years of his career was his ability to balance complex logic with easy articulation of his thoughts. Over time he became a specialist in researching business opportunities in the insurance, software, and ultimately Internet-based markets (Quittner, 4). It was this specialty that would lead him to investigate the commercial exploitation of the Internet.
While originally created by the Defense Department, until 1994, the Internet (then it was still called the "World-Wide-Web") had been an essentially "commerce-free" environment. Bezos determined very early on that he could become a "first-mover" in a business model that utilized this new medium of communication (i.e., eBusiness) and embarked on research to determine which products sold well on a mail order basis. He believed that if a product sold well in this environment, it would do well in an on-line arena. He also looked for where he could create or add value to the customer experience. In order to support his vision, he investigated the top-twenty (20) mail order products paying particular attention to how he could add to, or create, a strong value proposition.
For Bezos, the "value add" in his model was to be something that the customer truly wanted such as ease of selection, low price, or some other base level "need." Without a significant value boost for the customer, there would be too much of a tendency to simply do things in the "old way" (Quittner, 4). For Bezos, the basis for the business model was simply to determi
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