Amazon.com in China: Can Elaine Chang Crack the Chinese Market?

Amazon was founded in June 1994 by Jeff Bezos (Bezos). At that time, the internet was gaining popularity and was being considered as a potential business medium. To cash in on this trend, Bezos came up with the idea of selling books to a mass audience through the internet. In June 1995, he launched his online bookstore, Amazon.com, and it officially opened for business on July 6, 1995. At the beginning, Amazon’s business model was based on the “sell all, carry few” strategy wherein Amazon offered more than a million books online, though it actually stocked only about 2000. The remaining titles were sourced predominantly through drop-shipping wherein Amazon forwarded customer orders to book publishers, who then shipped the products directly to the consumers...