SUMMER TRAINING REPORT

ON

A STUDY ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

TOWARDS AMAZON

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the

award of the degree of
BACHLOR OF COMMERECE
Batch: 2021-22

Under the supervision of

Dr. VIVEK TIWARI
Assistant Professor

Submitted by
ADITYA PRATAP SINGH
Roll No. 190400050002
B. Com. (Hons) 5th Sem.

SHRI JAI NARAIN MISHRA P.G. COLLEGE,

LUCKNOW, 2021-22

AYUSH SINGH GAUR

 DECLARATION

This is to declare that I Aditya Pratap Singh (Roll No- 190400050002) student of

B. COM (HONS), have personally worked on the research entitled “A Study On

Consumer Behaviour Towards Amazon” The data mentioned in this report were

obtained during genuine work done and collected by me. The data obtained from

other sources have been duly acknowledged. The result embodied in this project

has not been submitted to any other University or Institute for the award of any

degree.

Date: `

Place: (Roll No. 190400050002)

 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the report titled “A Study on Consumer

Behaviour Towards Amazon” being submitted by Aditya Pratap

Singh, Roll No- 190400050002 in partial fulfilment of the requirements

for the award of the Degree of Bachelor Of Commerce, is a bonafide

record of the project work done by of Bachelor Of Commerce, Shri

Jai Narain Mishra P.G. College, .

 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

A project is never the sole product of a person whose name has appeared on the

cover. Even the best effort may not prove successful without proper guidance. For

a best project one needs proper time, energy, efforts, patience, and knowledge and

how to use all these things. But without any guidance it remains unsuccessful. I

have done this project with the best of my ability and hope that it will serve its

purpose. It was really a great learning experience and I would really express my

special and profound gratitude to my guide Mr. Vivek Kumar TIwari who not only

helped me in the successful completion of this report but also spread her precious

and valuable time in expanding my knowledge base, I take immense pleasure in

thanking her for supporting at all stages of this project. After the completion of this

Project I feel myself as a well aware person about the Research Procedure and the

complexities that can arose during the process. Also I got an insight of Amazon.

Finally, I am also grateful to all those personalities who have helped me directly or

indirectly in bringing up this project report.

I would also like to thank Mr. Vivek TIwari Head of Department for his regular

support and help in the successful completion of my research report.

 PREFACE

I respect to the allotted period, I have formed relationship with the organization as

trainee but informally it is a sacred place for me as it’s my first practical exposure

to an organization to know and get aware to an organizational real practical

stressful environment.

Although I am student of B.Com (Hons) It is a two year full time degree

courses. So far this training is scheduled for forth semester syllabi as a separate

topic to be asked in detail in viva-voice conducted by external So far I have

completed 5th semester examination. Thus study will provided me a better

opportunity to survive in cut throat competition with a prosperous existence. I have

tried my best to gain out of well framed circumstances & with the help of

experienced personnel who helped me out so for become possible to them. As

being a very confidential functioning many things are there which can’t be known

but on the basis of gathered information and certain hints, the project has been

formed. It may have something missing but I have tried to present all things what I

have received. Although this report has been got checked by different personnel

but after that if there is some shortcomings I expect it to be rectified. So the whole

study bifurcated in different parts. Certain observations & suggestions also have

been stated which if possible to be reviewed.

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

While working in the organization I was trained as a relationship personnel being

engaged into various jobs such as dealing with clients, answering customer queries

through telephonic conversations and providing them knowledge about new

schemes and converting them into our customers.

As my summer internship project I was given the topic on “A study of consumer

behavior in at Amazon”. The project work was for this research was conducted in

Amazon to study the customer satisfaction level.

The research has been conducted to gather information from 100 respondents & a

structured questionnaire will be used to collect the information from the

respondents. The data which was collected from them will be analyzed and

classified. It was found that though the Amazon has the highest market share it

needs to improve on its service quality and retail product.

 TABLE OF CONTENT

Sr. No. Chapters Page No.

1. INTRODUCTION 8-22
2. LITERATURE 23-29
REVIEW
3. COMPANY PROFILE 30-56
4.  OBJECTIVE 57-59
 SCOPE OF
STUDY
 IMPORTANCE
AND USE OF
THE STUDY
5. RESEARCH 60-65
METHODOLOGY
6. LIMITATION 66-67
7. DATA ANALYSIS 68-78
AND
INTERPRETATION
8. FINDINGS 79-80
9. SUGGESTIONS AND 81-82
RECOMMENDATION
10. CONCLUSION 83-84
11. BIBLIOGRAPHY 85
12. QUESTIONNIARE 87
INTRODUCTION
 INTRODUCTION

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Consumer behavior is the study of when, why, how, where and what people do or do not buy
products. It blends elements from psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology and
economics. It attempts to understand the buyer decision making process, both individually and in
groups. It studies characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics and behavioural
variables in an attempt to understand people's wants. It also tries to assess influences on the
consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference groups, and society in general.
Customer behaviour study is based on consumer buying behaviour, with the customer playing
the three distinct roles of user, payer and buyer. Relationship marketing is an influential asset for
customer behaviour analysis as it has a keen interest in the re-discovery of the true meaning of
marketing through the re-affirmation of the importance of the customer or buyer. A greater
importance is also placed on consumer retention, customer relationship management,
personalisation, customisation and one-to-one marketing. Social functions can be categorized
into social choice and welfare functions. Each method for vote counting is assumed as a social
function but if Arrow’s possibility theorem is used for a social function, social welfare function
is achieved. Some specifications of the social functions are decisiveness, neutrality, anonymity,
monotonocity, unanimity, homogeneity and weak and strong Paretooptimality. No social choice
function meets these requirements in an ordinal scale simultaneously. The most important
characteristic of a social function is identification of the interactive effect of alternatives and
creating a logical relation with the ranks. Marketing provides product in order to satisfy
customers. With that in mind, the productive system is considered from its beginning at the
production level, to the end of the cycle, the consumer (Kioumarsi et al., 2009).

Belch and Belch define consumer behavior as 'the process and activities people engage in when
searching for, selecting, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of products and product so
as to satisfy their needs and desires'.
Black box model

ENVIRONMENTAL
BUYER'S BLACK BOX
FACTORS BUYER'S

Marketing Environmental Buyer RESPONSE

Decision Process
Stimuli Stimuli Characteristics

Product
choice
Problem recognition
Brand
Attitudes Information search
Product Economic choice
Motivation Alternative
Price Technical Dealer
Behaviour s evaluation
Place Political choice
Personality Purchase decision
Promotion Cultural Purchase
Lifestyle Post-purchase
timing
behavior
Purchase
amount

The black box model shows the interaction of stimuli, consumer characteristics, decision process
and consumer responses. It can be distinguished between interpersonal stimuli (between people)
or intrapersonal stimuli (within people).[2] The black box model is related to the black box theory
of behaviorism, where the focus is not set on the processes inside a consumer, but the relation
between the stimuli and the response of the consumer. The marketing stimuli are planned and
processed by the companies, whereas the environmental stimulus are given by social factors,
based on the economical, political and cultural circumstances of a society. The buyers black box
contains the buyer characteristics and the decision process, which determines the buyers
response.

The black box model considers the buyers response as a result of a conscious, rational decision
process, in which it is assumed that the buyer has recognized the problem. However, in reality
many decisions are not made in awareness of a determined problem by the consumer.

Information search
Once the consumer has recognised a problem, they search for information on products and
product that can solve that problem. Belch and Belch (2007) explain that consumers undertake
both an internal (memory) and an external search.

Sources of information include:

 Personal sources
 Commercial sources
 Public sources
 Personal experience

The relevant internal psychological process that is associated with information search is
behaviour . Behaviour is defined as 'the process by which an individual receives, selects,
organises, and interprets information to create a meaningful picture of the world'

The selective behaviour process

Stage Description

- Selective exposure consumers select which promotional messages they will expose
themselves to.
- Selective attention consumers select which promotional messages they will pay attention
to
- Selective comprehension consumer interpret messages in line with their beliefs, attitudes,
motives and experiences
- Selective retention consumers remember messages that are more meaningful or important
to them

The implications of this process help develop an effective promotional strategy, and select which
sources of information are more effective for the brand.
 INFORMATION EVALUATION
At this time the consumer compares the brands and products that are in their evoked set. How
can the marketing organization increase the likelihood that their brand is part of the consumer's
evoked (consideration) set? Consumers evaluate alternatives in terms of the functional and
psychological benefits that they offer. The marketing organization needs to understand what
benefits consumers are seeking and therefore which attributes are most important in terms of
making a decision.

Purchase decision
Once the alternatives have been evaluated, the consumer is ready to make a purchase decision.
Sometimes purchase intention does not result in an actual purchase. The marketing organization
must facilitate the consumer to act on their purchase intention. The provision of credit or
payment terms may encourage purchase, or a sales promotion such as the opportunity to receive
a premium or enter a competition may provide an incentive to buy now. The relevant internal
psychological process that is associated with purchase decision is integration.

Postpurchase evaluation
The EKB model was further developed by Rice (1993) which suggested there should be a
feedback loop, Foxall (2005) further suggests the importance of the post purchase evaluation

and that the post purchase evaluation is key due to its influences on future purchase
patterns.

BUYING

Buying in has several meanings:

 In the securities market it refers to a process by which the buyer of securities, whose
seller fails to deliver the securities contracted for, can 'buy in' the securities from a third
party with the defaulting seller to make good.
 In poker it signifies the up-front payment required to participate in a given game or
tournament.
 In management and decision making, buy-in (as a verb or noun) signifies the
commitment of interested or affected parties to a decision (often called stakeholders) to
 'buy in' to the decision, that is, to agree to give it support, often by having been involved
in its formulation.

Securities market use

On the English stock exchange, a transaction by which, if a member has sold securities which he
fails to deliver on settling day, or any of the succeeding ten days following the settlement, the
buyer may give instructions to a stock exchange official to "buy in" the stock required. The
official announces the quantity of stock, and the purpose for which he requires it, and whoever
sells the stock must be prepared to deliver it immediately. The original seller has to pay the
difference between the two prices, if the latter is higher than the original contract price. A similar
practice, termed "selling out," prevails when a purchaser fails to take up his securities.

The practise is not limited to the UK Stock Exchange but is found in various forms on most stock
exchanges. The rules vary according to the local regulations, and the party which fails to deliver
is usually penalised and may even be suspended..

Alternatives to short selling available on the SGX :

1. Borrow the share and proceed to sell a stock.

2. Buy a put warrant
3. Short a CFD.
4. Sell a Single Stock Future (SSF) in the futures market.

Poker and gaming

"Buying in" regarding poker tournaments is the process of entering a poker tournament that
requires an up-front payment. The size of the payment, otherwise known as the "Buy In",
determines the total winning prize pool and also contains a fee, otherwise known as the rake, that
is paid to the house.

