Amazon.com

While Amazon.com ships more than one billion dollars worth of products annually, it has yet to make a dime for investors in profits. However, even though it has less market share than Barnes & Noble, which makes money for investors, its stock market value has surpassed Barnes & Noble's. The contention of this analysis is that the unique vision of the founder, Jeffrey P. Bezos, revolutionary merchandising and distribution methods, and expensive and effective marketing strategies have been the primary causes behind Amazon.com's success. However, the analysis also contends that the utopia-like E-Commerce firm must accept some dystopia realities, or we will likely see it go from being the darling of investors to the basement of Wall Street.

An introduction to the paradox of Amazon.com, a company that is the darling of Wall Street investors with a stock market value higher than Barnes & Noble, even though it has never shown a profit.

A brief biography on Bezos' background, and his experience with real revolution.

A summary of the vision that allowed Bezos to power Amazon.com to its present day stock market height.

The revolutionary business model used by Amazon.com will be discussed, including its lack of need for inventory, warehousing, and its unique distribution methods.

retail sites to move product "Amazon offers an easily searchable trove of 3.1 million titles�15 times more than any bookstore on the planet and without the costly overhead of multimillion-dollar buildings and scads of store clerks. That paves the way for each of its 1,600 employees to generate, on average, $375,000 in annual revenues�more than triple that of No. 1 bricks-and-mortar bookseller Barnes & Noble Inc.'s 27,000 employees" (Hof, Neuborne and Green 1). Amazon.com developed other innovating methods of retailing online, but with other products. They now merchandise videos, music, gifts, and a host of other products because Bezos appears determined to make Amazon.com the leading E-tailer. Within the time span of one full quarter of selling CDs to the public, Amazon.com was able to surpass the Internet's leading CD seller up to then, Cdnow, Inc.. The paradox is that no matter how much Amazon.com seems to sell, they are not making any money. Their market value is phenomenal, and many argue that this represents the optimism of investors when it comes to the future of retailing on the Internet as much as it has to do with Amazon.com. Nonetheless, the results have been attractive to the most wary investor: In nearly the b