Amazon.com

“ Amazon.com launched its own reading device, the Kindle, in November 2007. Before launching the Kindle, Amazon.com bought in April 2005 Mobipocket, a French company specializing in ebooks for PDAs, cellphones and smartphones, with a catalog of several thousands of books in several languages to be read on the Mobipocket Reader. ”

“ The online bookstore Amazon.com was launched by Jeff Bezos in July 1995, in Seattle, on the West coast of the U.S., after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the internet. When Amazon.com started, it had 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books. Unlike traditional bookstores, Amazon.com didn't have windows looking out on the street and books skillfully lined up on shelves or piled upon displays. The "virtual" windows are its webpages, with all transactions made through the internet. ”

“ Our experience in Germany, where book prices are also regulated, shows that prices are not the main factor for our customers to purchase books at Amazon. The main factor resides in the additional services we provide. We offer a whole bunch of services, beginning with a large choice in our catalog - we sell all the French cultural products. We have a powerful search engine. As for music, our site offers the only catalog searchable by song title. ”

“ The opening of new markets to commercial enterprise must always tend to increase the prosperity of the countries concerned, and the free navigation of the Amazon has become a question of the greatest importance. ”

“ Exchanges are located in the principal cities of the country and the distributing organization purchases from the manufacturer the number of positive prints of each picture needed to supply these exchanges. A manufacturer’s popularity with the exhibitors and the public is shown, of course, by the number of positive prints that the distributor must purchase from him to meet the demand. These manufacturers profited both by the sale of their prints and, through their direct interest in the distributor, from the earnings of the latter. ”

“ It should be one of the first objects of all manufacturers to produce stuffs not only beautiful and quaint in design, but also adapted for every-day service, and decorous in humble and secluded life. And you must remember always that your business, as manufacturers, is to form the market, as much as to supply it. ”

“ Similarly the publisher of books, maps or periodicals who sells his product through canvassers or agents is selling direct to the consumer. Again, if a retailing house does so large a business that it can advantageously engage in manufacturing some of the lines of goods it sells, it may combine production with distribution. One of the most important instances of this method of direct dealing is the mail-order house of Sears, Roebuck & Co., of Chicago, which manufactures in great quantities some of the goods—shoes for example—which it sells. ”

“ In each trade there is an established course of business; and, however obvious may be some better course, the difficulties of altering the settled routine are, if not insurmountable, still very considerable. Take, for instance, the commerce of literature. In days when a letter cost a shilling and no book-post existed, there grew up an organization of wholesalers and retailers to convey books from publishers to readers: a profit being reaped by each distributing agent, primary and secondary. ”

“ We, however, who are primarily interested in the shop, are apt to forget that success, instead of hinging upon shop management, depends in many cases mainly upon other elements, namely,—the location of the company, its financial strength and ability, the efficiency of its business and sales departments, its engineering ability, the superiority of its plant and equipment, or the protection afforded either by patents, combination, location or other partial monopoly. ”

“ I see a huge expansion of digital reading with tablets that are easy to use and with a very large choice of ebooks thanks to electronic commerce and companies like Amazon. (...) I also use online books to learn the art of innovation! ”

“ Through Wholesalers and Retailers.—Most products of common use—such as foods, clothing, footwear, house furnishings, lumber, fuel and so on—are marketed through middlemen. The manufacturer of men’s clothing or of shoes usually sells his product to retailers scattered over the country who in turn sell to consumers. Manufactured food products, dry goods and notions, drugs, hardware and house furnishings are generally sold first to wholesalers, who in turn sell to retailers. ”

“ The great distributing companies employ the salesmen, advertising experts, business men, and so forth. All the technical work concerned with the making of the picture, however, is in the hands of the producing company, and, since we are engaged in such work ourselves, it is about these posts that we must talk. ”

“ The development of marketing relations between small producers and small consumers is a slow process that apparently cannot be forced. Again, certain specialities, complicated machines such as printing presses, power installations, made-to-order devices, and machines requiring much attention and service after the first sale, usually are sold direct by manufacturers to consumers through the medium of speciality salesmen. The salesman is the representative of the producer in the marketing transaction. ”

“ We want every Bookseller, and every News Agent, everywhere, to sell our books, and to keep an assortment of them on hand, and to send to us at once for a copy of our New Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue, which look over carefully, marking what books you may want, as it contains a list of all books published by us, all or any of which will be sold by us to everybody in the Book Trade, to Booksellers, or to News Agents, at very low rates. There are no books published you can sell as many of, or make as much money on, as Petersons'. ”

“ A feature of this exposition which is likely to become of permanent and increasing utility to our industries is the collection of samples of merchandise produced in various countries with special reference to particular markets, providing practical object lessons to United States manufacturers as to qualities, styles, and prices of goods such as meet the special demands of consumers and may be exported with advantage. ”

“ Producer Direct to Consumer.—The simplest form of marketing and the most primitive is the sale by the producer directly to the consumer. The village boy or girl who raises flowers and sells them to passing tourists, the truck gardener near cities who disposes of his vegetables and fruits by sale direct to consumers, either from house to house or at a market-place frequented both by producers and consumers, the dairyman who peddles or delivers milk direct to consumers, are illustrations. ”

