E-Business with a Brick-and-Mortar Store

I could think of Amazon.com as a successfully run e-commerce business with the traditional brick-and-mortar store in place. Amazon.com has become one of the most successful internet-enabled book stores due to its innovative marketing and excellent customer servicing. Established just in the year 1995, today it could boast of nearly 49 million active customers. After posting a healthy $6.92 billion in sales in 2004, Amazon ranked at the top of Internet Retailer’s Annual Top 400 list, streets ahead of computer giant Dell Inc., which posted $3.25 billion in online business-to-consumer (B2C) sales. One of Amazon.com‘s business partner, Office Depot Inc. clocked sales figures of $3.1 billion.

The corporate mission of amazon .com is to become the biggest internet bookstore in the world. For this purpose, it has been creating strategic alliances and partnerships with leading internet and computer companies and service providers that could substantially generate high-value business and consolidate its position as the No.1 internet bookstore in the world. Amazon.com quickly realized the enormous potentials available for selling financial software packages and other high-demand accounting software that took care of corporate accounting and taxation requirements.

The aspect of one-click purchases dispensed with the need for Order Forms in the case of repeat customers and they were also introduced to user-friendly credit cards payments. It is indeed to the credit of amazon.com, that it was able to introduce several remarkable and path-breaking services for their customers, including a wireless e-commerce system, through which constant tracking of orders could be made even when the customers on the move. These special features were not available for clients of competing booksellers like eBay, etc.