For example a 50 person capacity tournament could cost $55 to enter per player. In poker terms
this could equate to $50+5, meaning $50 goes to the prize pool to pay the eventual winners and
$5 (10%) goes to the house for hosting the tournament. In this example the prize pool would
contain $2500 and the house would take a total of $250 (also 10%).

Management
The process of lobbying for support for part of the influential group before suggesting an idea,
arguing a case or submitting a report.

In the sports world, buying in is a significant aspect of players/participants accepting goals and
direction from a coach, leader or program. "Buying in" becomes synonymous with commitment
and dedication. In the Spring of 2007, two film makers, Tim Breitbach(Dopamine) and Ralph
Barhydt, started producing a film entitled, "Buying In" that explores the social issues of buying
in based on the success of the boys' and girls' high school basketball teams at The Branson
School, in Ross, California, who each won the State Championship in their division in 2007.
 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products

and product supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction
is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported
experience with a firm, its products, or its product (ratings) exceeds
specified satisfaction goals."[1] In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 71 percent
responded that they found a customer satisfaction metric very useful in managing and monitoring
their businesses.

It is seen as a key performance indicator within business and is often part of a Balanced
Scoretwo wheelerd. In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers,
customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key element
of business strategy.

"Within organizations, customer satisfaction ratings can have powerful effects. They focus
employees on the importance of fulfilling customers' expectations. Furthermore, when these
ratings dip, they warn of problems that can affect sales and profitability.... These metrics
quantify an important dynamic. When a brand has loyal customers, it gains positive word-of-
mouth marketing, which is both free and highly effective."

Therefore, it is essential for businesses to effectively manage customer satisfaction. To be able

do this, firms need reliable and representative measures of satisfaction.

"In researching satisfaction, firms generally ask customers whether their product or service has
met or exceeded expectations. Thus, expectations are a key factor behind satisfaction. When
customers have high expectations and the reality falls short, they will be disappointed and will
likely rate their experience as less than satisfying. For this reason, a luxury resort, for example,
might receive a lower satisfaction rating than a budget motel—even though its facilities and
service would be deemed superior in 'absolute' terms."

The importance of customer satisfaction diminishes when a firm has increased bargaining power.
For example, cell phoneplan providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, participate in an industry
that is an oligopoly, where only a few suppliers of a certain product or service exist. As such,
many cell phone plan contracts have a lot of fine print with provisions that they would never get
away if there were, say, 100 cell phone plan providers, because customer satisfaction would be
far too low, and customers would easily have the option of leaving for a better contract offer.

There is a substantial body of empirical literature that establishes the benefits of customer
satisfaction for firms.

Purpose

A business Amazon two wheelerlly is continually seeking feedback to improve customer

satisfaction.

"Customer satisfaction provides a leading indicator of consumer purchase intentions and

loyalty." "Customer satisfaction data are among the most frequently collected indicators of
market perceptions. Their principal use is twofold:"

1. "Within organizations, the collection, analysis and dissemination of these data send a
message about the importance of tending to customers and ensuring that they have a
positive experience with the company's goods and product."
2. "Although sales or market share can indicate how well a firm is performingcurrently,
satisfaction is perhaps the best indicator of how likely it is that the firm’s customers will
make further purchases in the future. Much research has focused on the relationship
between customer satisfaction and retention. Studies indicate that the ramifications of
satisfaction are most strongly realized at the extremes."

On a five-point scale, "individuals who rate their satisfaction level as '5' are likely to become
return customers and might even evangelize for the firm. (A second important metric related to
satisfaction is willingness to recommend. This metric is defined as "The percentage of surveyed
customers who indicate that they would recommend a brand to friends." When a customer is
satisfied with a product, he or she might recommend it to friends, relatives and colleagues. This
can be a powerful marketing advantage.) "Individuals who rate their satisfaction level as '1,' by
contrast, are unlikely to return. Further, they can hurt the firm by making negative comments
about it to prospective customers. Willingness to recommendis a key metric relating to customer
satisfaction."

Theoretical Ground

"In literature antecedents of satisfaction are studied from different aspects. The considerations
extend from psychological to physical and from normative to positive aspects. However, in most
of the cases the consideration is focused on two basic constructs as customers expectations prior
to purchase or use of a product and his relative perception of the performance of that product
after using it.

Expectations of a customer on a product tell us his anticipated performance for that product. As
it is suggested in the literature, consumers may have various "types" of expectations when
forming opinions about a product's anticipated performance. For example, four types of
expectations are identified by Miller (1977): two wheelerl, expected, minimum tolerable, and
desirable. While, Day (1977) indicated among expectations, the ones that are about the costs, the
product nature, the efforts in obtaining benefits and lastly expectations of social values.
Perceived product performance is considered as an important construct due to its ability to allow
making comparisons with the expectations.

It is considered that customers judge products on a limited set of norms and attributes. Olshavsky
and Miller (1972) and Olson and Dover (1976) designed their researches as to manipulate actual
product performance, and their aim was to find out how perceived performance ratings were
influenced by expectations. These studies took out the discussions about explaining the
differences between expectations and perceived performance."

The Disconfirmation Model

"The Disconfirmation Model is based on the comparison of customers’ [expectations] and their
[perceived performance] ratings. Specifically, an individual’s expectations are confirmed when a
product performs as expected. It is negatively confirmed when a product performs more poorly
than expected. The disconfirmation is positive when a product performs over the
expectations(Churchill & Suprenant 1982). There are four constructs to describe the traditional
disconfirmation paradigm mentioned as expectations, performance, disconfirmation and
satisfaction." [3] "Satisfaction is considered as an outcome of purchase and use, resulting from the
buyers’ comparison of expected rewards and incurred costs of the purchase in relation to the
anticipated consequences. In operation, satisfaction is somehow similar to attitude as it can be
evaluated as the sum of satisfactions with some features of product." "In the literature, cognitive
and affective models of satisfaction are also developed and considered as alternatives(Pfaff,
1977). Churchill and Suprenant in 1982, evaluated various studies in the literature and formed an
overview of Disconfirmation process in the following figure:"

Customer satisfaction measured

Organizations need to retain existing customers while targeting non-customers. Measuring

customer satisfaction provides an indication of how successful the organization is at providing
products and/or product to the marketplace.

"Customer satisfaction is measured at the individual level, but it is almost always reported at an
aggregate level. It can be, and often is, measured along various dimensions. A hotel, for
example, might ask customers to rate their experience with its front desk and check-in service,
with the room, with the amenities in the room, with the restaurants, and so on. Additionally, in a
holistic sense, the hotel might ask about overall satisfaction 'with your stay.'"

As research on consumption experiences grows, evidence suggests that consumers purchase

goods and product for a combination of two types of benefits: hedonic and utilitarian. Hedonic
benefits are associated with the sensory and experiential attributes of the product. Utilitarian
benefits of a product are associated with the more instrumental and functional attributes of the
product (Batra and Athola 1990).

Customer satisfaction is an ambiguous and abstract concept and the actual manifestation of the
state of satisfaction will vary from person to person and product/service to product/service. The
state of satisfaction depends on a number of both psychological and physical variables which
correlate with satisfaction behaviors such as return and recommend rate. The level of satisfaction
can also vary depending on other options the customer may have and other products against
which the customer can compare the organization's products.
Work done by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (Leonard L) between 1985 and 1988 provides
the basis for the measurement of customer satisfaction with a service by using the gap between
the customer's expectation of performance and their perceived experience of performance. This
provides the measurer with a satisfaction "gap" which is objective and quantitative in nature.
Work done by Cronin and Taylor propose the "confirmation/disconfirmation" theory of
combining the "gap" described by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry as two different measures
(perception and expectation of performance) into a single measurement of performance
according to expectation.

The usual measures of customer satisfaction involve a survey from software providers such
as Confirmit, Medallia andSatmetrix[8] with a set of statements using a Likert Technique or scale.
The customer is asked to evaluate each statement and in term of their perception and expectation
of performance of the organization being measured. Their satisfaction is generally measured on a
five-point scale.

"Customer satisfaction data can also be collected on a 10-point scale."[1]

"Regardless of the scale used, the objective is to measure customers’ perceived satisfaction with
their experience of a firm’s offerings." It is essential for firms to effectively manage customer
satisfaction. To be able do this, we need accurate measurement of satisfaction.

Good quality measures need to have high satisfaction loadings, good reliability, and low error
variances. In an empirical study comparing commonly used satisfaction measures it was found
that two multi-item semantic differential scales performed best across both hedonic and
utilitarian service consumption contexts. According to studies by Wirtz & Lee (2003), [11] they
identified a six-item 7-point semantic differential scale (for example, Oliver and Swan 1983),
which is a six-item 7-point bipolar scale, that consistently performed best across both hedonic
and utilitarian product. It loaded most highly on satisfaction, had the highest item reliability, and
had by far the lowest error variance across both studies. In the study, [11]the six items asked
respondents’ evaluation of their most recent experience with ATM product and ice cream
restaurant, along seven points within these six items: “pleased me to displeased me”, “contented
with to disgusted with”, “very satisfied with to very dissatisfied with”, “did a good job for
me to did a poor job for me”, “wise choice to poor choice” and “happy with to unhappy with”.

A semantic differential (4 items) scale (e.g., Eroglu and Machleit 1990),[12] which is a four-item
7-point bipolar scale, was the second best performing measure, which was again consistent
across both contexts. In the study, respondents were asked to evaluate their experience with both
products, along seven points within these four items: “satisfied to dissatisfied”,
“favorableto unfavorable”, “pleasant to unpleasant” and “I like it very much to I didn’t like it at
all”.

The third best scale was single-item percentage measure, a one-item 7-point bipolar scale (e.g.,
Westbrook 1980).[13]Again, the respondents were asked to evaluate their experience on both
ATM product and ice cream restaurants, along seven points within “delighted to terrible”.

It seems that dependent on a trade-off between length of the questionnaire and quality of
satisfaction measure, these scales seem to be good options for measuring customer satisfaction in
academic and applied studies research alike. All other measures tested consistently performed
worse than the top three measures, and/or their performance varied significantly across the two
service contexts in their study. These results suggest that more two wheelereful pretesting would
be prudent should these measures be used.

Finally, all measures captured both affective and cognitive aspects of satisfaction, independent of
their scale anchors.[11]Affective measures capture a consumer’s attitude (liking/disliking) towards
a product, which can result from any product information or experience. On the other hand,
cognitive element is defined as an appraisal or conclusion on how the product’s performance
compared against expectations (or exceeded or fell short of expectations), was useful (or not
useful), fit the situation (or did not fit), exceeded the requirements of the situation (or did not
exceed).

Methodologies

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a scientific standard of customer satisfaction.

