Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)

AMZN 243.15

-1.3%

1:15 PM EST

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To: George Gotch who wrote (48102)	3/30/1999 12:11:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) of 164684

The market is about sales, not earnings. AMZN has bitten off a huge debt and they MUST grow into several aspects of Internet sales to justify it. On-line auctions are just a part of it. This strategy makes perfect sense given the market conditions and the limited focus of the media. If you measure success in terms of stock price, then Amazon has already made it. If it were my company or I worked there and had stock options, I would think this strategy is just great. --------- I visited Amazon's auction site and have a mixed impression. The site looks characteristic of Amazon - is easy on the eyes and the categories are logical. But I'm not very impressed with how products are grouped. All the products in a category are just lumped together with no order to them. This may not appear to be much of a problem initially and is similar to the way eBay does things. But when Amazon's auction site grows to include many more items, wading through an endless list becomes cumbersome. I do like the ease of bringing existing customers into the system - single click bidding. And getting set up to place an item for bid looks well organized and easy. Perhaps my biggest complaint with the auction site thus far is that there is nothing there that I found to be compelling to buy. On-Sale has a better choice of computer stuff at better prices, www.pricewatch.com gets you better deals without the bidding hassle and numerous other sites offer more selection and better prices on other items. Then I looked at Amazon's fees for hosting the service. They range from a total of about 6% to 2%. That seems reasonable to sellers and will help to attract participation. What surprised me a bit, although it is too early to tell, is that there were only a few bids that have been placed. All those zero bids don't yet add up to the kind of buying enthusiasm that sellers hope for. If the site doesn't catch fire it won't meet the threshold that makes the bidding process a success. But Amazon does have an incredible tract record and around 8 million registered customers. That doesn't compare to eBay's four million direct customers plus the 16 million AOL registered users but the ease with which Amazon customers can enter the process and the $250 no fraud guarantee should help to even the game. The no fraud guarantee seems to be directly targeted toward the Achilles' heal of eBay. Their unregulated approach to business can be attacked by the warm and fuzzy giant of ecommerce. (Bezos is a funny, cuddly kinda guy, isn't he?)

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