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Amazon vs Borders

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Envisioned by its company founder and CEO Jeff Bezos since 1994 as "Earth's most customer-centric company" Amazon.com today, with more than 17 million customers and over a billion and a half dollars in annual sales, stands as the world’s largest E-commerce E-tailer. Named after the Amazon River, one of the largest and most exotic rivers in the world, Amazon.com started as an online bookstore but quickly diversified its selling efforts to DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, and toys with the aim, as implied by its logo “A to Z with a smile,” to attain customer satisfaction and carry every product from A to Z. Although it was a slow starter, not showing a profit for the first five years, and enduring the dot-com burst, Amazon.com persevered and now profitable it is recognized as having popularized online shopping (Schneider, 2011).

Without any experience in the business of selling books, Jeff Bezos realized that the books had a great potential shipping profile for online sales. Always believing in the economic network effects, he decided to setup his company in Seattle, WA, very close to the largest book distribution warehouse and talented computer programmers in the U.S. According to a quote that Bezos said in an article publicized in U.S. News, “While we're crossing the desert, may we be thirsty, but we sincerely believe there’s an oasis on the other side" (Jeff Bezos, 2008, "Living on the Edge, "para. 6), Bezos always had the vision to achieve his goals, regardless of what obstacles and hindrances he faced at first, he always kept in view the purposes to hopefully and eventually reach his goal regardless of the risks.

During their undergraduate and graduate years at the University of Michigan. The brothers Tom and Louis Borders, founded Borders Books in 1971. The main purpose of forming this company

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