Academic research has shown that the national ACSI score is a strong predictor of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) growth, and an even stronger predictor of Personal Consumption
Expenditure (PCE) growth.[15] On the microeconomic level, academic studies have shown that
ACSI data is related to a firm's financial performance in terms of return on investment (ROI),
sales, long-term firm value (Tobin's q), cash flow, cash flow volatility, human
capital performance, portfolio returns, debt financing, risk, and consumer spending. Increasing
ACSI scores has been shown to predict loyalty, word-of-mouth recommendations, and purchase
behavior. The ACSI measures customer satisfaction annually for more than 200 companies in 43
industries and 10 economic sectors. In addition to quarterly reports, the ACSI methodology can
be applied to private sector companies and government agencies in order to improve loyalty and
purchase intent.[19] ASCI scores have also been calculated by independent researchers, for
example, for the mobile phones sector, higher education, and electronic mail.

The Kano model is a theory of product development and customer satisfaction developed in the
1980s by Professor Noriaki Kano that classifies customer preferences into five categories:
Attractive, One-Dimensional, Must-Be, Indifferent, Reverse. The Kano model offers some
insight into the product attributes which are perceived to be important to customers.

SERVQUAL or RATER is a service-quality framework that has been incorporated into

customer-satisfaction surveys (e.g., the revised Norwegian Customer Satisfaction Barometer to
indicate the gap between customer expectations and experience.

J.D. Power and Associates provides another measure of customer satisfaction, known for its top-
box approach and automotive industry rankings. J.D. Power and Associates' marketing research
consists primarily of consumer surveys and is publicly known for the value of its product awards.

Other research and consulting firms have customer satisfaction solutions as well. These
include A.T. Kearney's Customer Satisfaction Audit process, which incorporates the Stages of
Excellence framework and which helps define a company’s status against eight critically
identified dimensions.

For B2B customer satisfaction surveys, where there is a small customer base, a high response
rate to the survey is desirable.[25] The American Customer Satisfaction Index (2012) found that
response rates for paper-based surveys were around 10% and the response rates for e-surveys
(web, wap and e-mail) were averaging between 5% and 15% - which can only provide a straw
poll of the customers' opinions.
In the European Union member states, many methods for measuring impact and satisfaction of e-
government product are in use, which the eGovMoNet project sought to compare and harmonize.

These customer satisfaction methodologies have not been independently audited by

the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) according to MMAP (Marketing Metric
Audit Protocol).
LITERATURE REVIEW
 LITERATURE REVIEW

Consumer behaviour

Cognitive theories of behaviour assume there is a poverty of stimulus. This (with reference to
behaviour ) is the claim that sensations are, by themselves, unable to provide a unique
description of the world. Sensations require 'enriching', which is the role of the mental model. A
different type of theory is the perceptual ecology approach of James J. Gibson. Gibson rejected
the assumption of a poverty of stimulus by rejecting the notion that behaviour is based upon
sensations – instead, he investigated what information is actually presented to the perceptual
systems. His theory "assumes the existence of stable, unbounded, and permanent stimulus-
information in the ambient optic array. And it supposes that the visual system can explore and
detect this information. The theory is information-based, not sensation-based." He and the
psychologists who work within this paradigm detailed how the world could be specified to a
mobile, exploring organism via the lawful projection of information about the world into energy
arrays. Specification is a 1:1 mapping of some aspect of the world into a perceptual array; given
such a mapping, no enrichment is required and behaviour is direct behaviour .
Behaviour -in-action

An ecological understanding of behaviour derived from Gibson's early work is that of

"behaviour -in-action", the notion that behaviour is a requisite property of animate action; that
without behaviour , action would be unguided, and without action, behaviour would serve no
purpose. Animate actions require both behaviour and motion, and behaviour and movement can
be described as "two sides of the same coin, the coin is action". Gibson works from the
assumption that singular entities, which he calls "invariants", already exist in the real world and
that all that the behaviour process does is to home in upon them. A view known
as constructivism (held by such philosophers as Ernst von Glasersfeld) regards the continual
adjustment of behaviour and action to the external input as precisely what constitutes the
"entity", which is therefore far from being invariant.

Glasersfeld considers an "invariant" as a target to be homed in upon, and a pragmatic necessity to

allow an initial measure of understanding to be established prior to the updating that a statement
aims to achieve. The invariant does not and need not represent an actuality, and Glasersfeld
describes it as extremely unlikely that what is desired or feared by an organism will never suffer
change as time goes on. This social constructionist theory thus allows for a needful evolutionary
adjustment.

A mathematical theory of behaviour -in-action has been devised and investigated in many forms
of controlled movement, and has been described in many different species of organism using
the General Tau Theory. According to this theory, tau information, or time-to-goal information is
the fundamental 'percept' in behaviour .

Evolutionary psychology (EP) and behaviour

Many philosophers, such as Jerry Fodor, write that the purpose of behaviour is knowledge, but
evolutionary psychologists hold that its primary purpose is to guide action. For example, they
say, depth behaviour seems to have evolved not to help us know the distances to other objects
but rather to help us move around in space.[44] Evolutionary psychologists say that animals from
fiddler crabs to humans use eyesight for collision avoidance, suggesting that vision is basically
for directing action, not providing knowledge.
Building and maintaining sense organs is metabolically expensive, so these organs evolve only
when they improve an organism's fitness. More than half the brain is devoted to processing
sensory information, and the brain itself consumes roughly one-fourth of one's metabolic
resources, so the senses must provide exceptional benefits to fitness. Behaviour accurately
mirrors the world; animals get useful, accurate information through their senses.

Scientists who study behaviour and sensation have long understood the human senses as
adaptations. Depth behaviour consists of processing over half a dozen visual cues, each of which
is based on a regularity of the physical world. Vision evolved to respond to the narrow range of
electromagnetic energy that is plentiful and that does not pass through objects. [44] Sound waves
provide useful information about the sources of and distances to objects, with larger animals
making and hearing lower-frequency sounds and smaller animals making and hearing higher-
frequency sounds.[44]Taste and smell respond to chemicals in the environment that were
significant for fitness in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. The sense of touch is
actually many senses, including pressure, heat, cold, tickle, and pain. Pain, while unpleasant, is
adaptive. An important adaptation for senses is range shifting, by which the organism becomes
temporarily more or less sensitive to sensation. For example, one's eyes automatically adjust to
dim or bright ambient light. Sensory abilities of different organisms often coevolve, as is the case
with the hearing of echolocating bats and that of the moths that have evolved to respond to the
sounds that the bats make.

Evolutionary psychologists claim that behaviour demonstrates the principle of modularity, with
specialized mechanisms handling particular behaviour tasks.[44] For example, people with
damage to a particular part of the brain suffer from the specific defect of not being able to
recognize faces (prospagnosia). EP suggests that this indicates a so-called face-reading module.

Theories of visual behaviour

 Empirical theories of behaviour

 Enactivism
 Anne Treisman's feature integration theory
 Interactive activation and competition
 Irving Biederman's recognition by components theory
Physiology

Sensory system

A sensory system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information.
A sensory system consists of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved
in sensory behaviour . Commonly recognized sensory systems are those
for vision, hearing, somatic sensation (touch), taste and olfaction (smell). It has been suggested
that the immune system is an overlooked sensory modality. In short, senses are transducers from
the physical world to the realm of the mind.

The receptive field is the specific part of the world to which a receptor organ and receptor cells
respond. For instance, the part of the world an eye can see, is its receptive field; the light that
each rod or cone can see, is its receptive field. Receptive fields have been identified for
the visual system, auditory system and somatosensory system, so far.

Consumer behaviour is a field of study that focuses on consumer activities. This has been a topic
of vast interest for the marketers all over the world. The marketing managers always study these
consumer behavioural changes and make continuous changes in products and product. According
to Blackwell et al. (2006), consumer behaviour is defined as the activities that people undertake
when obtaining, consuming and disposing of products and product that they expect will satisfy
their personal needs. Blackwell et al. (2006) mentions that a customer follows a sequence before
buying a product or service.
consumer behaviour has become a factor that has a direct impact on the overall performance of
the businesses (Kotler and Keller, 2012)
consumer behaviour has become crucial especially due to fierce competition in retail industry in
the worldwide (Lancaster et al, 2002) consumer behaviour addressing the works of marketers.
Moreover, consumer decision making process, in particular, five stages of consumer decision
making process will be discussed in detail.
Customer Satisfaction
Satisfaction has been broadly defined by Vavra, T.G. (1997) as a satisfactory post-purchase
experience with a product or service given an existing purchase expectation. Howard and
Sheth (1969)
According to Westbrook and Reilly (1983) define satisfaction as, “The buyer’s cognitive
state of being adequately or inadequately rewarded for the sacrifices he has undergone”
(p.145). 6, customer satisfaction is “an emotional response to the experiences provided by,
associated with particular Customer Satisfaction Satisfaction has been broadly defined by
Vavra, T.G. (1997) as a satisfactory post-purchase experience with a product or service given
an existing purchase expectation. Howard and Sheth (1969)
According to Westbrook and Reilly (1983) define satisfaction as, “The buyer’s cognitive
state of being adequately or inadequately rewarded for the sacrifices he has undergone”
(p.145). 6,
customer satisfaction is “an emotional response to the experiences provided by, associated
with particular purchase expectations with perceptions of performance during and after the
consumption experience.13 Oliver (1981)14 defines customer satisfaction as a customer’s
emotional response to the use of a product or service. Anton (1996)15 offers more
elaboration: “customer satisfaction as a state of mind in which the customer’s needs, wants
and expectations throughout the product or service life have been met or exceeded, resulting
in subsequent repurchase and loyalty”. Merchant Account Glossary points out that,
“Customer satisfaction is an ambiguous and abstract concept and the actual manifestation of
the state of satisfaction will very from person to person and produce/service to
produce/service.....”16Schiffman and Kanuk (2004) 17 Woodruff and Gardian (1996)
defines customer satisfaction as “The individual’s perception of the performance of the
product or service in relation to his or her expectations”.
According to Hung (1977), “…. satisfaction is a kind of stepping away from an experience
and evaluating it … One could have a pleasurable experience that caused dissatisfaction
because even though it was pleasurable, it wasn’t as pleasurable as it was supposed to be. So
satisfaction / dissatisfaction isn’t an emotion, it’s the evaluation of the emotion”. define
“Satisfaction, then, is the evaluation or feeling that results from the disconfirmation process.
It is not the comparison itself (i.e., the disconfirmation process), but it is the customer’s
response to the comparison. Satisfaction has an emotional component.”
COMPANY PROFILE
 COMPANY PROFILE
Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc.

Type Public

Traded as NASDAQ: AMZN

NASDAQ-100 Component
S&P 500 Component

Founded July 6, 1994; 21 years ago

Seattle, Washington, U.S.

Headquarters Seattle, Washington, U.S.

