Despite Amazon’s undisputed centrality in the contemporary digital economy, a close look at its core business model reveals it to be surprisingly conventional. Before the invention of e-commerce, mail-order catalog companies such as Sears, Roebuck had accustomed American consumers to purchasing goods sight unseen from vendors with whom they communicated solely via information technology.
Like Amazon, Sears, Roebuck neither manufactured goods nor owned inventory but functioned solely as information intermediary. What both companies provided was a layer of network infrastructure that links consumers to producers via a single unified interface. In the case of Sears, Roebuck, this interface was a paper catalog, for Amazon a website, but the basic services provided are identical. By organizing, consolidating, and filtering information, both the catalog and website served to simplify otherwise complicated and time-consuming informational activities and establish and maintain networks of…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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