Amazon dot com”, is an American e-commerce company that is located in Seattle,

Washington. The “Amazon.com” is considered one of the first big companies that offer
to sell goods over the Internet and where it is faced strong doubts on the possibility of
continuity, but they approved the opposite and announced their first annual profit in
2003. Amazon’s sales rank is 294, profits rank is 437 where the net income for year
2010 was 1.152 billion and finally the market value is 101(Forbes, 2011). The company
was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bisoz to start the first activity in 1995 by working as a store
to sell books online. The company started under the name “Cadabra .com”, and then
Bezos decided to change the name to “Amazon” referring to the largest river in the
world. After a period of time, it extended its line of activity to include, in addition to
books, tapes and DVDs and music CDs, computer software, video games and hardware,
clothing, furniture and materials, toys and other items. The company was founded
special separate sites that operate in Canada and the United Kingdom, Germany,
Austria, France, China and Japan.. The Amazon logo itself is strength; it has an arrow in
the shape of a smile. The arrow starts from the A in Amazon and ends under Z,
reflecting the widest variety of products possible. In the same time, the smile represents
the importance of customer satisfaction, and it reflects the friendliness of Amazon.

What are the benefits and limitations of Amazon’s online retail model?
Amazon has a specific retail model in pricing, promotion, product and people. First
pricing which is considered a very powerful point for customers and sellers. Amazon
provides the customer with specific prices so that he/she can compare prices between
products so that he/she can choose the best they prefer. Second is the promotion, as
Amazon provides its customers with new promotions available in the site from different
sellers. In addition, they send e-mails to their customers to inform them of the new
products, offers and promotions available. Third is the product itself, products at
Amazon are perfectly categorized into many categories where a customer can easily
search of what he/she needs without a need for a long search. Finally are the people,
Amazon mostly care about their customers’ satisfaction as they deliver the products to
their customers on time without any delays. In addition, they usually track their
customers to see what they usually buy, like or search for so that they can send them e-
mails if they have anything new that would get their attention.

Limitations:
Shipping time: Delivering a product usually takes more than 5 days so if a customer
needs a product immediately he/she can’t get it at the time needed because of that.
Shipping Cost: the delivery cost depends on the country of the customer and the
seller. In this case if they were both far from each other this might cost the customer a
lot to get the product.
Communication: the communication between the buyer and the seller might be very
difficult as the website doesn’t provide the buyer with an easy way of communicating
with the seller while buying.
Product: the product delivered to the buyer might not be in good quality or exactly as
described in the website so this might cause mistrust between the buyer and the website
itself.
Physical product: the buyer can’t touch the product while buying it so this might
cause mistrust from the buyer as he/she won’t trust the features of the product without
making sure of them.
Benefits:
Easy Access: Amazon provides the customers with easy access and search anytime
they need a product without having to search so many websites to find the product they
need.Variety of Goods: Amazon provides its customers with huge variety of goods
that can satisfy their customers easily. Privacy: Dealers won’t be able to communicate
with each other unless they have a deal. Security: Payment on the website is very
secure as your password and card number won’t be shown to anyone and your product
will be delivered within the time specified after the payment is done.
How does Amazon.com change the market for books?
Amazon has changed a lot in the book market lately. In the beginning Amazon used to
sell new books, old books and online books to customers before having the product
available but they changed that and started selling the products only when they are
available.  Moreover, Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos created an online device
called the Kindle which “is a portable e-book reader. More precisely, it is a software,
hardware and network platform developed by Amazon.com that uses wireless
 

connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books,
newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media in some countries. The Kindle
 

