When Amazon was founded in 1995, it chose the book category as its sales focus. This is not because Bezos simply likes to sell books, but because books are naturally branded and standardized products, and users are more familiar with the products, so they are suitable for online sales. In the early days of its establishment, Amazon had about 1 million books on sale, and the slogan at the time was the largest bookstore on the planet. Since books have a unified ISBN international standard book number, except for some books with collection value, the same books only differ in newness and price. Amazon’s book business sales exceeded US$20,000 a week after its launch. The rapid growth of performance also promoted Amazon’s listing on the NASDAQ in 1997, with a closing price of US$1.96 on the first day of listing.
In 1998, Amazon began to expand its product range in all directions, adding categories such as film and television, music, electronic products, software, and toys, and began to expand overseas markets, opening the UK and Germany sites one after another. In the same year, Amazon proposed a new item recommendation algorithm to recommend items based on the similarity between buyers’ browsing and products. Before the US dollar Internet bubble burst in 1999, Amazon’s stock price once soared.
In 2000, Amazon launched a third-party market, shifting from self-operation to platform development, which also means that more sellers can use the Amazon platform for sales. After incorporating third-party sellers, Amazon stipulates that sellers need to sell the same products under existing links, and the follow-up sales rules come from this. According to actual sales performance, some sellers are also included in Amazon’s supply chain system, with VC, VE accounts and higher permissions.
In 2002, Amazon announced a partnership with several major clothing companies and added more than 400 clothing brands to the site, further broadening the sales categories. In the same year, Amazon launched AWS cloud computing services and officially transformed into a technology company. The 2019 financial report shows that AWS accounts for 12.49% of Amazon’s revenue and is still growing rapidly.
In 2004, Amazon released the A9 search algorithm; in 2005, Amazon released the Prime membership plan, and its members can enjoy free 2-day delivery service. Today, the A9 algorithm is already quite complete, and Prime has more than 100 million members worldwide, which is considered one of Amazon’s most valuable assets. This move has made Amazon stand out in the US market where postage is relatively expensive.