“ For example, a manufacturer of hardware selling direct to the retail trade found that his strongest competitor's policy was to sell to every dealer who would buy and to offer no exclusive sales arrangements, while he himself made a success by offering his goods only under exclusive sales agencies. ”

“ Industries manufacturing comparatively inexpensive articles for the retail trade, put them up in packages which become well known to customers; and those industries whose goods are sold under brands or trade-marks, or in some other form so that they are familiar to buyers, afford an example of competition of an entirely different kind. ”

“ Long before you get your shop into running condition and you are able to fill orders, you and your associates will have talked over the best way that should be adopted to put your article or machine on the market so that it will bring in the largest returns in the shortest time. ”

“ Mills that sell their products direct to consumers necessarily maintain a sales organization at their main offices, and as circumstances may require local representatives, in the larger markets, such as New York and Chicago, these men keep in personal touch with the customers, furnishing samples, making contracts, following up shipments and adjusting claims. Knowing the possible customers, this direct method suffices without any accessory effort, such as advertising. ”

“ THE PAPER TRADE The distribution of paper is cared for in part by direct sales from the mills to consumers, such as large publishers of newspapers, magazines, and books, and manufacturers of paper commodities, such as tags, boxes, stationery, toilet accessories etc. ”

“ When the modern conditions first came in and the manufacturer found all his time taken up by the mechanical perfecting of his work, and when his machines first began turning out goods for wholesale distribution, the manufacturer seldom stamped or sewed even his name upon his product. ”

“ But when our great machine shops, our systematized factories and machine production developed suddenly, almost without warning, a great flood of very good and very cheap products in a quantity and at a price available for almost all surged upon the market. A thousand new things, a thousand old things made in better ways, were suddenly offered to the millions. ”

“ But the consumer, to some extent at least, makes up the difference by supplying the service that other retailing establishments offer him. The customer may make a money saving by trading with the mail-order house, but he does so by contributing his own time and labour to the transaction. ”

“ Symbols or devices used by a manufacturer or merchant to distinguish the products, manufactures, or merchandise which he produces, manufactures, or sells, from that of others, are called and known by the name of trade-marks. They are used in order that such products, manufactures, or merchandise may be known as belonging to the owner of the symbol or device, and that he may secure the profits from its reputation or superiority. ”

“ All the packings, covers, labels, trademarks, and names by which the manufacturer tries to stimulate the attention, the imagination, and the suggestibility of the customer may easily draw a large part of their psychological effectiveness from without, as soon as they imitate the appearance of articles which are well introduced and favored in the market. If the public is familiar with and favorably inclined toward an article on account of its inner values or on account of its being much advertised, a similar name or a similar packing may offer efficient help to a rival article. ”

“ Now, however, studies are being made everywhere of the distributive systems by which products get to market and to determine what share of the consumer's price should go to the producer and what to the distributor. ”

“ To round out this talk, I'd like to go over the ways that ebooks are more like paper books than you'd expect. One of the truisms of retail theory is that purchasers need to come into contact with a good several times before they buy — seven contacts is tossed around as the magic number. ”

“ Previously distinct information-based industries, such as printing, publishing, graphic design, media, sound recording and film making, were converging into one industry, with information as a common product. ”

“ The normal course of home trade piece-goods is from manufacturer to bleacher, dyer, printer or finisher, either on account of a merchant to whom the goods are sold or on the manufacturer’s own account. ”

“ The safest course for consumers, therefore, is to buy goods bearing the name and trade-mark of a well-known and reputable manufacturer, and to make sure by a careful examination that they are getting what they order. ”

“ At the centers of business the great merchants, in touch, by the post and telegraph, with both consumers and producers, study to apportion the supply so that it will reach those who stand most in need of it, and seek to regulate future production so that there may be neither waste nor want when the product is brought to market. ”

“ While the people employed in the several divisions of the pulp-wood industry may run, numerically, into many tens of thousands, in the great division of the printing trades, they run into the hundreds of thousands. I refer to the great printing and publishing trades—the trades which turn the pulp paper into periodicals and books—the trades whose work directly educates us. ”

“ We have just issued a new and complete Catalogue and Wholesale Price Lists, which we send gratuitously to any Bookseller or Librarians on application.
Orders solicited from Librarians, Booksellers, Canvassers, News Agents, and all others in want of good and fast selling books, and they will please send on their orders. ”

“ The endeavor is to increase the circulation at any cost that will result in an increased net return from the sale of the advertising space. The literary output of the magazines is of use for carrying the advertising pages, and as a matter of business, as seen from the standpoint of the business man's interest, that is its only use. ”

“ Fancy packaging designed by some of the most competent commercial artists and motivational research men in the country. Then you buy distribution. From the factory all the way to the retail ultra-market where your wife shops. ”

“ Great business enterprises allow their success to the manufacture or sale of some simple invention or compound—usually the result of an experiment at home. With this latest book of practical formulas the boy of to-day has a far better opportunity than his father—and the mother and sisters can develop an industry of their own that will produce a comfortable income. ”