Amazon.com
6 (February 2016)Products and services[edit]
Retail goods[edit]
Amazon product lines include several media (books, DVDs, music CDs, videotapes, and software), apparel, baby products, consumer electronics,beauty products, gourmet food, groceries, health and personal-care items, industrial & scientific supplies, kitchen items, jewelry and watches, lawn and garden items, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools, automotive items and toys & games.
The company launched amazon.com Auctions, a web auctions service, in March 1999. However, it failed to chip away at the large market share of the industry pioneer, eBay. Later, the company launched a fixed-price marketplace business, zShops, in September 1999, and the now defunct partnership with Sotheby's, called Sothebys.amazon.com, in November. Auctions and zShops evolved into Amazon Marketplace, a service launched in November 2000 that let customers sell used books, CDs, DVDs, and other products alongside new items. As of October 2014, Amazon Marketplace is the largest of its kind, followed by similar marketplaces from Sears, Rakuten and Newegg.
In August 2007, Amazon announced AmazonFresh, a grocery service offering perishable and nonperishable foods. Customers could have orders delivered to their homes at dawn or during a specified daytime window. Delivery was initially restricted to residents of Mercer Island, Washington, and was later expanded to several ZIP codes in Seattle proper.[158] AmazonFresh also operated pick-up locations in the suburbs of Bellevue andKirkland from summer 2007 through early 2008.
In 2012, Amazon announced the launch of Vine.com for buying green products, including groceries, household items, and apparel.[159] It is part of Quidsi, the company that Amazon bought in 2010 that also runs the sites Diapers.com (baby), Wag.com (pets), and YoYo.com (toys).[159] Amazon also owns other e-commerce sites like Shopbop.com,Woot.com, and Zappos.com.[159]
Amazon's Subscribe & Save program offers a discounted price on an item (usually sold in bulk), free shipping on every Subscribe & Save shipment, and automatic shipment of the item every one, two, three, or six months.[160]
In 2013, Amazon launched its site in India, amazon.in. It started with electronic goods[161] and planned to expand into fashion apparel, beauty, home essentials, and healthcare categories by the end of 2013.[citation needed] In July 2014, Amazon said it would invest $2 billion (Rs 12,000 crore) in India to expand business, after its largest Indian rival Flipkart announced $1 billion in funding.[162]
In 2014, Amazon sold 63% of all books bought online and 40% of all books sold overall.[163]
Fulfillment by Amazon Small and Light is a service introduced in 2015 that will[when?] provide fulfillment for small, light items from a center in Florence, Kentucky. The service will offer free standard shipping for small, light, low-value items offered on the site by third-party sellers.[164]
In 2015, a study by Survata found that 44% of respondents searching for products went directly to Amazon.com.[165][166]
Amazon Prime[edit]
In 2005, Amazon announced the creation of Amazon Prime, a membership offering free two-day shipping within the contiguous United States on all eligible purchases for a flat annual fee of $79 (equivalent to $96 in 2016),[167] as well as discounted one-day shipping rates.[168] Amazon launched the program in Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom in 2007; in France (as "Amazon Premium") in 2008, in Italy in 2011, and in Canada in 2013.[169]
Amazon Prime membership in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States[170] also provides Amazon Video, the instant streaming of selected movies and TV shows at no additional cost.[171] In November 2011, it was announced that Prime members have access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which allows users to borrow certain popular Kindle e-books for free reading on Kindle hardware, up to one book a month, with no due date.[172]
In March 2014, Amazon announced an increase in the annual membership fee for Amazon Prime, from $79 to $99.[167][173] Shortly after this change, Amazon announced Prime Music, a service whose members can get unlimited, ad-free streaming of over a million songs and access to curated playlists.[174] In November 2014, Amazon added Prime Photos, which allows unlimited photo storage in the users' Amazon cloud drive.[175] In March 2015, Amazon was expanding that service as a paid offering to cover other kinds of content, and to users outside of its loyalty program. Unlimited Cloud Storage will let users get either unlimited photo storage or “unlimited everything” – covering all kinds of media from videos and music through to PDF documents – respectively for $11.99 or $59.99 per year.[176] Amazon also began offering free same-day delivery to Prime members in 14 U.S. metropolitan areas in May 2015.[177]
In April 2015, Amazon started a trial partnership with Audi and DHL in order to get deliveries directly into the trunks of Audi cars. This project is only available on the Munich (Germany) area to some Audi connected car users.[178]
On July 15, 2015, to commemorate its 20th birthday, Amazon celebrated "Amazon Prime Day", which Amazon announced would feature deals for prime members that rivaled those on Black Friday.[179] Also that month Amazon Prime announced[180] that it would be signing Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May, formerly of BBC's Top Gear, to begin working on an untitled Amazon motoring show series due to be released in 2016.
