Amazon.com An E-Business

Amazon is based in Seattle and started by filling all orders using books purchased from a distributor in response to customer orders. This practice differs from that of a traditional bookstore that purchase directly from publishers and stocks books in anticipation of customer orders. Today, Amazon has six warehouses where it holds inventory. Amazon stocks best-selling books, though it still gets other titles from distributors or publishers. It uses the U.S. Postal Service and other package carriers like UPS and FedEx to send books to customers.

Traditional booksellers like Borders and Barnes and Noble have also started selling using the Internet channel. Barnes and Noble have set up BarnesandNoble.com as a separate company, whereas Borders uses Amazon to fulfill its online orders after initially trying to operate an online business. In the case of Barnes and Noble, the retail store and the online supply chains share warehousing and transportation to some extent. This is a departure from their original strategy when BarnesandNoble.com was not visible in any Barnes and Noble Bookstore. Several questions arise concerning how Amazon is structured and how traditional booksellers have responded.

1. Recommend to Amazon the Best Distribution Design Options

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