen. The partnership has caused well-known bookstores
like Barnes & Noble to remove these titles from their shelves.
In November 2013, Amazon announced a partnership with the United States Postal Service to
begin delivering orders on Sundays. The service, included in Amazon's standard shipping
rates, initiated in metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and New York because of the high-
volume and inability to deliver in a timely way, with plans to expand
into Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix by 2014.
In June 2017, Nike confirmed a "pilot" partnership with Amazon to sell goods directly on the
platform.
As of October 11, 2017, Amazon Fresh sells a range of Booths branded products for home
delivery in selected areas.
In September 2017, Amazon ventured with one of its sellers JV Appario Retail owned by
Patni Group which has recorded a total income of US$ 104.44 million (₹ 759 crore) in
financial year 2017–18.
In November 2018, Amazon reached an agreement with Apple Inc. to sell selected products
through the service, via the company and selected Apple Authorized Resellers. As a result of
this partnership, only Apple Authorized Resellers may sell Apple products on Amazon
effective January 4, 2019.

Leadership
You can have all the skills in the world, but if you don’t fit into Amazon’s culture, you
won’t work there, period. To make it easier to define that culture, they have leadership
principles, which employees use daily. According to the company, “It’s just one of the things
that makes Amazon peculiar.” If an applicant doesn’t align with these principles, they will
likely not get a job offer.
So let’s take a quick look at Amazon’s leadership principles:

 Customer Obsession – Start with the customer, and continually work to build
customer trust.
 Ownership – Think long-term for the company as a whole, beyond your own team.
 Invent and Simplify – Constant innovation without self-limitation gets the gold star.
 Are Right, A Lot – Leaders have “strong judgment and good instincts.”
 Learn and Be Curious – Learning never ends, self-improvement never ends.
 Hire and Develop the Best – Leaders are expected to develop new leaders and raise
the bar with each hire.
 Insist on the Highest Standards – What some might call unreasonably high standards
are expected.
 Think Big – Bold innovation that serves customers is highly valued.
 Bias for Action – Move fast and take calculated risks.
 Frugality – Less is more. Be resourceful.
 Earn Trust – Leaders are expected to listen, be forthright, and treat others with
respect.
 Dive Deep – Get into the nitty gritty at all levels. Keep an eye on the details and stay
on top of metrics.
 Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit – Don’t compromise in order to maintain
“social cohesion.”
 Deliver Results – The goal should always be quality results delivered on time.