Friday, January 6, 2017

Reviews

Amazon allows users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. Reviewers must rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Amazon provides a badging option for reviewers which indicate the real name of the reviewer (based on confirmation of a credit card account) or which indicate that the reviewer is one of the top reviewers by popularity. Customers may comment or vote on the reviews, indicating whether they found a review helpful to them. If a review is given enough "helpful" hits, it appears on the front page of the product. In 2010, Amazon was reported as being the largest single source of Internet consumer reviews.[73]
When publishers asked Bezos why Amazon would publish negative reviews, he defended the practice by claiming that amazon.com was "taking a different approach ... we want to make every book available—the good, the bad, and the ugly ... to let truth loose".[74]
Although reviews are attributed to the credit-card name of the reviewer, there have been cases of positive reviews being written and posted by a public relations company on behalf of its clients,[75] and instances of writers using pseudonyms to leave negative reviews of their rivals' works.[76]
Following the listing of Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson, a disparaging biography of Michael Jackson by Randall Sullivan, his fans, organized via social media as "Michael Jackson's Rapid Response Team to Media Attacks", bombarded Amazon with negative reviews and negative ratings of positive reviews.
Posted by at No comments:

Website

The domain amazon.com attracted at least 615 million visitors annually by 2008.[69] Amazon attracts over 130 million customers to its US website per month by the start of 2016.[70] The company has also invested heavily on a massive amount of server capacity for its website, especially to handle the excessive traffic during the December Christmas holiday season.[71]
Results generated by Amazon's search engine are partly determined by promotional fees.[72]
In the World
Amazon's localized storefronts, which differ in selection and prices, are differentiated by top-level domain and country code:
Region Sovereignty Domain name
Asia  China amazon.cn
 India amazon.in
 Japan amazon.co.jp
Europe  France amazon.fr
 Germany amazon.de
 Italy amazon.it
 Netherlands amazon.nl
 Spain amazon.es
 United Kingdom amazon.co.uk
North America  Canada amazon.ca
 Mexico amazon.com.mx
 United States amazon.com
Oceania  Australia amazon.com.au
South America  Brazil amazon.com.br
Posted by at No comments:

Subsidiaries

Audible.com

Audible headquarters
Audible.com is a seller and producer of spoken audio entertainment, information, and educational programming on the Internet. Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio, and TV programs, and audio versions of magazines and newspapers. Through its production arm, Audible Studios, Audible has also become the world's largest producer of downloadable audiobooks. On January 31, 2008, Amazon announced it would buy Audible for about $300 million. The deal closed in March 2008, and Audible became a subsidiary of Amazon.[58]

Brilliance Audio

Brilliance Audio is an audiobook publisher founded in 1984 by Michael Snodgrass in Grand Haven, Michigan.[59] The company produced its first 8 audio titles in 1985.[59] The company was purchased by Amazon in 2007 for an undisclosed amount.[60][61] At the time of the acquisition Brilliance was producing 12-15 new titles a month.[61] It operates as an independent company within Amazon.
In 1984, Brilliance Audio invented a technique for recording twice as much on the same cassette.[62] The technique involved recording on each of the two channels of each stereo track.[62] It has been credited with revolutionizing the burgeoning audiobook market in the mid-1980s since it made unabridged books affordable.[62]

ComiXology

ComiXology is a cloud-based digital comics platform with over 200 million comic downloads as of September 2013. It offers a selection of more than 40,000 comic books and graphic novels across Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, and Windows 8 devices, and over the Internet. Amazon bought the company in April 2014.[63]

Goodreads

Goodreads is a "social cataloging" website founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler, a software engineer and entrepreneur, and Elizabeth Chandler. The website allows individuals to freely search Goodreads' extensive user-populated database of books, annotations, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions and discussions. In December 2007, the site had over 650,000 members and over 10,000,000 books had been added. Amazon bought the company in March 2013.[64]

Shelfari

Shelfari is a social cataloging website for books. Shelfari users build virtual bookshelves of the titles which they own or have read, and they can rate, review, tag, and discuss their books. Users can also create groups that other members may join, create discussions, and talk about books, or other topics. Recommendations can be sent to friends on the site for what books to read. Amazon bought the company in August 2008.[64] Shelfari continued to function as an independent book social network within the Amazon.com family of sites until 2016, when that January, Amazon announced on Shelfari.com that it would be merging Shelfari with Goodreads and closing down Shelfari.[65][66]

Beijing Century Joyo Courier Services

Amazon 40' container turnpike double, a Long Combination Vehicle
Beijing Century Joyo Courier Services is a subsidiary of Amazon and it applied for a Freight forwarding license with the US Maritime Commission. Amazon is also building out its logistics in trucking and air freight to potentially compete with UPS and FedEx.[67][68]
Posted by at No comments:

Products and services

Main article: List of Amazon.com products and services
Amazon.com's product lines available at its website 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, watches, lawn and garden items, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools, automotive items and toys & games.
Amazon.com has a number of products and services available, including but not limited to:
Posted by at No comments:

Merchant partnerships

Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into a browser would bring up Amazon.com's "Toys & Games" tab; however, this relationship was terminated due to a lawsuit.[52] Amazon also hosted and managed the website for Borders bookstores but this ceased in 2008.[53] From 2001 until August 2011, Amazon hosted the retail website for Target.[54]
Amazon.com operates retail websites for Sears Canada, bebe Stores, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, and Lacoste. For a growing number of enterprise clients, including the UK merchants Marks & Spencer, Benefit Cosmetics' UK entity, edeals.com, and Mothercare, Amazon provides a unified multichannel platform where a customer can interact with the retail website, standalone in-store terminals, or phone-based customer service agents. Amazon Web Services also powers AOL's Shop@AOL.
On October 18, 2011, Amazon.com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Sandman, and Watchmen. The partnership has caused well-known bookstores like Barnes & Noble to remove these titles from their shelves.[55]
On November 2013, Amazon.com announced a partnership with the United States Postal Service to begin delivering orders on Sundays. The service, included in Amazon’s standard shipping rates, initiated in metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and New York due to the high-volume and inability to deliver timely, with plans to expand into Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, and Phoenix by 2014.[56]
On July 2016, Amazon.com announced a partnership with the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority to test some of the technologies and may use delivery service via prime air drone in the future.[57]
Posted by at No comments:

Board of directors

As of February 2016, the board of directors is:[51]
Posted by at 1 comment:

Mergers and acquisitions

Investment

  • 2008: Engine Yard, a Ruby-on-Rails platform as a service (PaaS) company.[42]
  • 2010: LivingSocial, a local deal site.[43]
  • 2014: Acquired the '.buy' domain in an auction for $4,588,888[44][45]
  • 2014: Amazon Announces Additional US $2 Billion Investment in India in June 2014[46]
  • 2016: Amazon Announces Additional US $3 Billion Investment in India in June 2016

Subsidiaries

  • 2003: A9.com, a company focused on researching and building innovative technology.[47]
  • 2004: Lab126, developers of integrated consumer electronics such as the Kindle.
  • 2007: Endless.com, an e-commerce brand focusing on shoes.[48]
  • 2007: Brilliance Audio, the largest independent audiobook producer in the US.[49]
Amazon owns over 40 subsidiaries, including Zappos, Shopbop, Diapers.com, Kiva Systems, Goodreads, Teachstreet, and IMDb.[50]
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)