What is Amazon Prime

Amazon.com, Inc. is an American international electronic commerce company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, VHSs, CDs, video and MP3 downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. The company also produces consumer electronics notably the Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire tablet computer and is a major provider of cloud computing services Amazon Prime is a membership shipping program for the Amazon online store. Registration of £49, which is the membership fee, makes you eligible for shipping of purchases from Amazon. Two-day shipping is free while one-day shipping costs $3.99 per item. You can visit the Amazon website to learn more or sign up. 1995,The Company was renamed after the Amazon River, one of the largest rivers in the worlds which in turn was named after the Amazons, the legendary nation of female warriors in

Greek mythology. It is a shipping membership In addition, Kindle owners who have an Amazon Prime membership can "check-out" books for free and aren't bound by due dates (this borrowing service is provided through Kindle Owners' Lending Library).

This service is currently limited to one book a month Amazon Prime also has a free trial for new users to be able to learn about the service. This allows a user to test the various features of Amazon Prime for a limited time without paying the subscription fee. To sign up for the Amazon Prime free trial, your Amazon account must have a current, valid credit card. Payment options such as an Amazon.com line of credit, Amazon.com Brand Business Cards, checking accounts, pre-paid credit cards, or gift cards cannot be used.

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 builds 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. The resulting damage to a supply and demand marketplace remains to be seen but advertising contracts with large search engines eliminating smaller websites from overall exposure these practices should have a negative effect on the industry on the whole.