No one would have imagined 30 years ago that they could buy goods directly from different districts, cities, or even other countries simply by having an Internet-connected device. But how did Amazon become such a dominant force in the online shopping industry, and how did Jeff Bezos become the world’s richest man as CEO?
There are numerous factors that have contributed to Amazon’s success, but the two most important ones are:
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Identifying the right customer need
Jeff Bezos discovered that the biggest disadvantage of traditional stores was that they couldn’t sell everything because the shelves and stock were too small. As a result, they will frequently select the best-selling products or those with the highest profit margins to display. This also meant that almost everyone would use similar products, and customers might not be able to find products that met 100 percent of their needs.
Back then, the only way to find the required product was to visit all of the familiar stores or place an exclusive order with the store.
Because it takes too much time, most customers chose to accept the items that were available and gave up the desire to completely satisfy their needs.
Utilize technological innovation to completely satisfy your customers.
Bezos created the Amazon online shopping platform to maximize the variety of items and reduce storage costs to nearly zero. By typing keywords into Amazon, customers can find all of their desired items from various stores around the world. When orders are received, the delivery service will pick up the goods from the store and deliver them to customers.
Jeff Bezos has helped to satisfy 100 percent of each customer’s personal needs with this “endless online storage,” pushing the sale of corner products (niche products) without having to hire a massive warehouse just to contain products.
This is known as the “Long Tail” concept, which was first introduced by Chris Anderson in 2004. In his 2006 book ” Longtail “, he revealed that total revenue from niche products was equal to or greater than that of Amazon’s best-selling products. When traditional retailers ignore this niche market, they are throwing away half of their revenue.
