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

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (24532)	11/5/1998 10:13:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Unboxed another 1000 at 128 3/4 Glenn

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (24532)	11/5/1998 10:53:00 AM
From: Robert Rose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

<The customer does not care about an "interface"> Glenn, defined broadly, most customers care very much about the shopping "interface." I am defining an interface here as the sum total of the physical interactions between the buyer and the seller. I am choosing this definition in order to compare the buyer's experience in a bazaar 3,000 years ago with the buyer's experience shopping online today. To illustrate the importance of "interface," I will use myself as an example. I have decided to do as much of my shopping online this year as possible. Why? Because the shopping "interface" is so much more convenient than my traditional approach - going the the bricks-and-mortar shopping mall. The exhilerating (!) one-click shopping experience at amazon.com has motivated me to duplicate it buying other products as much as possible. However, until recently, searching for a particular product required (still somewhat inconvenient) keyword searching using yahoo, my favorite search engine. What I wanted for my holiday shopping this year was an online shopping mall. I had heard of such efforts underway, but had not yet discovered one. Then I went to aol.com, just to check it out, and found the closest thing to an online shopping mall yet. So what online retailers are most likely to get much of my business this year? Those affiliated with aol.com, because aol.com offers me the most convenient "interface." For whatever it's worth, notice that for me, convenience is considerably more important than price. That is why I clothes shop at Nordstrom (where I can find what I want at a high price), rather than Ross (where I can't find what I want, despite the low price). However, my price insensitivity does have it's limits. While I would love to grocery shop online using peapod.com because of the convenience, the $15 shopping fee precludes my doing so at this time. (That is why I believe online grocery shopping faces an uphill battle - it is still very labor and inventory intensive for the seller, and thus expensive for the buyer.) Because I believe that my personal experience is typical of many who experience online shopping, the inherent advantages of the online shopping "interface" will result in the e-commerce revolution that so many are predicting. E-commerce is going to be HUGE this season. Thus, I do not plan to be short aol, amzn, or ebay, to name a few, until after the 4Q earnings reports....