Amazon.com is the most famous and successful e-commerce company nowadays. (McDonald: 48) Its big online channel offers a broad range of categories of products for customers. They include computers, cameras, electronics, cell phones, books and other services. (Kargar: 34) As many people know, Amazon.com starts its business with bookselling. After years, it is widely known over the world because of its expanded business on bookselling. It deeply affects traditional bookselling market and leads to a series of social change.
Amazon.com was founded by Jeffrey Bezos in 1994, and the site went on line in 1995.Jeffery Bezos obtains B.S degree in electrical engineering and computer science. He worked for several high-tech companies after he finished school. (Brandt: 25) In 1994, he found that the internet usage was growing at 2,300 percent a year. ( Kargar:34)This information encourages him to start a business on line by selling books or music. After some market research, Jeffrey found that the bookselling market was much more profitable than the music market. He starts his business in a house that is in Seattle.
Amazon.com started its text search revolution in 2003. (Naughton: The Observer) These new features allowed customers to search full text of electronic copies of books. With this invention,Amazon.com user and consumers enable to search words on more than 33 million pages of 120,000 books.( Swartz:18) In order to improve this new feature, Amazon.com asked more than 190 publishers to agree to post their electronic copies on line. (Swartz: 18)This innovation brought more customers to Amazon, but it led concerns to the publishers. Text search revolution had a negative impact on their business along with decrease of revenue. People didn’t need to buy a physical book; the electronic source can satisfied their need. Some mainstreams media are also concern about its effect on physical libraries. They predict that if text revolution has been widely used on internet, “physical libraries may become obsolete.” (Swartz: 18)
Amazon released its first generation of e-reader in 2007 which was an electronic device with grayscale display. (Jun: 95) Amazon customers are able to download e-books from Amazon by using internet. Kindle had captured many people’s interest since it had been released. Through technological development, Kindle reached its third generation in 2009 with auto-rotating screen and long-lasting battery. It provided reader with a more comfortable reading experience. (Jun: 2011) The innovation of Kindle had led to a dramatic effect on the bookselling market. As Amazon.com indicated, their e-books sales in United Stated had exceed the sales of physical books on 2010. It threatens market situation of traditional bookselling.
Amazon has a long period of time to avoid collecting sales tax because of a legal loophole which claims that “freed online and catalogue sellers from the obligation of collecting the sales tax if their businesses had no physical presence in the state where a buyer lives”. (Lifsher) This has created a significant amount of turmoil for bookselling marketers. The challenge for Amazon is that it currently has to deal with a mish mash of different state rules. Because of that, it supports the Streamlined Sales Tax project, a proposal in which states agree to a common set of sales tax definition and practices. (Greet: AFFILIATEPROGRAM.COM) Amazon’s ability to avoid paying sale tax leads to dissatisfaction from traditional booksellers. They complain about the unequal market circumstance which has been created by Amazon.com, the advantage of competitive is just given to e-commerce owners.
Works Cited
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Naughton, John. “Amazon.com revolution makes text an open book.” The Observer. The networker.N.p. 16 Nov. 2003.Web. 1 Mar. 2012
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