Introduction
Amazon.com is an e-commerce company whose headquarter is located in Seattle, Washington in the U.S. It is rated as one of the major and first internet-based companies.
How the internet has reduced geographic limitations
Looking at its location, (Seattle, Washington’s Beacon Hill), and with a wide range of products it deals with, coupled with a high demand for its products in the world market, we have to appreciate the role played by the internet service in ensuring that the company achieves its goals. This has helped to reduce the geographical barrier which could have hindered its expansion to reach the world market demand.
Due to the internet service, one does not need to travel to the U.S to find the catalog containing the Amazon.com products or wait for it to be mailed to him, but it is possible to access everything including the new products via the internet. With high, market demands the company opened up large-sized centers across the globe where it has employed software developers. Such international locations include England, Scotland, India, South Africa, Romania, and China, (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
How the internet has helped in the compression of time
With the internet service, customer needs not send such things as the inquiry notes, purchase orders, or send for the catalog which could take a lot of time and cost much. What he needs is just to access the internet, get the catalog from there, and if possible make the purchase there and then using a credit card. With some of its services and products offered in electronic and downloadable form, one just needs to settle his payments and download the product, unlike in cases where one has to settle the payment through money order then wait for the shipment of the goods which could make a big deal of time.
How the internet has assisted in the growth of niche product spaces
Amazon.com has a storage service called Amazon S3. This service enables the storage of data objects ranging from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes. With this in place, it implies that the company can store products ranging from books, music in MP3 format, newspapers, magazines, computer software, video games, and other electronic products, thus offloading the cost of storing the products in warehouses or stores. If a customer needs the printed or recorded form of the products it is very easy to download and put them in the desired form.
How the internet has assisted in the availability of resources
The internet service has helped to reduce strain on the scarce resources, especially when it comes to products like books, newspapers, and magazines, which rely entirely on natural resources to get the papers for printing.
How the internet has helped in scalability
As the demand to advertise, stores, and access to goods and services increase, it means that the developers of computer applications or products have to come up with hardware and software (with the ability to retain performance levels with additional processors) to be used in the operating system so as to handle such large data contents.
References
Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia, 2008.
SearchDataCenter.com Definitions, 2008.