A Marketplace Leader
Amazon, originally known as the ‘Earth’s Largest Bookstore’, first opened its virtual doors back in July 1995. However, the small bookstore that began in a garage has become one of the biggest success stories of the modern world where everything happens online.
Although these days it has hundreds of warehouses where the company stores products waiting to be shipped, in the beginning Amazon held no inventory whatsoever. Whenever someone bought a book utilizing an Amazon promo voucher, the employees had to order it first. Then they had to wait for the book to arrive at their office, before shipping it off to the customer. This process would take about a week, but the waiting period could easily turn into a few weeks if the particular book was hard to find.
Today, Amazon holds 43.5% of USA’s eCommerce market – it has over 300 million active users and sells over 3 billion products each month. Furthermore, over 1 million products are added each day to their stores, and they are expected to sell over 12 billion products by 2020. Their most significant profits come from the USA, followed by Germany, Japan, and England. Even Amazon’s founder broke some records. He is now the wealthiest man on Earth with a fortune surpassing 100 billion dollars.
Further research has also shown that customers are more inclined to shop online based on the availability of services such as same/next day delivery, returns and international shipping – services which Amazon is known to cater for. However, an analysis of 500,000 US & UK based Internet retailers shows that few offer these services – so how will they compete with this eCommerce giant? Check out our report on that here.
Make sure to also check out the infographic below designed by 16best.net about the company started out as a tiny garage bookstore 23 years ago, and expanded into a global marketplace leader.
