On January $31,2018,$ the market capitalization of Amazon.Com Inc. $($Amazon$)$ hit $$702$ billion, the highest level ever.? When its fourth$-$quarter results were released on February $1,2018,$ Amazon showed a$30-$per$-$cent increase in revenues, to $$60\mathrm{.}5$ billion for the quarter, and net income for the quarter had increased by $150$ per cent, to $$1\mathrm{.}9$ billion? From its start as a venture looking to build "earth's largest bookstore" in $1994,$ Amazon was now one of the most valuable companies in the world, and founder Jeff Bezos was the richest person on earth.In $2018,$ Amazon had an online store that sold its own products and listed products for sale by more than two million third$-$party sellers.$*$ Since its founding, Amazon had added more than $30$ store categories, ranging from electronics to furniture, selling millions of different products and making an estimated $1\mathrm{.}2$ billion domestic customer shipments in $2017\mathrm{.}5$ Amazon Web Services, the company's on$-$demand cloud$-$computing service, generated $$17\mathrm{.}5$ billion in sales in $2017.$ Amazon Prime Video had become a leader in video$-$streaming services, with original$-$content series and movies that rivalled the offerings of Netflix. Its Echo devices, powered by the artificial$-$intelligence assistant Alexa, had more than $30,000$ skills and could be used to control smart$-$home devices. The popular Kindle e$-$reader boosted sales of Amazon e$-$books. Amazon had increased its number of brick$-$and$-$mortar stores with the acquisition of Whole Foods Market $($Whole Foods$)$ in $2017.$ It had also opened AmazonFresh and Amazon Go grocery stores, as well as Amazon bookstores.With total shipping costs that exceeded $$21$ billion in the most recent fiscal year, the company was taking steps to gain greater control of its supply chaina strategy that could eventually put Amazon in direct competition with United Parcel Service of America Inc. $($UPS$)$ and Federal Express Corporation $($FedEx$).$ In recent years, it had expanded into ocean freight forwarding, opened an air cargo hub, built a truck fleet, and established a parcel delivery network.'The company offered its third$-$party sellersfulfillment services called Fulfillment by Amazon $($FBA$),$ which provided transportation, warehousing, picking, packing, shipping, customer service, and returns for products sold through its website. The company's latest initiative, Shipping with Amazon, was a new service for any business offering package delivery to customers, regardless of whether they sold products on the Amazon site.$$From a standing start, Amazonwith $566,000$ employees $($referred to as "Amazonians"$)-$had becomemore valuable than Walmart Inc. $($Walmart$),$ the world's largest retailer. However, given the broad variety and volume of products Amazon was selling through a range of formats, a key challenge for the