In December 2015, Amazon stated that "tens of millions" of people are Amazon Prime members.[181] Amazon Prime added 3 million members during the third week of December 2015.[182] It was also during December that Amazon announced the creation of the Streaming Partners Program,[183] an over-the-top subscription service that enables Amazon Prime subscribers to add additional streaming video services to their accounts. Among the programming providers involved in the program are Showtime, Starz (with additional content from sister network Encore), Lifetime Movie Club (containing recent original movie titles from Lifetime Television and Lifetime Movie Network), Smithsonian Earth, andQello Concerts.
In January 2016, Amazon Prime reached 54 million members according to a report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.[184]
Consumer electronics[edit]
In November 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Kindle, an e-book reader which downloads content over "Whispernet", via Sprint's EV-DO wireless network. The screen uses E Ink technology to reduce battery consumption and to provide a more legible display. As of July 2014, there are over 2.7 million e-books available for purchase at the Kindle Store.[185]
In September 2011, Amazon announced its entry into the tablet computer market by introducing the Kindle Fire, which runs a customized version of the operating system Android. The low pricing of Fire ($199 USD)[186] was widely perceived as a strategy backed by Amazon's revenue from its content sales, to be stimulated by sales of the Fire.
In September 2012, Amazon unveiled the second generation tablet, called the Kindle Fire HD. On September 25, 2013, Amazon.com unveiled its third generation tablet, called the Kindle Fire HDX.[187] In October 2013, the sixth generation Kindle was released.
In April 2014, Amazon announced its Amazon Fire TV set-top box system, a device targeted to compete with such systems like Apple TV orGoogle's Chromecast device. The Amazon set-top box allows for streaming videos from sites like Amazon's own streaming service as well as others such as Netflix or Hulu. The device also supports voice search for movies, as well as gaming, which includes special versions of Minecraft,Asphalt 8, and The Walking Dead.[188][189] Amazon announced the Fire TV Stick in October 2014. The device replicates much of the functionality of the Fire TV.[190]
Digital content[edit]
Amazon's Honor System was launched in 2001 to allow customers to make donations or buy digital content, with Amazon collecting a percentage of the payment plus a fee; however, the service was discontinued in 2008[192] and replaced by Amazon Payments.
Amazon Music, its own online music store, launched as Amazon MP3 in the US on September 25, 2007, selling downloads exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management.[193] (In addition to copyright law, Amazon's terms of use agreements restrict use of the MP3s, but Amazon does not use digital rights management (DRM) to enforce those terms.)[194] In addition to independent music labels, Amazon MP3 primarily sells music from the "Big 4" record labels: EMI, Universal, Warner Bros. Records, andSony Music. Prior to the launch of this service, Amazon made an investment in Amie Street, a music store with a variable pricing model based on demand.[195] Amazon MP3 was the first online offering of DRM-free music from all four major record companies.[196][197][198][199]
In January 2008, Amazon began distributing its MP3 service to subsidiary websites worldwide[200] and, in December 2008, Amazon MP3 was made available in the UK. At the launch of Amazon MP3 in the UK, over 3 million Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free songs were made available to consumers, with prices that started at 59p, compared to Apple's 79p starting price.[201]
In July 2010, Amazon announced that e-book sales for its Kindle reader outnumbered sales of hardcover books for the first time ever during the second quarter of 2010. Amazon claims that, during that period, 143 e-books were sold for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no digital edition; and during late June and early July, sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcovers.[202]
On March 22, 2011, Amazon launched the Amazon Appstore for Android devices and the service was made available in over 200 countries.[203] Also in 2011, Amazon announced that it was releasing a Mac download store to offer dozens of games and hundreds of pieces of software for Apple computers.[204]
In January 2013, Amazon launched AutoRip, a digital music service. The service allows customers to receive a free MP3 copy of select CDs purchased through Amazon.[205]Amazon announced in September 2013 that it would launch Kindle MatchBook in October 2013, a similar service for books allowing customers who buy books from Amazon to acquire an e-book copy for free, or at a discounted price of US$3 or less.[206] MatchBook was launched on the company's site on October 29, 2013.[207][208]
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