Amazon turns 30 – but apart from books and e-readers, is it good for the world?

Of the Big Tech giants that dominate stock market valuations and headlines, Amazon is the one with which I have the least in common. I have a subscription to Audible, Amazon’s audiobook subscription service, and regularly
buy e-books through this site and read them on my aging Kindle. I love both sites. But Amazon is not an e-commerce force in New Zealand, after 30 years of operation it is elsewhere in the world.

The e-commerce giant doesn’t have a presence here, which would allow it to offer its wildly popular Prime subscription with free two-day shipping. That’s why Kiwis are choosing to shop selectively at Australian and US Amazon stores, fearing shipping fees and long delivery times.

In the US alone, Prime membership, priced at $139 per year, is expected to reach a staggering 180 million subscribers this year. Free shipping is why US Prime customers spend an average of $110 per month on Amazon compared to $38 for non-members.

When you can buy one box of coffee and have it delivered to your door the next day at no additional cost, U.S. consumers have become accustomed to receiving multiple deliveries per week.

Our retailers fear the day when Amazon builds the giant distribution warehouses here that it currently has in Sydney and Melbourne. No one can match the purchasing power and logistics of Amazon, which has dwarfed US heavyweights like Walmart and Target in terms of revenue and influence. (Read more about the response from New Zealand bookstores.)

Founder Jeff Bezos started Amazon in a Seattle garage on July 4, 1994, to make it easier to buy books online. This noble goal evolved into Amazon’s vision to become the world’s largest retailer of everything.

The company is a true disruptor, driven by Bezos’ laser focus on “adding value” to customers’ lives. E-commerce was too complicated, so Amazon pioneered one-click shopping. It invented the Kindle to bring books into the digital age, and more than a decade ago it introduced the smart assistant Alexa to make it easier to browse the web and check your calendar using a little gadget, the Echo. The company is one of the most valuable in the world, and Bezos, who stepped away from the day-to-day running of the company in 2021, is one of the richest people in the world, depending on Amazon’s stock price on any given day. Amazon hired more than 1.5 million people last year, most of them in its massive distribution centers, but it is trying to replace many of them with robots.

The consumerism that Amazon encourages with free shipping and one-click shopping has created what critics say is a sustainability nightmare. The area of ​​its business with the greatest growth potential is Amazon Web Services (AWS), which uses energy-intensive data centers around the world to store data and applications. On-premises data centers are planned for Auckland, and AWS already does big business in New Zealand, generating a reported $385 million in 2023. With AI services requiring more computer processing power, AWS has its work cut out as it tries to meet its climate pledge with 2019 “to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2040”.

Many hate Amazon for what it represents – low-cost, large-scale retail that encourages consumption and with which boutiques cannot compete. It has monopoly aspects that are the subject of antitrust lawsuits.

But you have to tip your hat to Bezos, who has now set his sights on his rocket company, Blue Origin. He built the world’s largest e-commerce operation and revolutionized retail around the world.