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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: llamaphlegm who wrote (21148)	10/11/1998 4:37:00 PM
From: Randy Ellingson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

One (by itself insignificant) more data point: During my regular checkup with my dentist, and not discussing stocks but rather Alaska (here in Colorado) he told me he's reading a good book on crab fishing in the Bering Sea. We'd been talking about his PC: he's not a web or PC natural, but I helped him get connected to the net several months ago. His machine is painfully slow (W95 on a P60 w/ 8Mb RAM, 14.4 modem). He says "I bought the book on the web" and follows my query as to where with "Amazon.com. Pretty nifty store they've got set up there." It's impressive to me that he uses his PC at all, and that he gets on the internet at all (very slow loading any page, let alone getting the browser open). But even moreso that 'they' got him to go to Amazon and buy a book. FWIW, I know a couple others who've led themselves to Amazon, and so far nobody who's shopped the others. I've shopped Amazon a couple times. I agree it's easy. I'm certain their competitors have attractive and functional web sites as well, but I'll likely stay with Amazon unless they let me down in a big way. Just as with shopping (primarily for work-related purchases) at NECX Direct, the convenience of a known site and single location shopping is worth the few dollars I could save by shopping around. I do own a few shares of Amazon, which undoubtedly biases me. Regardless, any substantial success AMZN sees over the coming years won't be due to my purchases or anyone else's but to their own jump start and execution. Same but opposite goes for their failure. BTW, I have not noticed as much radio advertising the past couple months. Anyone else notice an increase or decrease? Have they ever advertised on TV? Randy

To: llamaphlegm who wrote (21148)	10/11/1998 6:09:00 PM
From: Bill Harmond	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

I don't think the most affluent (in broad terms) components of society are really on the web yet. When the Web starts penetrating the 55+ crowd more deeply, then I'd be more comfortable saying that.

To: llamaphlegm who wrote (21148)	10/12/1998 2:08:00 AM
From: e. boolean	Respond to of 164684

>>Of those who made purchases online in the first six months of 1998, 71 percent are men and 29 percent are women--the same ratio that existed last year. This is a critical statistic that is completely overlooked by the optimists. They are assuming that at some point women will be flocking to shop their e-mail-order houses, stay "loyal" because of the superiority of the "experience" they offer, and not do comparison shopping that takes them away to other sites. NZMA has succeeded in appealing primarily to men shoppers. There is no indication that they have any clue how to appeal to more women shoppers, and superior values from the competition plus the superior "experiences" of live in-store book readings, etc., will hit them especially hard among women shoppers. They will never win over this group, and they will not have the luxury of failing more than once. Trust me on this one! e.b.