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Amazon’s business strategy and revenue model: A history and 2014 update
I’ve used Amazon as a case study in my books for over 10 years now since I think all types of businesses can learn from their digital business strategy. From startups and small businesses to large international businesses, their focus on the customer, testing market opportunities made available by digital technology and their focus on testing and analysis to improve results.
I aim to keep this case study up-to-date for readers of the books and Smart Insights readers who may be interested. In it we look at Amazon’s background, revenue model and sources for the latest business results.
We can also learn from their approach to digital marketing since they use digital marketing efficiently across all customer communications touchpoints in our RACE marketing planning framework: * Reach: Amazon’s initial business growth based on detailed approach to SEO and AdWords targeting millions of keywords. * Act: Creating a clear simple experiences through testing and learning. * Convert: Using personalisation to make relevant recommendations and a clear checkout process that many now imitate. * Engage:
Their focus on customer experience, “Customer Obsession” as they call it is shown by the way they consistently outperform other retailers in their ACSI customer satisfaction rating too. We have our own internal experimentation platform called “Weblab” that we use to evaluate improvements
Experiments and more experiments!
Amazon have created their own internal experimentation platform called “Weblab” that they use to evaluate improvements to our websites and products. In 2013, they ran 1,976 Weblabs worldwide, up from 1,092 in 2012, and 546 in 2011. One recent example of how these are applied is a new feature called “Ask an owner”. From a product page, customers can ask any question related to the product, Amazon then route these questions to owners of the product who answer.
Amazon business and revenue model
I recommend anyone studying Amazon checks the latest Amazon revenue and business strategies from their SEC filings / Investor relations. The annual filings to give a great summary of eBay business and revenue models.
A good summary of the latest business model initiatives is always available in the latest Amazon annual report summary. The latest report includes a great vision for Digital Agility (reprinted from 1997 in their latest annual report) showing testing of business models that many businesses don’t yet have. Amazon explain:
“We will continue to measure our programs and the effectiveness of our investments analytically, to jettison those that do not provide acceptable returns, and to step up our investment in those that work best. We will continue to learn from both our successes and our failures”.
They go on to explain that business models are tested from a long-term perspective, showing the mindset of CEO Jeff Bezos:
We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions.
The latest example of innovation in their business model is the 2014 launch of the Fire phone. Which while an undistinguished as an Android smartphone features innovation in its 3D dynamic perspective and can recognize over 100 million all told movies, video games and CDs to other products. Naturally owners can read product details for these items, add them to their Wish List, and order them on Amazon.com.
Other recent innovations you can read about in the report include: * Fire TV * Grocery delivery in the West coast of the United States * Prime Instant Video * Amazon Fashion * Expansion to Amazon Web services (AWS)
AWS is less well-known outside of tech people, but Amazon is still pursuing this cloud service aggressively. In 2011, they introduced 82 new features and services, in 2012, 159 and in 2013: 280.They now have 10 AWS regions around the world, including the East Coast of the U.S., two on the West Coast, Europe, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Brazil, China, and a government-only region called GovCloud.
A short history of Amazon’s growth and business model evolution
So how did Amazon grow to where it is today? Amazon has come a long way since it launched in 1995:

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