Area served Worldwide

Founder(s) Jeff Bezos

Key people Jeff Bezos

(Chairman, President and CEO)

Industry Internet

Products Appstore, The Book

Depository,comiXology, Game Studios,Instant
Video, Instant Video UK,Audible, Instant Video
German,Kindle, Lab126, Studios,Twitch.tv, Woot,
MyHabit.com, Shopbop, Askville

Services Online shopping, Web hosting,Content

Distribution
 Revenue US$ 88.988 billion (2014)

Operating US$ 178 million (2014)

income

Net income US$ -241 million (2014)

Total assets US$ 54.505 billion (2014)

Total equity US$ 10.741 billion (2014)

Employees 183,100 (July 2015)

Subsidiaries a2z, A9.com, Amazon Web Services, Alexa

Internet,Audible.com, comiXology,Digital
Photography Review,Goodreads, Internet Movie
Database, Junglee.com,Twitch, Zappos

Website amazon.com (original U.S. site)

various national sites

Written in C++ and Java

Alexa rank 6 (August 2015)

Type of site E-commerce

Advertising Web banners, videos

Available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian,

Japanese, Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch,
Standard Chinese

Launched July 5, 1994[11]

Amazon.com, Inc. is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company with
headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the United States.
Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, sellingDVDs, Blu-
rays, CDs, video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming,software, video
games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys and jewelry. The company also
produces consumer electronics—notably, Amazon Kindle e-book readers, Fire tablets, Fire
TV and Fire Phone—and is the world's largest provider of cloud
computing services.[13] Amazon also sells certain low-end products like USB cables under its
in-house brand AmazonBasics.
Amazon has separate retail websites for United States, United
Kingdom &Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain,
the Netherlands, Australia,Brazil, Japan, China, India and Mexico. Amazon also offers
international shipping to certain other countries for some of its products. In 2011, it professed an
intention to launch its websites in Poland and Sweden.
In the middle of 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United
States by market capitalization.
History
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called his "regret minimization
framework," which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for not participating sooner in the
Internet business boom during that time. In 1994, Bezos left his employment as vice-president
of D. E. Shaw & Co., a Wall Street firm, and moved to Seattle. He began to work on a business
plan for what would eventually become Amazon.com.
Jeff Bezos incorporated the company as "Cadabra" on July 5, 1994. Bezos changed the name to
Amazon a year later after a lawyer misheard its original name as "cadaver".The company went
online as Amazon.com in 1995.
Bezos selected the name Amazon by looking through the dictionary, and settled on "Amazon"
because it was a place that was "exotic and different" just as he planned for his store to be;
the Amazon river, he noted was by far the "biggest" river in the world, and he planned to make
his store the biggest in the world. Bezos placed a premium on his head start in building a brand,
telling a reporter, "There's nothing about our model that can't be copied over time. But you
know, McDonald's got copied. And it still built a huge, multibillion-dollar company. A lot of it
comes down to the brand name. Brand names are more important online than they are in the
physical world." Additionally, a name beginning with "A" was preferential due to the probability
it would occur at the top of any list that was alphabetized.
After reading a report about the future of the Internet which projected annual Web commerce
growth at 2,300%, Bezos created a list of 20 products which could be marketed online. He
narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising products which included: compact
discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. Bezos finally decided that his
new business would sell books online, due to the large world-wide demand for literature, the low
price points for books, along with the huge number of titles available in print. Amazon was
originally founded in Bezos' garage in Bellevue, Washington.
The company began as an online bookstore, an idea spurred off with discussion with John
Ingram of Ingram Book (now called Ingram Content Group), along with Keyur Patel who still
holds a stake in Amazon. In the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50 states and
over 45 countries. Within two months, Amazon's sales were up to $20,000/week.[26] While the
largest brick and mortar bookstores and mail order catalogs might offer 200,000 titles, an online
bookstore could "carry" several times more, since it would have an almost unlimited virtual (not
actual) warehouse: those of the actual product makers/suppliers.
Since June 19, 2000, Amazon's logotype has featured a curved arrow leading from A to Z,
representing that the company carries every product from A to Z, with the arrow shaped like a
smile.
Amazon was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington. In July 1995, the company began
service and sold its first book on Amazon.com: Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and
Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. In October
1995, the company announced itself to the public. In 1996, it was reincorporated in Delaware.
Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, trading under
the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN, at a price of US$18.00 per share ($1.50 after
three stock splits in the late 1990s).
Amazon's initial business plan was unusual; it did not expect to make a profit for four to five
years. This "slow" growth caused stockholders to complain about the company not reaching
profitability fast enough to justify investing in, or to even survive in the long-term. When
the dot-com bubble burst at the start of the 21st century, destroying many e-companies in the
process, Amazon survived, and grew on past the bubble burst to become a huge player in online
sales. It finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $5 million (i.e., 1¢ per share),
on revenues of more than $1 billion. This profit margin, though extremely modest, proved to
skeptics that Bezos' unconventional business model could succeed.[30] In 1999, Time magazine
named Bezos the Person of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizing online
shopping.
Barnes & Noble sued Amazon on May 12, 1997, alleging that Amazon's claim to be "the world's
largest bookstore" was false. Barnes and Noble asserted, "[It] isn't a bookstore at all. It's a book
broker." The suit was later settled out of court, and Amazon continued to make the same
claim." Walmart sued Amazon on October 16, 1998, alleging that Amazon had stolen Walmart's
trade secrets by hiring former Walmart executives. Although this suit was also settled out of
court, it caused Amazon to implement internal restrictions and the reassignment of the former
Walmart executives.
Acquisitions and investments
1998: PlanetAll, a reminder service based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Junglee, an XML-
based data mining startup based in Sunnyvale;[33][34][35] Bookpages.co.uk,[36][37] a UK
online book retailer, which became Amazon UK on October 15, 1998;[38] Telebook
(www.telebuch.de) was Germany's leading online bookstore, it became Amazon's German online
store;[36] Internet Movie Database (IMDb).
1999: Alexa Internet a database company; Accept.com a financial services
company; Drugstore.com 40% investment in 1999, increased stake in 2000, sold stake
to Walgreens in 2011 for a 90% loss; GeoWorks, a wireless communications company,
acquisition of a minority interest; Pets.com, purchased a 54 percent stake; LiveBid.com, which
produced Internet-based auction software; e-Niche Incorporated comprising Exchange.com,
Bibliofind.com (hard-to-find book titles), and Musicfile.com (hard to find music
titles); HomeGrocer.com, a 35 percent stake in the online grocer;[50] Gear.com, 49 percent stake
(the company was purchased by Overstock.com in 2000); Tool Crib of the North, acquired the
online and catalog sales division of the company in October 1999, selling a very wide variety of
tools and home improvement items; Convergence Corporation, software to connect wireless
devices to the Internet; MindCorps Incorporated, applications for web sites including online
chats to web based databases;[54] Della.com, gift registry, expert advice, and personalized gift
suggestions, Amazon purchased a 20% stake[55] (in April 2000, the company merged with
WeddingChannel.com[56]); Back to Basics Toys, catalog toy store (sold to Scholastic in 2003);
Ashford.com, retailer of luxury products, Amazon acquired a 16.6 percent ownership; Leep
Technology Inc., developer of on-line database query tools and CRM software.
2003: Online music retailer CDNow. By 2011, the website cdnow.com was defunct and in use by
a different company.
2004: Joyo.com, a Chinese e-commerce website.
2005: BookSurge, a print on demand company, and Mobipocket.com, an e-book software
company. CreateSpace.com (formerly CustomFlix), a distributor of on-demand DVDs (since
expanded to include print on-demand books, CDs, and video), based in Scotts Valley,
California. Smallparts.com, an industrial component supplier.
2006: Shopbop, a retailer of designer clothing and accessories for women, based in Madison,
Wisconsin.
2007: dpreview.com, a digital photography review website based in London; Brilliance Audio,
the largest independent publisher of audiobooks in the United States.
2008: Audible.com; Fabric.com; Box Office Mojo; AbeBooks; Shelfari; (including a 40% stake
in LibraryThingand whole ownership of BookFinder.com, Gojaba.com, and FillZ); Reflexive
Entertainment, a casual video game development company.
2009: Zappos, an online shoe and apparel retailer Lexcycle, SnapTell, an image matching
startup, Stanza, a rival e-book reader to Amazon's Kindle.
2010: Touchco., Woot, Quidsi, BuyVIP, Amie Street.
2010: Toby Press
2011: LoveFilm, The Book Depository, Pushbutton, Yap
2012: Kiva Systems, Teachstreet, Evi
2013: IVONA Software, Goodreads, Liquavista,
2014: Double Helix Games, comiXology, Twitch
2015: Annapurna Labs, a chip designer based in Yokneam, Israel
Investment
2008: Engine Yard, a Ruby-on-Rails platform as a service (PaaS) company.
2010: LivingSocial, a local deal site.
2014: Acquire .buy domain in an auction for $4,588,88
2014 : Amazon Announces Additional US $2 Billion Investment in India in June 2014
Subsidiaries
2004: A9.com, a company focused on researching and building innovative technology.
2004: Lab126, developers of integrated consumer electronics such as the Kindle.
2007: Endless.com, an e-commerce brand focusing on shoes.
2007: Brilliance Audio, the largest independent audio book producer in the US.
Amazon owns over 40 subsidiaries, including Zappos, Diapers.com, Kiva Systems, Goodreads,
