Money and Finance
- The Secrets Of Bezos: How Amazon Became The Everything Store
Amazon.com rivals Wal-Mart as a store, Apple as a device maker, and IBM as a data services provider. It will rake in about $75 billion this year. For his book, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone spoke to hundreds of current and former friends...
- Jeff Bezos Pays $250 Million For The Washington Post
In an ironic twist for a tycoon whose company has always kept its distance from the press, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has agreed to pay $250 million cash for The Washington Post. The purchase takes the newspaper out of the hands of the Graham family,...
- Inside Amazon's Idea Machine: How Bezos Decodes The Customer
Found via My Investing Notebook. A few months ago Amazon reached what its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos demurely tells me was “an interesting milestone.” The retailing giant, so ubiquitously associated with books, then music and video, now has tens of...
- Taking The Long View
Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owes much of his success to his ability to look beyond the short-term view of things INSIDE a remote mountain in Texas, a gargantuan clock is being pieced together, capable of telling the time for...
- Upfront And Unscripted With Jeff Bezos (audio)
I think Jeff Bezos and Chris Anderson are two of the best people from which to learn. I don't know how I missed this podcast the first time, but it is really great (in my opinion). I also think the iPod-like comparison is a valid one for The Kindle....
Money and Finance
Put Buyers First? What a Concept
When I spoke to analysts and investors, they had all kinds of reasons for Amazon’s performance last year. “They finally reached a point where their R&D spending was not expanding as fast as their revenues,” said Citigroup’s Mark S. Mahaney. He and others also talked about Amazon’s success in international markets, its fast-growing (and high margin) merchant market, which allows merchants to sell goods alongside Amazon, and its rapidly expanding Web services business. Mostly, though, the investing community pointed to those healthier margins as the main reason for the stock’s run-up. Legg Mason’s legendary fund manager, Bill Miller, who has made a small fortune for his investors by betting big on Amazon, told me that “Wall Street is almost fanatically focused on margin expansion and contraction.”
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But I couldn’t help wondering if maybe there wasn’t something else at play here, something Wall Street never seems to take very seriously. Maybe, just maybe, taking care of customers is something worth doing when you are trying to create a lasting company. Maybe, in fact, it’s the best way to build a real business — even if it comes at the expense of short-term results.
But I couldn’t help wondering if maybe there wasn’t something else at play here, something Wall Street never seems to take very seriously. Maybe, just maybe, taking care of customers is something worth doing when you are trying to create a lasting company. Maybe, in fact, it’s the best way to build a real business — even if it comes at the expense of short-term results.
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It is almost impossible to read or see an interview with Mr. Bezos in which he doesn’t, at some point, begin to wax on about what he likes to call “the customer experience.” Just a few months ago, for instance, he appeared on Charlie Rose’s talk show to tout Amazon’s new e-book device, the Kindle. Toward the end of the program, Mr. Rose asked the chief executive an open-ended question about how he spent his time, and Mr. Bezos responded with a soliloquy about his “obsession” with customers.
It is almost impossible to read or see an interview with Mr. Bezos in which he doesn’t, at some point, begin to wax on about what he likes to call “the customer experience.” Just a few months ago, for instance, he appeared on Charlie Rose’s talk show to tout Amazon’s new e-book device, the Kindle. Toward the end of the program, Mr. Rose asked the chief executive an open-ended question about how he spent his time, and Mr. Bezos responded with a soliloquy about his “obsession” with customers.
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“They care about having the lowest prices, having vast selection, so they have choice, and getting the products to customers fast,” he said. “And the reason I’m so obsessed with these drivers of the customer experience is that I believe that the success we have had over the past 12 years has been driven exclusively by that customer experience. We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them.”
“They care about having the lowest prices, having vast selection, so they have choice, and getting the products to customers fast,” he said. “And the reason I’m so obsessed with these drivers of the customer experience is that I believe that the success we have had over the past 12 years has been driven exclusively by that customer experience. We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them.”
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Anybody who has spent any time around Mr. Bezos knows that this is not just some line he throws out for public consumption. It has been the guiding principle behind Amazon since it began. “Jeff has been focused on the customer since Day 1,” said Suresh Kotha, a management professor at the University of Washington business school who has written several case studies about Amazon. Mr. Miller noted that Amazon has really had only one stated goal since it began: to be the most customer-centric company in the world.
Anybody who has spent any time around Mr. Bezos knows that this is not just some line he throws out for public consumption. It has been the guiding principle behind Amazon since it began. “Jeff has been focused on the customer since Day 1,” said Suresh Kotha, a management professor at the University of Washington business school who has written several case studies about Amazon. Mr. Miller noted that Amazon has really had only one stated goal since it began: to be the most customer-centric company in the world.
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Related Links:
- Jeff Bezos on Charlie Rose
- 1997 Amazon.com Case Study from Professor Suresh Kotha
- The Amazon Kindle
- Jeff Bezos' Letters to Shareholders
- The Secrets Of Bezos: How Amazon Became The Everything Store
Amazon.com rivals Wal-Mart as a store, Apple as a device maker, and IBM as a data services provider. It will rake in about $75 billion this year. For his book, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone spoke to hundreds of current and former friends...
- Jeff Bezos Pays $250 Million For The Washington Post
In an ironic twist for a tycoon whose company has always kept its distance from the press, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has agreed to pay $250 million cash for The Washington Post. The purchase takes the newspaper out of the hands of the Graham family,...
- Inside Amazon's Idea Machine: How Bezos Decodes The Customer
Found via My Investing Notebook. A few months ago Amazon reached what its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos demurely tells me was “an interesting milestone.” The retailing giant, so ubiquitously associated with books, then music and video, now has tens of...
- Taking The Long View
Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owes much of his success to his ability to look beyond the short-term view of things INSIDE a remote mountain in Texas, a gargantuan clock is being pieced together, capable of telling the time for...
- Upfront And Unscripted With Jeff Bezos (audio)
I think Jeff Bezos and Chris Anderson are two of the best people from which to learn. I don't know how I missed this podcast the first time, but it is really great (in my opinion). I also think the iPod-like comparison is a valid one for The Kindle....