An AP News Story released Dec 26 highlights Amazon’s success in a bad economy. They were able to increase sales over 2007 (from the metrics they are making public), bucking a nationwide retailer trend. They appear to have also done better during this holiday shopping season as opposed to last year. While other retailers have seen a substantial drop in sales this XMas, Amazon continues to do great business.
Why is this? I think it is because they offer what is often the best price on any given product, and what is always the best service you can get, period. That is my opinion; Forrester Research think Amazon.com ranks #3 overall for customer experience in 2008.
I began shopping on Amazon.com in 1998, which makes it 10 great years of shopping for me. I first started with Amazon.com to order books. I lived in a rural area that did not have a decent book store. For a few years Amazon.com and BookPool.com were my only real sources of good tech books. As the years went on and I moved to more urban areas, I still prefered Amazon.com to many brick-and-morter stores. I found, over and over, that Amazon often had products that the local store did not. And when a local store did have the product I was looking for, Amazon would beat their price by a significan margin.
This XMas I did almost all of my shopping on Amazon. I have an Amazon prime acount. For $80/year, I get free 2-day shipping, and $1.99 overnight shipping on most items that Amazon sells. It is worth it for me. I by enough tech books alone to make up for the price. At XMas and Birthday time I take advantage of the free shipping. I was able to buy a number of presents on Amazon, and they were all shipped for free to the recepients. For one other present I purchased locally I paid about $5 for shipping. I had to find a box, pack the item, wait in line at the post office, and pay to have it shipped.
Anytime Amazon has ever made a mistake they have provided wonderful customer service to resolve the issue. I wait a very short amount of time to speak with customer service, and my issue has always be resolved promptly. Is this the experience I have had a local brick-and-mortar stores? Nope.
It is no wonder that Amazon is doing well, and that they have so many loyal customers like myself.