Teachstreet, and IMDb.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
As of November 2018, the board of directors is:
Jeff Bezos, President, CEO and Chairman
Tom Alberg, Managing partner, Madrona Venture Group
John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar and Advisor to the Provost at USC
Bing Gordon, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Jamie Gorelick, partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr
Alain Monié, CEO, Ingram Micro
Jon Rubinstein, former Chairman and CEO, Palm, Inc.
Thomas O. Ryder, former Chairman and CEO, Reader's Digest Association
Patty Stonesifer, President and CEO, Martha's Table
Merchant partnerships
Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into a browser would bring up Amazon.com's "Toys
& Games" tab; however, this relationship was terminated due to a lawsuit. Amazon also hosted
and managed the website for Borders bookstores but this ceased in 2008.[110] From 2001 until
August 2011, Amazon hosted the retail website for Target.
Amazon.com operates retail websites for Sears Canada, bebe Stores, Marks &
Spencer, Mothercare, and Lacoste. For a growing number of enterprise clients, currently
including the UK merchants Marks & Spencer, Benefit Cosmetics' UK entity, edeals.com, and
Mothercare, Amazon provides a unified multichannel platform where a customer can interact
with some people they call the retail website, standalone in-store terminals, or phone-based
customer service agents. Amazon Web Services also powers AOL's Shop@AOL.
On October 18, 2011, Amazon.com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive
digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The
Sandman, and Watchmen. The partnership has caused well-known bookstores like Barnes &
Noble to remove these titles from their shelves.
In November 2013, Amazon.com announced a partnership with the United States Postal
Service to begin delivering orders on Sundays. The service, included with Amazon’s standard
shipping rates, initiated in metropolitan areas of Los Angelesand New York due to the high-
volume and inability to deliver timely, with plans to expand into Dallas, Houston, New Orleans,
and Phoenix by 2014.
Locations
Headquarters
Amazon.com's former headquarters in the Pacific Medical Center building inBeacon Hill, Seattle
The company's global headquarters are in 14 buildings in Seattle's South Lake
Union neighborhood. The European headquarters are in Luxembourg's capital,Luxembourg City.
In Seattle, as of 2012, a three-tower headquarters near Amazon's existing buildings with a
capacity of 12,000 employees is under construction.
Fulfillment and warehousing
Fulfillment centers are located in the following cities, often near airports. These centers also
provide warehousing and order-fulfillment for third-party sellers:. Amazon Fulfillment centers
can also provide warehousing and order-fulfillment for third-party sellers for an extra fee. Third-
party sellers can use Fulfillment by Amazon, or FBA, to sell on other platforms as well, such
as eBay or their own websites.
Warehouses are large and each has hundreds of employees. Employees are responsible for four
basic tasks: unpacking and inspecting incoming goods; placing goods in storage and recording
their location; picking goods from their computer recorded locations to make up an individual
shipment; and shipping. A computer that records the location of goods and maps out routes for
pickers plays a key role: employees carry hand-held computers which communicate with the
central computer and monitor their rate of progress. A picker may walk 10 or more miles a day.
In the United Kingdom initial staffing was provided by Randstad Holding and other temporary
employment agencies. Some workers are accepted as Amazon employees and granted pension
and shares of stock; others are dismissed. "When we have permanent positions available, we
look to the top performing temporary associates to fill them." Development of a high level
of automation is anticipated in the future following Amazon's 2012 acquisition of Kiva Systems,
a warehouse automation company.
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Third-generation Amazon Kindle
Retail goods
Amazon product lines include several media (books, DVDs, music CDs, videotapes, and
software), apparel, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet food,
groceries, health and personal-care items, industrial & scientific supplies, kitchen
items,jewelry and watches, lawn and garden items, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools,
automotive items and toys & games.
The company launched amazon.com Auctions, a web auctions service, in March 1999. However,
it failed to chip away at the large market share of the industry pioneer, eBay. Later, the company
launched a fixed-price marketplace business, zShops, in September 1999, and the now defunct
partnership with Sotheby's, called Sothebys.amazon.com, in November. Auctions and zShops
evolved into Amazon Marketplace, a service launched in November 2000 that let customers sell
used books, CDs, DVDs, and other products alongside new items. As of October 2014, Amazon
Marketplace is the largest of its kind, followed by similar marketplaces from Sears, Rakuten and
Newegg.
In August 2007, Amazon announced AmazonFresh, a grocery service
offering perishable and nonperishable foods. Customers could have orders delivered to their
homes at dawn or during a specified daytime window. Delivery was initially restricted to
residents of Mercer Island, Washington, and was later expanded to several ZIP codes in Seattle
proper. AmazonFresh also operated pick-up locations in the suburbs
of Bellevue and Kirkland from summer 2007 through early 2008.
In 2012, Amazon announced the launch of Vine.com for buying green products, including
groceries, household items, and apparel. It is part of Quidsi, the company that Amazon bought in
2010 that also runs the sites Diapers.com (baby), Wag.com (pets), and YoYo.com
(toys). Amazon also owns other e-commerce sites like Shopbop.com, Woot.com,
andZappos.com.
Amazon's Subscribe & Save program offers a discounted price on an item (usually sold in bulk),
free shipping on every Subscribe & Save shipment, and automatic shipment of the item every
one, two, three, or six months.
In 2013, Amazon launched its site in India, amazon.in. It has started with electronic goods and
plans to expand into fashion apparel, beauty, home essentials, and healthcare categories by the
end of 2013. In July 2014, Amazon had said it will invest $2 billion (Rs 12,000 crore) in India to
expand business, after its largest Indian rival Flipkart announced $1 billion in funding.
In 2014, Amazon sold 63% of all books bought online and 40% of all books sold overall.
Fulfillment by Amazon Small and Light is a service introduced in 2015 that will provide
fulfillment for small, light items from a center in Florence, Kentucky. The service will offer free
standard shipping for small, light, low-value items offered on the site by 3rd party sellers.
Amazon Prime
In 2005, Amazon announced the creation of Amazon Prime, a membership offering free two-day
shipping within the contiguous United States on all eligible purchases for a flat annual fee of $79
(equivalent to $95 in 2015), as well as discounted one-day shipping rates. Amazon launched the
program in Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom in 2007; in France (as "Amazon
Premium") in 2008, in Italy in 2011, and in Canada in 2013.
Amazon Prime membership in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States also
provides Amazon Instant Video, the instant streaming of selected movies and TV shows at no
additional cost. In November 2011, it was announced that Prime members have access to the
Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which allows users to borrow certain popular Kindle ebooks
for free reading on Kindle hardware, up to one book a month, with no due date.
In March 2014, Amazon announced an increase in the annual membership fee for Amazon
Prime, from $79 to $99. Shortly after this change, Amazon announced Prime Music, a service
whose members can get unlimited, ad-free streaming of over a million songs and access to
curated playlists. In November 2014, Amazon added Prime Photos, which allows unlimited
photo storage in the users' Amazon cloud drive.[162] In March 2015, Amazon is expanding that
service as a paid offering to cover other kinds of content, and to users outside of its loyalty
program. Unlimited Cloud Storage will let users get either unlimited photo storage or “unlimited
everything” — covering all kinds of media from videos and music through to PDF documents —
respectively for $11.99 or $59.99 per year.[163] Amazon also began offering free same-day
delivery to Prime members in 14 U.S. metropolitan areas in May 2015.
In April 2015, Amazon started a partnership with Audi and DHL in order to get deliveries on the
trunk of Audi cars. This project is only available on the Munich (Germany) area to some Audi
connected car users.
In July 2015, Amazon Prime announced that it would be signing Jeremy Clarkson, Richard
Hammond, and James May to begin working on a new car series due to be released in 2016.
Consumer electronics
In November 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Kindle, an e-book reader which downloads
content over "Whispernet", via Sprint's EV-DO wireless network. The screen uses E
Inktechnology to reduce battery consumption and to provide a more legible display. As of July
2014, there are over 2.7 million titles available for purchase at the Kindle Store.
In September 2011, Amazon announced its entry into the tablet computer market by introducing
the Kindle Fire, which runs a customized version of the operating system Android. The low
pricing of Fire ($199 USD) was widely perceived as a strategy backed by Amazon's revenue
from its content sales, to be stimulated by sales of the Fire.
In September 2012, Amazon unveiled the second generation tablet, called the Kindle Fire HD.
On September 25, 2013, Amazon.com unveiled its third generation tablet, called the Kindle Fire
HDX. In October 2013, the sixth generation Kindle was released.
In April 2014, Amazon announced its Amazon Fire TV set-top box system, a device targeted to
compete with such systems like Apple TV or Google's Chromecast device. The Amazon set-top
box allows for streaming videos from sites like Amazon's own streaming service as well as
others such as Netflix or Hulu. The device also supports voice search for movies, as well as
gaming, which includes special versions of Minecraft, Asphalt 8, and The Walking
Dead. Amazon announced the Fire TV Stick in October 2014. The device replicates much of the
functionality of the Fire TV.
The company entered the smartphone market in July 2014 with the release of the Fire Phone
Digital content
Amazon's Honor System was launched in 2001 to allow customers to make donations or buy
digital content, with Amazon collecting a percentage of the payment plus a fee; however, the
service was discontinued in 2008 and replaced byAmazon Payments.
