By Sarah Hildebran, Brent Johnson and Erik Olson

History Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos in The website was launched in 1995, originally only selling books. Amazon.com offered an initial in 1997 opening at $18/share. (Current price $40.85) Purchased IMDb in Forgoing profit in exchange for expansion, Amazon.com failed to turn a profit until Amazon.com launched its own search engine A9 in 2004

Background Amazon.com is integrated with “brick and mortar” stores such as Target, Sears, and Borders. Has country specific sites based in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China and Japan.

Vision Statement Amazon.com’s vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.

What They Sell A better question might be, “What don’t they sell?”What don’t they sell Most popular products are: 1. Books 2. Music 3. Movies 4. Clothing 5. Computers

Customer Profile Amazon.com customers are found across all ages and incomes. Customers are more likely to be: - Young, Upper middle class, >$100,000

S.W.O.T Analysis Strengths Well-established customer base Dynamic customer recommendation system Variety and availability of products Low-operating costs Weaknesses Lackluster customer service and delivery time compared to brick and mortar stores Shipping fees hurts low price competition Low returns due to overly broad product lineup

S.W.O.T Analysis Opportunities Growing online market Improving technology leading to better interactive shopping Forming strategic alliances with brick and mortar stores Threats Economic instability Increasing shipping costs Ebay.com Walmart Barnes and Noble

Sources Amazon.com corporateTimeline corporateTimeline ch= ch