Amazon.com is not an on-line catalog where customers simply browse and place their orders. The level of interactivity between retailer and customer is beyond generic
e-commerce.
Everything in the Amazon...
(not found in the mall)What Amazon.com is doing to put itself above the common
e-commerce site
By Cherry ShamE-commerce is the rookie of the Internet year. It is surprising retailers and consumers with its explosive start and bright future. People want to and do believe in it. Retailers and entrepreneurs strive to follow the successful e-commerce flagship, Amazon.com. But what makes Amazon.com the mainstream e-commerce company that it is today? How is it interacting with consumers differently than traditional brick and mortar stores or even other e-commerce sites?
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is everywhere. He has given interviews in countless magazines, was chosen as Time 1999 Person of the Year and last year alone, I saw him on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Charlie Rose and Oprah. He has been on more television talk shows than any other e-commerce personality has. If that isn't a sign of success in America, what is?
Amazon.com sells books and even though recently it has started to broaden its market to other areas, such as CDs and toys, it was made famous by its competitively priced books. Amazon.com has crushed the competition, as Steve Riggio of Barnes and Noble has to admit, "This business has evolved rapidly and to a point that we did not see three years ago. Clearly, we thought there was going to be room for us and Amazon" (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.06/barnes.html).
But what has Amazon done to attract all this attention? Amazon.com is not the only on-line book store but consumers click to Amazon.com. Why? One theory is the web site interacts with its customers, more than any other e-commerce site. Amazon.com is not an on-line catalog where customers simply browse and place their orders. The level of interactivity between retailer and customer is beyond generic e-commerce.
The nature of e-commerce is interactive. Consumers want a product, they enter their credit card number and the product is in the mail, all done with a few clicks on a web site. At the most basic level of e-commerce, there is an action/reaction, question/response relationship between users and e-commerce sites. However, basic level interactivity doesnŐt cut it on the Internet. Amazon.com is the new standard for doing business on-line. It is estimated that 75% of all books sold on-line are bought from Amazon.com, while its closest competitor, barnesandnoble.com is at 15% (www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.06/barnes.html). Amazon.com's success has showed that customers want an almost mall like experience and more. They want to see the cover of the books. Readers want to belong to a book club of sorts. They want to get reviews from other like minded readers, to know what others are buying and most importantly, to get discounts. Amazon.com does all this and more without the consumer leaving home. Amazon scans book covers for a more tangible concept of the physical. Consumers can post their own reviews and read others. Under any book title there is information about the book and buyers (features such as "Customers who bought this book also bought:", "Auctions and Shops sellers and our other stores recommend:" and "Customer Reviews of the Day").
Joshua Cooper Ramo of Time magazine wrote, "There is, in all this, a kind of humanness that is exactly the opposite of what online shopping was supposed to be like" (http://www.time.com/time/poy/intro.html). E-commerce underestimated on-line shoppers where Amazon.com didn't. Bezos was able to senses the "humanness" users craved even through a media such as the Internet. Shoppers were not looking for an on-line catalog; they wanted an interactive store that combines retail with consumer information and a sense of ownership, giving shoppers more power. In a traditional commerce, the store belongs to the retailer and the mall. There is a physical distance between the buyers and sellers, whereas e-commerce brings sites to the home and office. Convenience must be met on more than one level. Amazon.com makes it convenient for the consumers to purchase books but is also allows easy access to reviews, bestsellers, and consumer information not normally found in bookstores. More interactive than any bookstore.
In a nutshell, Jeff Bezos said, "We can't do ordinary things in ordinary ways" (www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/bezos.html). Amazon.com has shown on-line consumers demand more from an e-commerce site and they want to be apart of it.
Cherry Sham graduated from The University of Calgary with a B.Sc. in General Studies before attending the Multimedia program at SAIT. She has no pets, loves television and hates traffic.
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