Amazon Music, its own online music store, launched as Amazon MP3 in the US on September
25, 2007, selling downloads exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management. (In
addition to copyright law, Amazon's terms of useagreements restrict use of the MP3s, but
Amazon does not use digital rights management (DRM) to enforce those terms.) In addition to
independent music labels, Amazon MP3 primarily sells music from the "Big 4" record
labels: EMI,Universal, Warner Bros. Records, and Sony Music. Prior to the launch of this
service, Amazon made an investment in Amie Street, a music store with a variable pricing model
based on demand. Amazon MP3 was the first online offering of DRM-free music from all four
major record companies.
In January 2008, Amazon began distributing its MP3 service to subsidiary websites
worldwide and, in December 2008, Amazon MP3 was made available in the UK. At the launch
of Amazon MP3 in the UK, over 3 million Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free songs were
made available to consumers, with prices that started at 59p, compared to Apple's 79p starting
price.
In July 2010, Amazon announced that e-book sales for its Kindle reader outnumbered sales
of hardcover books for the first time ever during the second quarter of 2010. Amazon claims that,
during that period, 143 e-books were sold for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers
for which there is no digital edition; and during late June and early July, sales rose to 180 digital
books for every 100 hardcovers.
On March 22, 2011, Amazon launched the Amazon Appstore for Android devices and the
service was made available in over 200 countries. Also in 2011, Amazon announced that it was
releasing a Mac download store to offer dozens of games and hundreds of pieces of software for
Apple computers.
In January 2013, Amazon launched AutoRip, a digital music service. The service allows
customers to receive a free MP3 copy of select CDs purchased through Amazon. Amazon
announced in September 2013 that it would launch Kindle MatchBook in October 2013, a
similar service for books allowing customers who buy books from Amazon to acquire an e-book
copy for free, or at a discounted price of US$3 or less. MatchBook was launched on the
company's site on October 29, 2013.
Amazon Games
In October 2008, Amazon acquired game developer and distributor Reflexive
Entertainment. This studio continued to develop games for PC, Mac and Kindle eReaders under
the brands Reflexive and Amazon Digital Services. Notable titles include Every Word for Kindle
Paperwhite and Airport Mania for Kindle Fire, Android, iOS Windows and Mac.
In August 2012, Amazon announced it would be adding a gaming department to its company
titled Amazon Game Studios. Amazon stated that it would introduce "innovative, fun and well-
crafted games" to consumers. According to the Amazon Game Studios website, the last game
that was launched by the department was Amazon's first ever mobile game Air Patriots, released
on November 1, 2012.
On February 6, 2014, Amazon confirmed the acquisition of the gaming company Double Helix
Games without any indication of the financial terms. The 75 Double Helix employees were to
become Amazon employees and their Orange County, California, headquarters was to remain
their operating base. Amazon informed the TechCrunch media company that it "acquired Double
Helix as part of our [Amazon's] ongoing commitment to build innovative games for customers"
and confirmed that Double Helix's current game roster and other future developments will
receive support following the acquisition.
On August 25, 2014, Amazon announced its intent to acquire the video game streaming
website Twitch for $970 million. The acquisition of Twitch is expected to help Amazon drive
Internet traffic and potentially boost its Prime membership program, and promote its video ad
and Fire TV set top box business.
Amazon Art
In August 2013 Amazon launched Amazon Art as an online marketplace selling original and
limited edition fine art from selected galleries. The initial 40000 items listed for sale
included Norman Rockwell's painting Willie Gillis: Package from Home priced at $4.85
million, L'Enfant a la tasse by Claude Monet for $1.45 million and Andy Warhol's Sachiko for
$45 000.
Amazon Instant Video
Main articles: Amazon Instant Video, Amazon Instant Video UK and Amazon Instant Video
German
Amazon Instant Video is an Internet video on demand service by Amazon in the United States,
United Kingdom, Japan, Austria and Germany. There are plans to offer the video streaming
service in India sometime in 2015.
In 2015, the Prime Instant Video exclusive series Transparent earned two Golden Globe Awards,
and Transparent is the first series from a streaming service to win a Golden Globe for best series.
Private labels and exclusive marketing arrangements
In August 2005, Amazon began selling products under its own private label, "Pinzon";
the trademark applications indicated that the label would be used for textiles, kitchen utensils,
and other household goods. In March 2007, the company applied to expand the trademark to
cover a more diverse list of goods and to register a new design consisting of the "word PINZON
in stylized letters with a notched letter "O" which appears at the "one o'clock"
position". Coverage by the trademark grew to include items such as paints, carpets, wallpaper,
hair accessories, clothing, footwear, headgear, cleaning products, and jewelry. In September
2008, Amazon filed to have the name registered. USPTO has finished its review of the
application, but Amazon has yet to receive an official registration for the name.
AmazonBasics is a private-label product line, mainly consisting of consumer electronics
accessories, but also including home and office accessories. The line was launched in 2009.
An Amazon.com exclusive is a product, usually a DVD, that is available exclusively on
Amazon.com. Some DVDs are produced by the owner of the film or product, while others are
produced by Amazon.com itself. The DVDs produced by Amazon are made using its
"CreateSpace" program, in which DVDs are created, upon ordering, using DVD-R technology.
The DVDs are then shipped about two days later. Some DVDs (such as the Jersey Shore Season
1 or The UnusualsSeason 1) are released first as an Amazon.com exclusive for a limited time
before being released elsewhere. On May 23, 2011, Amazon.com allowed customers to
download Lady Gaga's Born This Way album for 99 cents, resulting in some downloads being
delayed, due to an extremely high volume of downloads.
Amazon self publishing services through one of its companies, CreateSpace, a member of the
Amazon group of companies.
Amazon Web Services
AWS Summit 2013 event in NYC.
Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002, which provides programmatic access
to latent features on its website.
In November 2005, Amazon began testing Amazon Mechanical Turk, an application
programming interface (API) allowing programs to dispatch tasks to human processors.
In March 2006, Amazon launched an online storage service called Amazon Simple Storage
Service (Amazon S3). An unlimited number of data objects, from 1 byte to 5 terabytes in size,
can be stored in S3 and distributed via HTTP or BitTorrent. The service charges monthly fees for
data stored and transferred. In 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Simple Queue
Service(Amazon SQS), a distributed queue messaging service, and product wikis (later folded
into Amapedia) and discussion forums for certain products using guidelines that follow
standard message board conventions.
Also in 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a virtual site
farm,[208] allowing users to use the Amazon infrastructure to run applications ranging from
running simulations to web hosting. In 2008, Amazon improved the service by adding Elastic
Block Store (EBS), offering persistent storage for Amazon EC2 instances and Elastic IP
addresses, and offering static IP addresses designed for dynamic cloud computing. Amazon
introduced SimpleDB, a database system, allowing users of its other infrastructure to utilize a
high-reliability, high-performance database system. In 2008, Amazon graduated EC2 from beta
to "Generally Available" and added support for the Microsoft Windows platform.
Amazon continues to refine and add services to AWS, adding such services as Scalable DNS
service (Amazon Route 53), payment handling, and AWS specific APIs for its Mechanical
Turk service.
In August 2012, Amazon announced Amazon Glacier, a low-cost online file storage web
service that provides reliable data archiving, storage, and backup.
In November 2012 at AWS' web developer conference in Las Vegas it announced it was
targeting large companies as cloud storage clients. It will further cut its S3 prices to customers
with long-term contracts in its "Redshift" storage service launching in 2013.
In March 2013 Amazon announced its Mobile Ads API for developers. The new Ads API can be
used on apps distributed on any Android platform as long as the app is also available on
Amazon’s Appstore.
As of December 2014, Amazon Web Services operated 1.4 Million servers across 11 regions and
28 availability zones.
New book content production
Amazon Publishing is Amazon's publishing unit. It is composed of AmazonEncore,
AmazonCrossing, Montlake Romance, Thomas & Mercer, 47 North, and Powered by Amazon.
Additional imprints are planned.
Launched in 2005, Amazon Shorts offered exclusive short stories and non-fiction pieces from
best-selling authors for immediate download. By June 2007, the program had over 1,700 pieces
and was adding about 50 new pieces per week. The program was discontinued on June 1, 2010.
Donations
Amazon also created "channels" to benefit certain causes. In 2004, Amazon allowed customers
to donate $5 to $200 to the campaigns of 2004 US presidential hopefuls, providing links that
raised $300,000 for the candidates.[213] Amazon has periodically reactivated a Red
Cross donation channel after crises such as Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, and the
2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. By January 2005, nearly 200,000 people had
donated over $15.7 million in the US.
Amazon Smile, accessed by going to smile.amazon.com when normally shopping, allows
Amazon to donate 0.5% of the sale price to a selected charity as its sponsor.
Amazon Local
Amazon Local is a daily deal service launched in June 2011 in Boise, Idaho. As of 2013,
Amazon Local offers daily deals to over 100 regions in 36 U.S. states. Amazon Local also acts as
a deal aggregator; some of the deals are actually offered through Living Social, a firm in which
Amazon has heavily invested.
It was launched gradually in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2012, starting in London and
expanding to more towns and cities.
Amazon Wireless
In July 2009, Amazon.com launched an Amazon Wireless website, which offers cellular devices
and service plans for Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile in the US.

