Innovation Process of Amazon Kindle Essays -- Business, Online Store

INTRODUCTION Amazon.com entered the UK market as Amazon.co.uk on October 1998 by acquiring the site previously operated by Bookpages Ltd. The company began as US online book store in 1994. The retailer soon became very successful in the new market as its primary offer included over 1.4 million book titles, comprehensible search tools, secure transaction, direct shipping and also high discounts on thousands of popular books (Amazon, 1998). During 17 years of its presence on the market, Amazon offers various products and services including books, DVD, jewellery, electronics, furniture, , clothes, cosmetics, digital downloads, website development etc. (Datamonitor, 2010). Amazon significantly extended its product offer and currently is one of the leading online retailers in the world with several international websites and customers in over 200 countries. Amazon Kindle is one of Amazon’s recent remarkable products. Kindle is a portable device which allows user to read, download, and store e-books due to its wireless connection and internal memory (Amazon, 2009). The first version was originally launched in US market in 2007 and achieved success as sold out in five and a half hours (Patel, 2007). Later, Kindle has been through several upgraded versions; Kindle original, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, Kindle DX Graphite, and the most recent version Kindle 3 with improvements mostly on the shape, contrast, memory capacity, and operating system. Earlier versions of Kindle had been criticized for its aesthetic and user interface issues. Reviews from customers and gadget experts motivated Amazon to further improve the product. Kindle 3 was officially launched in July 2010. This new generation of Kindle is available in two options of connectivity;... ...cessfully established its position as market leader. This should be maintained with continuous and substantial improvement. Currently Kindle 3 operates in grayscale mode and it is potential for the company to develop the color version in the future. One thing need to be improved is its pricing strategies. The company should avoid reducing price on every new version as it could affect customer expectation and product value perception. Customer-oriented pricing strategies can be used in the future to establish Kindle standard price. This could be achieved by understand how customer use the product, the product benefit for customers, and estimate all relevant cost and compare how the product benefits offset these costs (Shiu, 2011b). This is an important point to consider in order to achieve sustainable position as the leading innovative e-book reader in the market.