Amazon.com 2000 Annual Report Download - page 12

We also benefit from public relations activities as well as online and traditional advertising, including radio,
television and print media.
We direct customers to our Web site through our Associates Program, which enables associated Web sites
to make products available to their audiences with order fulfillment by Amazon.com. Currently, over 530,000
Web sites have enrolled in the Associates Program.
Customer Service
We believe that our ability to establish and maintain long-term relationships with our customers and to
encourage repeat visits and purchases depends, in part, on the strength of our customer service operations, and
we continually seek to improve the Amazon.com customer service experience. Users can contact customer
service representatives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We have automated certain tools used by our customer
service staff and have plans for further enhancements. We currently have customer service personnel working
in seven customer service centers located in Seattle, Washington (this center is scheduled to close in May
2001), Tacoma, Washington; Slough, England; Regensburg, Germany; Grand Forks, North Dakota; Huntington,
West Virginia; The Hague, Netherlands (this center is scheduled to close in June 2001); and Sapporo, Japan,
which opened in January 2001. In addition, we have an outsourcing arrangement with Daksh.com, a vendor in
India.
Warehousing, Inventory, Fulfillment and Distribution
We currently have U.S. fulfillment facilities in Fernley, Nevada; Coffeyville, Kansas; Campbellsville and
Lexington, Kentucky; New Castle, Delaware; and Grand Forks, North Dakota, as well as a seasonal fulfillment
center in Seattle, Washington. We also have three European fulfillment centers which are located in the United
Kingdom, France and Germany. In Japan, we jointly manage fulfillment with Nippon Express, a leading courier
company. On an aggregate basis, these fulfillment centers comprise approximately 4.5 million square feet of
warehouse space. Our fulfillment centers facilitate our ability to deliver merchandise to customers on a reliable
and timely basis.
Seasonality
Our business is generally affected by both seasonal fluctuations in Internet usage and traditional retail
seasonality. Internet usage generally declines during the summer. Traditional retail sales for most of our
products, including books, music, DVDs/videos, toys and electronics, usually increase significantly in the fourth
calendar quarter of each year. In particular, the fourth quarter seasonal impact may be even more pronounced in
our sales of toys and electronics in comparison with our other products.
Technology
We have implemented numerous Web site management, search, customer interaction, recommendation,
transaction-processing and fulfillment services and systems using a combination of our own proprietary
technologies and commercially available, licensed technologies. Our current strategy is to focus our
development efforts on creating and enhancing the specialized, proprietary software that is unique to our
business and to license or acquire commercially developed technology for other applications where available
and appropriate.
We use a set of applications for accepting and validating customer orders, placing and tracking orders with
suppliers, managing and assigning inventory to customer orders and ensuring proper shipment of products to
customers based on various ordering criteria. Our transaction-processing systems handle millions of items, a
number of different status inquiries, gift-wrapping requests and multiple shipment methods, and allow the
customer to choose whether to receive single or several shipments based on availability. These applications also
manage the process of accepting, authorizing and charging customer credit cards. Amazon.com Web sites also
incorporate a variety of search and database tools.
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