AmazonFresh and Amazon Prime Pantry

AmazonFresh is a home grocery delivery service first trialed in 2007, and later made available
in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, California, San Diego, Brooklyn, New
York and Philadelphia, PA.
Amazon Prime Pantry is a similar service covering the 48 contiguous United States, allowing the
order of up to 45 pounds of dry goods and non-perishable groceries for a flat delivery fee.
Amazon Dash
Amazon Dash
On March 31, 2015, Amazon.com announced that it was expanding Amazon Dash to include an
Amazon Dash Button and an Amazon Replenishment Service.
Amazon Prime Air
60 Minutes announced on December 1, 2013 that Amazon Prime Air was a possible
future delivery service expected to be in development for several more years. In concept, the
process would use drones to deliver small packages (less than five pounds) within 30 minutes by
flying short distances (10–20 km) from local Amazon Fulfillment Centers. In the U.S., the
project will require the Federal Aviation Administration to approve commercial use of unmanned
drones.
Such approval could be in place as early as 2015, and Amazon expects to be ready at that
time.[225][226] In July 2014, it was revealed the company was developing its 8th and 9th drone
prototypes, some that could fly 50 miles an hour and carry 5-pound packages, and had applied to
the FAA to test them.
Prime Now
In December 2014, Amazon announced that as a benefit to Prime members, parts of Manhattan,
in New York City, could get products delivered to them within one hour for a fee of $7.99, or
within two hours for no additional fee. 25,000 daily essential products are available with this
delivery service. In February 2015, this service was extended to include all of Manhattan. It has
since been expanded to include parts of Miami, Baltimore, Dallas, Atlanta, Austindomestically,
and internationally to London and Birmingham, UK.
Amazon Supply
Amazon Supply, launched in 2012, offers industrial and scientific components and Maintenance,
Repair and Operations(MRO) supplies. Amazon Supply was developed based on experience
operating Smallparts.com, acquired in 2005. (The Smallparts.com brand was discontinued with
the launch of Amazon Supply.) While Amazon Supply uses the same order fulfillment and
distribution system as Amazon.com, its online retailer services customers in over 220 countries
worldwide.
Other services
An Amazon.com collection point at the White Rose Centre in Leeds,England.
In 2007, Amazon launched Amapedia, a now-defunct wiki for user-generated content to replace
ProductWiki, and the video on demand service Amazon Unbox.
Also in 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Vine, which allows reviewers free access to prerelease
products from vendors in return for posting a review, as well as a payment service specifically
targeted at developers, Amazon FPS.
IMDb and Amazon launched a website called SoundUnwound for browsing music metadata with
wiki-like user contribution in September 2007; this data was also used for Amazon's Artist
Pages. Soundunwound ceased existence on June 18, 2012, and the site redirected to Amazon.
Amazon Connect enables authors to post remarks on their book pages to customers.
Amazon Webstore allows businesses to create custom e-commerce websites using Amazon
technology. Sellers can select the category ( and keywords) for their business, and pay a
commission of 1-2%, plus credit-card processing fees and fraud protection, and a subscription
fee which ranges from $0 to $39.99 per month depending on the bundle option for an unlimited
number of listings.[237] Amazon has chosen very few companies to become an implementation
solution provider: They are Qlick Cart, 4C Media, Absolute Web tores,atmosol, e atalog, Explore
Consulting, Go eb aby, Kaushalam, KLoc Technologies, Luxor Design, SynapseIndia, and V
Group. These companies encourage traders to have their own webstore with easy guidance and
solutions.
In August 2014, Amazon launched a credit card reader. Merchants can use it to conduct
payments through a smartphone or tablet.
In 2014, Amazon launched a feature called "make an offer" that allows customers to place a bid
to 3rd party sellers, rather than buy outright. However, unlike eBay, the feature is not an auction
but rather a one-to-one bid where the customer haggles privately with the seller.
In January 2015, Amazon announced its own email and scheduling service dubbed WorkMail
developed by Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing unit of Amazon Inc. The Amazon
email service is expected to bring in $10 billion extra revenue to the company.
In March 2015, Amazon launched a new on-demand service, Amazon Home Services for all
sorts of housework.
In April 2015, Amazon rolled out a new travel site called Amazon Destinations, which focuses
on helping customers find "getaway destinations" within driving distance of their homes.
Currently Amazon Destinations features hotel selections in three U.S. metro areas: L.A., New
York and Seattle.
Website
The domain amazon.com attracted at least 615 million visitors annually by 2008, twice the
number of Walmart. Amazon attracts approximately 65 million customers to its US website per
month. The company has also invested heavily on a massive amount of server capacity for its
website, especially to handle the excessive traffic during the December Christmas holiday
season.
Results generated by Amazon's search engine are partly determined by promotional fees.
Reviews
Amazon.com controversies § Amazon reviews
Amazon allows users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. Reviewers must rate
the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Amazon provides a badging option for
reviewers which indicate the real name of the reviewer (based on confirmation of a credit card
account) or which indicate that the reviewer is one of the top reviewers by popularity. Customers
may comment or vote on the reviews, indicating whether they found a review helpful to them. If
a review is given enough "helpful" hits, it appears on the front page of the product. In 2010,
Amazon was reported as being the largest single source of Internet consumer reviews.
When publishers asked Bezos why Amazon would publish negative reviews, he defended the
practice by claiming that amazon.com was "taking a different approach ... we want to make
every book available—the good, the bad, and the ugly ... to let truth loose".
Although reviews are attributed to the credit-card name of the reviewer, there have been cases of
positive reviews being written and posted by a public relations company on behalf of its
clients, and instances of writers using pseudonyms to leave negative reviews of their rivals'
works.
Following the listing of Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson, a
disparaging biography of Michael Jackson by Randall Sullivan, his fans, organized via social
media as "Michael Jackson's Rapid Response Team to Media Attacks" boB. Com (Hons)rded
Amazon with negative reviews and negative ratings of positive reviews.
Content search
"Search Inside the Book" is a feature which allows customers to search for keywords in the full
text of many books in the catalog. The feature started with 120,000 titles (or 33 million pages of
text) on October 23, 2003. There are currently about 300,000 books in the program. Amazon has
cooperated with around 130 publishers to allow users to perform these searches.
To avoid copyright violations, amazon.com does not return the computer-readable text of the
book. Instead, it returns a picture of the matching page, instructs the web browser to disable
printing, and puts limits on the number of pages in a book a single user can access. Additionally,
customers can purchase online access to some of the same books via the "Amazon Upgrade"
program.
Third-party sellers
Amazon derives many of its sales from third-party sellers who sell products on Amazon (around
40% in 2008). Associates receive a commission for referring customers to Amazon by placing
links to Amazon on their websites, if the referral results in a sale. Worldwide, Amazon has "over
900,000 members" in its affiliate programs. According toW3Techs the Amazon Affiliate
Program is used by 1.2% of all websites, and it is the second most popular advertising network
after Google Ads. It is frequently used by websites and non-profits to provide a way for
supporters to earn them commission. Amazon reported over 1.3 million sellers sold products
through Amazon's websites in 2007. Unlike eBay, Amazon sellers do not have to maintain
separate payment accounts; all payments are handled by Amazon.
Associates can access the Amazon catalog directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web
Services (AWS) XMLservice. A new affiliate product, aStore, allows Associates to embed a
subset of Amazon products within another website, or linked to another website. In June 2010,
Amazon Seller Product Suggestions was launched (rumored to be internally called "Project
Genesis") to provide more transparency to sellers by recommending specific products to third-
party sellers to sell on Amazon. Products suggested are based on customers' browsing history.
Amazon sales rank
The Amazon sales rank (ASR) provides an indication of the popularity of a product sold on any
Amazon locale. It is a relative indicator of popularity that is updated hourly. Effectively, it is a
"best sellers list" for the millions of products stocked by Amazon. While the ASR has no direct
effect on the sales of a product, it is used by Amazon to determine which products to include in
its best-sellers lists. Products that appear in these lists enjoy additional exposure on the Amazon
website, and this may lead to an increase in sales. In particular, products that experience large
jumps (up or down) in their sales ranks may be included within Amazon's lists of "movers and
shakers"; such a listing provides additional exposure that might lead to an increase in sales. For
competitive reasons, Amazon does not release actual sales figures to the public. However,
Amazon has now begun to release point of sale data via the Nielsen BookScan service to verified
authors. While the ASR has been the source of much speculation by publishers, manufacturers
and marketers, Amazon itself does not release the details of its sales rank calculation algorithm.
In addition, it states:
Please keep in mind that our sales rank figures are simply meant to be a guide of general interest
for the customer and not definitive sales information for publishers—we assume you have this
information regularly from your distribution sources
—Amazon.com Help,
Amazon technology
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Information Management (IM) support
Amazon’s business strategy. The core technology that keeps Amazon running is Linux-based. As
of 2005, Amazon had the world’s three largest Linux databases, with capacities of 7.8 TB, 18.5
TB, and 24.7 TB. The central data warehouse of Amazon is made of 28 Hewlett Packard servers
with four CPUs per node running Oracle database software. Amazon’s technology architecture
handles millions of back-end operations every day, as well as queries from more than half a
million third-party sellers. With hundreds of thousands of people sending their credit card
numbers to Amazon’s servers every day, security becomes a major concern. Amazon employs
Netscape Secure Commerce Server using the Secure Socket Layer protocol which stores all
credit card details in a separate database. The company also records data on customer buyer
behavior which enables them to offer or recommend to an individual specific item, or bundles of
items based upon preferences demonstrated through purchases or items visited.
On January 31, 2013 Amazon experienced an outage that lasted approximately 49 minutes,
leaving its site inaccessible to some customers.
On May 5, 2014 Amazon unveiled a partnership with Twitter. Twitter users can link their
accounts to an Amazon account and automatically add items to their shopping carts by
responding to any tweet with an Amazon product link bearing the hashtag #AmazonCart.
Customers never leave the Twitter feed, and the product is waiting for them when they go to the
Amazon website.
Multi-level sales strategy
Amazon employs a multi-level e-commerce strategy. Amazon started off by focusing on
Business-to-Consumer relationships between itself and its customers, and Business-to-Business
relationships between itself and its suppliers but it then moved to incorporate Customer-to-
Business transactions as it realized the value of customer reviews as part of the product
descriptions. It now also facilitates customer to customer with the provision of the Amazon
marketplace which act as an intermediary to facilitate consumer to consumer transactions. The
company lets almost anyone sell almost anything using its platform. In addition to affiliate
program that lets anybody post Amazon links and earn a commission on click through sales,
there is now a program which let those affiliates build entire websites based on Amazon’s
platform.
Some other large e-commerce sellers use Amazon to sell their products in addition to selling
them through their own websites. The sales are processed through Amazon.com and end up at
individual sellers for processing and order fulfillment and Amazon leases space for these
retailers. Small sellers of used and new goods go to Amazon Marketplace to offer goods at a
fixed price. Amazon also employs the use of drop shippers or meta sellers. These are members or
entities that advertise goods on Amazon who order these goods direct from other competing
websites but usually from other Amazon members. These meta sellers may have millions of
products listed, have large transaction numbers and are grouped alongside other less prolific
members giving them credibility as just someone who has been in business for a long time.
Markup is anywhere from 50% to 100% and sometimes more, these sellers maintain that items
are in stock when the opposite is true. As Amazon increases their dominance in the marketplace
these drop shippers have become more and more commonplace in recent years.
Revenue
Over the 2000-2010 decade, Amazon has developed a customer base of around 30 million
people. Amazon.com is primarily a retail site with a sales revenue model. Amazon makes its
money by taking a small percentage of the sale price of each item that is sold through its website.
Amazon also allows companies to advertise their products by paying to be listed as featured
products.
Controversies
Amazon.com controversies
Since its founding, the company has attracted criticism and controversy from multiple sources
over its actions. These include: luring customers away from the site's brick and mortar
competitors, poor warehouse conditions for workers; anti-unionization efforts; Amazon Kindle
remote content removal; taking public subsidies; its "1-Click patent" claims; anti-competitive
actions; price discrimination; various decisions over whether to censor or publish content such as
the WikiLeakswebsite; LGBT book sales rank; and works containing libel,
facilitating dogfight, cockfight, or pedophile activities. In December 2011, Amazon faced
backlash from small businesses for running a one-day deal to promote its new Price Check app.
Shoppers who used the app to check prices in a brick-and-mortar store were offered a 5%
discount to purchase the same item from Amazon.[283] Companies like Groupon, eBay, and
Taap.it countered Amazon's promotion by offering $10 off from their products. The company
has also faced accusations of putting undue pressure on suppliers to maintain and extend its
profitability. One effort to squeeze the most vulnerable book publishers was known within the
company as the Gazelle Project, after Bezos suggested, according to Brad Stone, "that Amazon
should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle." In July
2014 the Federal Trade Commission launched a lawsuit against the company alleging it was
promoting in-app purchases to children, which were being transacted without parental consent.
Sales and use taxes
Amazon tax
Poor working conditions
Amazon has attracted widespread criticism by both current and former employees, as well as the
media and politicians for poor working conditions. In 2011 it was publicized that at the
Breinigsville, Pennsylvania warehouse, workers had to carry out work in 100 °F (38 °C) heat,
resulting in employees becoming extremely uncomfortable and suffering from dehydration and
collapse. Loading-bay doors were not opened to allow in fresh air as "managers were worried
about theft". Amazon's initial response was to pay for an ambulance to sit outside on call to cart
away overheated employees.
Some workers, "pickers", who travel the building with a trolley and a handheld scanner
"picking" customer orders can walk up to 15 miles during their workday, and if they fall behind
on their targets, they can be reprimanded. The handheld scanners feed back to the employee real-
time information on how fast or slowly they are going' the scanners also serve to allow Team
Leads and Area Managers to track the specific locations of employees and how much "idle time"
they gain when not working. In a German television report broadcast in February 2013,
journalists Diana Löbl and Peter Onneken conducted a covert investigation at the distribution
center of Amazon in the town of Bad Hersfeld in the German state ofHessen. The report
highlights the behavior of some of the security guards, themselves being employed by a third
party company, who apparently either had a Neo-nazi background or deliberately dressed in
Neo-Nazi apparel, and who were intimidating foreign and temporary female workers at its
distribution centres. The third party security company involved was delisted by Amazon as a
business contact shortly after that report.
In March 2015, it was reported in The Verge that Amazon will be removing 18 month long non-
compete clauses from its US employment contracts for hourly-paid workers, after criticism that it
was acting unreasonably in preventing such employees from finding other work. Even short-term
temporary workers have to sign contracts that prohibit them from working at any company where
they would "directly or indirectly" support any good or service that competes with those they
helped support at Amazon, for 18 months after leaving Amazon, even if they are fired or made
redundant.
A substantial New York Times article published on August 16, 2015 described evidence of an
intimidating and confrontational working culture for the company's office workers.
Lobbying
Amazon.com lobbies the United States federal government and state governments on issues such
as the enforcement of sales taxes on online sales, transportation safety, privacy and data
protection, and intellectual property. According to regulatory filings, Amazon.com focuses its
lobbying on the US Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal
Reserve. Amazon.com spent $500,000 on lobbying in the second quarter of 2010, $630,000 in
the first quarter of 2011, and $450,000 in the second quarter of that year.
Amazon.com was a corporate member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
until it dropped membership following protests at its shareholders' meeting May 24, 2012.
The initiative Choice in eCommerce was founded on May 8, 2013 by several online retailers in
Berlin, Germany. The cause was, in the view of the initiative, sales bans and online restrictions
by individual manufacturers. The dealers felt cut off from their main sales channel and thus
deprived them the opportunity to use online platforms like Amazon, eBay or Rakuten in a
competitive market for the benefit of their customers.
In 2014, Amazon expanded its lobbying practices as it prepared to lobby the Federal Aviation
Administration to approve its drone delivery program, hiring the powerful Akin Gump Strauss
Hauer & Feld lobbying firm in June
OBJECTIVE OF

THE STUDY
 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
An objective is the most important part of a research .The objective is the bull’s eye,

which a researcher has to hit. The objective determines the path on which a researcher

has to walk on, and help him/her by not deveining from the path.