hardware devices use an e-ink electronic paper display that, in addition to displaying up
to 16 shades of gray, minimizes power consumption and simulates reading on paper.
This is a great replacement for digital books being sold online as Jeff said that they have
been selling e-books for long time and no one buys e-books. The point of view that the
CEO has is that customers read books as they prefer touching the book and sensing the
meaning through reading page by page but no one is going to buy an e-book in order to
read it on his/her laptop or pc. This was the reason behind this device that is definitely
going to change the market of books.
How does the design of Amazon help the user to locate a product?
The design of Amazon is very flexible for customers to search in and find the product
that they are looking for. First there is a search icon with all the departments available
on Amazon so that the customer can easily choose the department he/she is looking for
such as Baby, Beauty, Jewelry, etc… and then write what specifically he/she needs in
this category. In addition to that, each customer can have his/her own cart in order to
select the item that the customer prefers to buy all together. Moreover, available on the
left of the website all the department with the sub departments to make it easier for the
customer to find the product they need. Furthermore, the middle part of the website
contains the most sold products on Amazon which gives the customer an idea of what
other customers buy and prefer and this might drive him/her to try the product. Finally,
Amazon provides the customer with the prices of the product which is more preferable
to customers as they like to know the prices and compare them with other sellers’ prices
before buying.

What is collaborative filtering? How does Amazon use this technique?

Collaborative Filtering is the patterns of filtering information which involve the
collaboration of several data sources to analyze the profiles and buying/selling patterns.
In which this filtering process offers the services and the merchandise being sold within
the site to various customers.  It works well for books, music, videos, etc. However, it
does not work well for a number of categories such as clothing, jewelry, cosmetics and so
on. Currently this service is available only to those who have registered in a website and
logged on to their accounts. E-commerce websites adapted this technology in order to
recommend products to shoppers based on their pervious purchases. Also, when
adopting this method, it provides contents to users depending on what other users
chosen and has share common interests. Amazon deploys the latest technologies to
collect data on customer behaviors. This enables them to offer more personalized items,
based upon preferences demonstrated through purchases or items visited. For example,
when you decided to buy a book from Amazon, the site use input about a customer’s
interests to generate a list of recommended items. And in this way, they will increase the
impulse buying and increase sales.

Is it a reasonable business practice to sell used books on Amazon or not

EBay and Amazon are well known e-commerce companies that are competing each
other. Therefore, eBay has started to sell used books in order to be differentiated from
Amazon. Similarly, Amazon has also offered this service to be included in its offering
mix. Bezos believes that selling used books doesn’t hurt the new books’ industry. In the
following, he responded to the Author Guild, after he attacked the Amazon’s site of
selling used books. He said, “Offering used books are simply good for customers. It
makes out-of-print books available and other books more affordable. Making books
affordable is a fundamental good”. (Rielly,2002). I believe, selling used books over the
internet is actually didn’t have any unethical act that hurts either the new books
industry or the authors. While, the opposite is true, offering low priced products caused
customer to visit Amazon’s website more. Also, when customers sell their old books,
they can use the sell’s budget to buy new books. Another important issue is that Amazon
shouldn’t have to compensate the publisher. Because, the publisher has produced a
product, and the product is sold to a consumer. What the consumer does with the
product after consuming it is the consumer’s business, not the publisher’s. I believe that
offering used books are good for customer. It helps in growing their knowledge and be
more open to the world by reading. Many customers, who can’t afford to buy new
versions of  books, prefer to buy old version or we can call it “used books”. Let’s take
students’ situations as an example. Students are not willing to buy new books every
semester for all the courses, as a result they are always looking for used books.
Institutions may consider that as unethical act, where every semester they make sure to
provide the required books in time. However, most of the students (customers) are
aware that the price of this book is too expensive in the university’s bookstore, so they
prefer to buy used books instead. Furthermore, I don’t think it will affect the demand of
the new books, since many customers still prefer to buy new books and keep them in
their own library.
References:
Dudley, Brier (19 November 2007). “Kindle hacking, iPod parallels and a chat with the
Kindle director”. Seattle
Times.http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/brierdudley/2007/11/chatting_with_am
azons_kindle_d.html. Retrieved 28 December 2010.
“Amazon Kindle: License Agreement and Terms of Use”. Amazon.com, Inc. 2009-02-
09.http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?
ie=UTF8&nodeId=200144530. Retrieved 2010-12-02.
A conversation with Jeff Bezos, chairman and CEO of Amazon.com about The Kindle, a
wireless, portable reading device. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/8784
http://www.amazon.com/
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/collaborative-filtering.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1291
http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=AMZN