Introduction
Amazon.com was founded in July 1995 by Jeff Bezos, with a mission to “use the Internet
to transform book buying into the fastest, easiest and most enjoyable shopping experience
possible”(PatrickWeb2002 ).Headquartered in Seattle, Amazon.com is the largest online
retailer in the United States. According to the data fromTop 500 Guide (Internet Retailer,
2008),Amazon.com’s web sales volume is 14.8 billion dollars, nearly three times that of
Staples, Inc., the second biggest online retailer. Amazon.com is famous as an online
bookstore. Actually, it has a broad array of product lines covering books, music and
videos, software and video games, electronics and toys, apparel, home appliances, foods,
healthcare products, etc. Amazon.com also partners withsome manufacturers and third-
party sellers.
Amazon grew quickly in 1996 and 1997 in the United States and became the “Earth’s
Biggest Bookstore”(Harmon,2008). Then it entered European market in 1998when it
purchased Bookpages.co.uk in the United Kingdom and Telebuch.de in Germany. As
stated in Amazon.com's European Distribution Strategy,Amazon chose these two