As Amazon grows and diversifies, its original vision remains intact. The company has always focused on the customer, even when it means sacrificing the bottom line. It is this relentless pursuit of customers that makes Amazon so successful.
In the beginning, Amazon sold books online. Then it added CDs, videos, and DVDs. Then it expanded its offerings to include toys, consumer electronics, power tools, and home improvement products. Then it opened its e-commerce platform to outside vendors, allowing anyone to sell anything on its site. In doing so, it became the world’s largest online retailer.
Throughout all this expansion, Amazon’s core business remained books. However, it wasn’t long before the company began to saturate that market as well. So it began to look for new markets and develop its own products. This included its first Kindle e-reader, which allows users to purchase and read e-books. It also branched into music with Amazon Music and its streaming video service, Amazon Prime Video; into movies with Amazon Studios; and into cloud computing services with Amazon Web Services.
With its acquisition of Whole Foods in 2018, Amazon entered the grocery business as well. It has also invested heavily in logistics by creating warehouses across numerous nations. These locations allow it to deliver items closer to consumers, which reduces shipping costs and speeds up delivery times.
Besides logistics, Amazon continues to make its name in technology by developing new hardware and software. It’s experimenting with autonomous drones that can deliver orders to customers within 30 minutes of a request and has created a database to help robots sort through and pick items for shipment. In addition to its own technologies, Amazon has also made a significant investment in the development of third-party software and hardware developers to ensure that its many offerings align with each other.
As a result, its various endeavors are connected through its corporate principles and mission statement so that all directions point toward a unified goal. This is why a corporate vision and mission statement are so important for any company, especially an e-commerce giant that serves a wide variety of demographics.
The name “Amazon” was chosen by founder Jeff Bezos while leafing through a dictionary. He liked the sound of the word and thought it would reflect the global reach of his company’s vision. Its stock has grown astronomically, more than quadrupling in value since its 1997 IPO. While it may not always turn a profit, Bezos has convinced shareholders that quarterly earnings are less important than continuing to push the flywheel. It’s a testament to his skill as a CEO that he has been able to do so. In fact, the company has only lost money twice in its history.