How is Amazon.coms business model evolving as youve added auctions and referrals to other merchants?
Our vision is that we want to be the world’s most customer-centric company. In many ways, we’re a one-trick pony. It’s just a good trick. And that is we focus incessantly on trying to get the customer experience right. Within that, we want to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online. You realize very quickly that you can’t sell everything people might want directly. So instead you need to do that in partnership with thousands and indeed millions of third-party sellers in different ways. To try to do that alone, in strictly a traditional retailing model, isn’t practical. What are your goals for auctions and Shop the Web, the program that provides referrals to other merchants? We have two sets of customers in the auction space, and we are focused diligently on trying to get the experience to be as good as possible for both sets. In the case of the buyers, one of the key things that auctions bring for our 8.4 million buyers is bigger
