It seems unfathomable that over the course of 25 years, a small, books-only retail center blossomed into a company as successful as Amazon. Today, Amazon has a market cap of over $1 trillion, and its founder, Jeff Bezos, has a net worth of $137 billion. Those big numbers beg a big question: what has Amazon done to be so successful?
Customer Service
One thing that makes potential online customers wary is a company’s return policy. Since the customer can’t try the item out before making a purchase, a good return policy can be a major swaying factor for whether or not the customer will complete the sale. Amazon offers free shipping and returns for all Prime members, and even non-members are eligible for those benefits once they reach a purchasing threshold. This customer-friendly return policy is a big secret to Amazon’s success.
Additionally, Amazon offers reasonably priced overnight delivery which helps customers who are on a deadline to get those last-minute items. This availability can create a sense of loyalty in customers that brings them back again and again.
High-Quality Employees
From the very beginning, Bezos has been adamant about hiring only the best people to work in his company. From his talented upper-level management to the quick and thorough warehouse workers, Amazon is a fine-tuned machine. Add in the superb 24/7 customer service representatives, and you have the winning team that furthers Amazon’s success daily.
Innovation
Amazon has worked tirelessly to be at the cutting edge of innovation, both for products and services. One Click is an excellent example of this. It allows customers to purchase goods simply by clicking a button, bypassing the shopping cart entirely. Subscribe and Save is another feature that is meant to make things easier for the customer. When shoppers sign up for Subscribe and Save, they often receive discounts for frequently purchased items that order themselves at a pre-set interval so the customer never goes without.
Amazon has also set trends in the way that it monitors shoppers’ browsing and buying patterns and leverages them to improve sales. The interface offers suggestions to customers based on their past search history and shows what other customers ultimately purchased given a similar search history. This makes research and comparison easy for the customers, which can instill a feeling of loyalty to the Amazon brand. Amazon also does a great job of amassing and displaying a sea of customer reviews. Customers feel like they can get the full picture of what they’re going to buy before they actually seal the deal.
Finally, Amazon has positioned itself to attract an enormous number of suppliers. Customers know that when they come to the Amazon marketplace, they can count on a number of choices for each product that they need. This vast menu of options makes the customer feel like they are getting the biggest bang for their buck as well as the product that best fits their needs.
An Eye to the Future
One of the biggest reasons why Amazon is so successful is that Jeff Bezos has always looked far into the future. As a company, Amazon takes a lot of losses in exchange for building strong relationships with stockholders and customers. Bezos firmly believes that these relationships will only strengthen the Amazon game in the long run. This model has proven so successful for him that many other companies are starting to change their way of looking at profits.
All in all, Amazon has done an amazing job of diversifying while keeping highly trained staff. With its culture of innovation, improvement, and excellent customer service, Amazon provides an outstanding forum for online retailers and a powerful example of corporate success.
To gain more insight into the inner workings of Amazon and how to sell more in the marketplace, attend Amazon seller events. You’ll hear from ex-Amazon leaders and trailblazers in internet entrepreneurship and get opportunities to network with hundreds of sellers and suppliers.
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