 To analyse brand loyalty of Consumer towards the company’s products range.

 Analyse consumer satisfaction for after sales service provided by Amazon.

 Analyse the Consumer behaviour in online marketing (Amazon) .

 To get aware with the procedure of marketing department.

 To know organizational structure and specifically marketing department.

 To analyze the awareness of customer of Amazon

 SCOPE OF STUDY
The scope formulation is the first step to a successful Research process. Project undertaken the

problem of analyzing the consumer behaviour towards Amazon in Amazon

IMPORTANCE AND USE OF THE STUDY

To keep things in mind that as the ever changing competitive business environment. New

thoughts and ideas should pour into its, Research & Development to innovate its existing

products which should be beyond competitors comprehension.

This study enables the user with answer to formulate an effective marketing mix strategy with a

broader prospective to tap areas where it did not feel the need earlier, hence the decision of

whether to penetrate this section or not can be found out at the end of the data analysis.

It also gives an idea of the potential of our business in the future & the fluctuation in prices from

time to time & from product to product.

Special reference is made to the improvement of ability of product in terms of packaging&

product innovations & advertisement always means to cut down competitors.

 RESEARCH

METHODOLOGY
 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

This chapter aims to understand the research methodology establishing a framework of

evaluation and revaluation of primary and secondary research. The techniques and concepts used

during primary research in order to arrive at findings; which are also dealt with and lead to a

logical deduction towards the analysis and results

RESEARCH DESIGN

The research design applied here was exploratory research

Exploratory Research is one in we don’t know about the problem, we have to find about the

problem and then work on solving the problem. Whereas in case of descriptive research, we

know the problem, we just have to find the solution to the problem. Generally descriptive

research design is applied after exploratory research design.

Here after doing the secondary research, we found the general perception about the retail baking

but then in second phase we tried to figure out where the difference lies and on what basis the

banks differ from each other

RESEARCH TOOL

Research tool

The purpose is to first conduct a intensive secondary research to understand the full impact and

implication of the industry, to review and critique the industry norms and reports, on which

certain issues shall be selected, which remain unanswered , this shall be further taken up in the

next stage of secondary research. This stage shall help to restrict and select only the important

question and issue, which inhabit growth and segmentation in the industry.

DATA COLLECTION:

Both primary and secondary data have been collected very vigorously

Secondary data: it is collected by the study of various reports. The reports studied under

secondary data. Primary Data was taken with questionnaire

THE RESEARCH REPORT

The report is the result of a survey which was undertaken in Amazon, Lucknow. The

objectives of the project has been fulfilled by getting response from the customer associated to

these segments through a personal interview in the form of a questionnaire. The responses

available through the questionnaire are used to evaluate the consumer satisfaction and consumer

behaviour for the products of Amazon and the willingness of the customer to purchase its

products on future.

The project also covers an analysis of the switch over of customers to competitors

products in the market.

 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

The problem formulation is the first step to a successful Research

process. Project undertaken the problem of analyzing the consumer behaviour

towards Amazon

THE RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

Based on the problem the objective of the research is divided into two

which are as follows:

Primary Objective:

 To analyse consumer behaviour towards the company’s products range.

Secondary Objective:

 Analyse consumer satisfaction for different Amazon products.

 Analyse the Consumer behaviour of Amazon.

 THE RESEARCH DESIGN
The research design used in the project is exploratory design. The investigation
is carried upon the customers in Amazon, Lucknow. The reason for choosing this design is to
get responses from the customers so that their buying behaviour about the products of the
company and their loyalty could be predicted.

THE DATA SOURCE

The data has been taken from two sources

 Primary data source

The primary data source has been collected through questionnaire by personally interviewing
each respondent on a number of queries structured in a questionnaire.
 Secondary data source
Secondary data was collected from following sources
Prior research reports
Websites
Books
Newspaper
Personal consultation

THE AREA OF WORK

The field work is conducted in the Amazon, Lucknow in various Places like
Mall, Showroom and retailers situated in different location all over the city.

THE SAMPLE SIZE

 The sample size consists of 100 units out of which the most logical and non
biased response are selected thus the sample size is taken out to be 100 units.
LIMITATION
 LIMITATION
Though, best efforts have been made to make the study fair, transparent and error
free. But there might be some inevitable and inherent limitations. Though outright measure are
undertaken to make the report most accurate.
The limitation of the survey are narrated below:
 The project is valid for Amazon, Lucknow only.
 It was not possible to cover each and every respondent due to time constrains.
 There may be some biased response form the respondents
 Some respondents did not provide the full data.
 Unwillingness on the part of the customers to disclose the information as per the questionnaire.
 The decisiveness on the part of the customers regarding some question hence difficulty faced in
recording and analyzing the data.
 DATA ANALYSIS

AND INTERPRETATION
 DATA ANALYSIS

1. Do you like the idea of purchasing Amazon product?

Yes 87

No 13

13%

87%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION

87% respondent said that they have idea of purchasing Amazon product but 13%

are not
2. Have you ever purchase product of Amazon ?

Yes 77

No 23

23%

77%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION

77% respondent said that they have ever purchase product of Amazon but 23% are

not
3. What helps you to decide which product of Amazon you purchase ?

TV Advertisement 23

Personal recommendation 36

Special offer 11

Radio advertising 17

News paper 7

Word of mouth 6

7% 6% 23%
17%

11%
36%

TV Advertisement Personal recommendation

Special offer Radio advertising
News paper Word of mouth

INTERPRETATION

23% respondent said that they decide to purchase the product of Amazon by TV

advertisement, 36 personal recommendation, 11% special offer, 17% radio

advertising, 7% from News paper and 6% word of mouth.

4. How frequently you see advertisement of Amazon ?

Weekly 27

Monthly 37

daily 27

None 19

17% 25%

25%
33%

Weekly Monthly daily None

INTERPRETATION

25% respondent said that they have see advertisement of Amazon weekly, 33%

monthly, 25% daily, but 17% none.

5. For which one of the following purpose you visit in your product ?

Purchasing brand goods 57

Purchasing local goods 23

Only gathering information 11

Others 9

9%
11%

57%
23%

Purchasing brand goods Purchasing local goods

Only gathering information Others

INTERPRETATION

57% respondent said that they have purpose to visit product purchasing brand

goods, 23% purchasing local goods, 11% only gathering information and 9%

others.
6. What according to you are attractive features that buy Amazon product?

Quality 32

Services 49

Performance 19

19%
32%

49%

Quality Services performance

INTERPRETATION

32% respondent said that they have attractive features that buy Amazon product

Quality, 49% services, 19% performance.

7 Are you satisfy with Amazon product?

Yes 91

No 9

9%

91%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION

91% respondent said that they satisfied buy 9% no.

8. Do according to you Amazon have changed the way the Consumer behavior

towards online marketing?

Yes 71

No 29

29%

71%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION

71% respondent said that Amazon product have changed the way the Consumer

behavior towards online marketing Yes but 29% said no.

9. Do you suggest Amazon product to others

Yes 89

No 11

11%

89%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION

89% respondent said that they suggest Amazon product to others yes but 11 said

no.
10. How will you rate your present Amazon performance?

Poor 7

Satisfactory 23

Fair 27

Good 21

Very good 13

Excellent 9

9% 7%
13%
23%

21%
27%

Poor Satisfactory Fair Good Very good Excellent

INTERPRETATION

7% respondent said that they rate your present Amazon performance poor, 23%

satisfactory, 27% fair, 21% good, 13% very good, 9% excellent.

FINDINGS
 FINDINGS
 87% respondent said that they have idea of purchasing Amazon product but 13% are not
 77% respondent said that they have ever purchase product of Amazon but 23% are not
 23% respondent said that they decide to purchase the product of Amazon by TV
advertisement, 36 personal recommendation, 11% special offer, 17% radio advertising,
7% from News paper and 6% word of mouth.
 25% respondent said that they have see advertisement of Amazon weekly, 33% monthly,
25% daily, but 17% none.
 57% respondent said that they have purpose to visit product purchasing brand goods,
23% purchasing local goods, 11% only gathering information and 9% others.
 32% respondent said that they have attractive features that buy Amazon Quality, 49%
Economy, 19% performance.
 91% respondent said that they satisfied buy 9% no.
 71% respondent said that Amazon have changed the way the Consumer behavior towards
telecom product Yes but 29% said no.
 89% respondent said that they suggest Amazon to others yes but 11 said no.
 7% respondent said that they rate your present Amazon product performance poor, 23%
satisfactory, 27% fair, 21% good, 13% very good, 9% excellent.
SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATION
 SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATION

The recommendations are

 The brand loyalty for more Amazon can be increased if the Quality and

appearance of the products are given due attention because Amazon has

captured a major online market.

CONCLUSION
 CONCLUSION

 There has been drastic change in Online shopping in India. The change in

consumers‟ product and service requirements and the explosion of

growth in the ecommerce world has made it tougher for e-commerce sites

to attract the critical mass of visitors needed to stay in business.

 The study revealed that clothing was the most preferred product which the

consumers intended to buy from of Amazon.in.

 Most of the consumers were satisfied with almost all services of the

amazon.in. The best service offered by amazon. in was the „Orders are

protectively packed‟.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS AUTHORS

 Marketing Management : Philip Kotler

 Marketing Research : D. D. Sharma

 Research Methodology : C. R. Kothari

 Websites

 www.Amazon.com

 www.google.com
ANNEXURE
 QUESTIONNIARE

Q1) Do you like the idea of purchasing product of Amazon ?

( a) Yes ( b) No

Q2) Have you ever purchase product of Amazon ?

( a) Yes ( b) No

Q3) What helps you to decide which product of cement you purchase?

( a) TV Advertisement ( b) Personal recommendation ( c) Special offer

( d) Radio advertising ( e) News paper ( f) Word of mouth

Q4) How frequently you made a purchase Amazon product ?

( a) Weekly ( b) Monthly ( c) Quarterly ( d) None

Q5) For which one of the following purpose you visit in your product ?

( a) Purchasing brand goods

(b) Purchasing local goods

(c) Only gathering information

(d) Others

Q6) What according to you are attractive features that buy Amazon ?

(a) Quality (b) Economy (c) performance

Q7) Are you satisfy with Amazon Product ?

(a) Yes (b) No

Q8) Do according to you Amazon have changed the way the Consumer behavior towards

online marketing?

(a) Yes (b) No

Q9.Do you suggest Amazon product to others

 Yes

 No

Q10. How will you rate your present Amazon performance?

 Poor

 Satisfactory

 Fair

 Good

 Very good

 Excellent