Companies like Amazon have changed how we shop.
Image: WSJ / Keith Webb
What do you think of when you imagine going shopping? You might visualize physically going to a shop, or you might instead see yourself simply bringing up a web browser and ordering over the Internet. Either way, you go through the same basic steps: finding what you want or need, paying for it, and then receiving it.
But shopping hasn’t always been that easy. Whether clothes, food, books, CDs, games, or anything else, people once had no choice but to go to the store themselves, order an item over the phone, or send in a catalogue order through “snail mail.”
Jeff Bezos, co-founder and CEO of Amazon.
Image: Robyn Twomey
Companies like eBay and Amazon changed all that. With the expansion of the dot com bubble (and following burst) in the 1990s and early 2000s, our culture went through a technological revolution that will forever change the way we shop.
Jeff Bezos, co-founder and CEO of Amazon, is one of the people responsible for our change in consumerism. Amazon is one of the few survivors of the dot com drop (though they certainly experienced hard times because of it), and today is stronger than ever. Companies like Yahoo!, now headed by CEO Marissa Mayer, have had a harder time bouncing back. Like Apple and Google, Amazon is a top company focusing on innovation and creativity–their goal is to make it happen, whatever “it” may be.
