Corporate award winner 2011

Founded in 1994, Amazon.com is a US-based multinational electronic commerce and computer services company. Originally founded to sell books online – where it could carry virtually any title compared to the relatively few a brick-and-mortar bookstore could hold in its inventory – the company has rapidly expanded the number of products it sells and changed the face of both book selling and online commerce. Today it is the largest online retailer in the United States, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up.

The company has been a leader in innovative web commerce since its founding. The US Patent and Trademark Office issued it a patent in 1999 for its “1-click” service that enables web shoppers to purchase a product with a single click of their computer mouse. Because all their customer information including billing and shipping details are stored securely online, shoppers can skip the time-consuming steps of filling an online shopping cart, filling out forms an providing payment information.

Amazon.com’s “search inside the book” feature allows customers to search for keywords in the full text of more than 250,000 books in its catalog. The company also pioneered Amazon Prime − a hugely popular program that offers free two-day shipping for a flat annual fee − that has been credited with helping to increase sales. Earlier this year Amazon.com offered Prime members free online streaming access to more than 5,000 movies and TV shows.

Though not the first to offer an online music store that sold MP3 format download, the one started by Amazon.com in 2007 was the first to offer music from all four major record companies without the digital rights management software that many consumers find too restrictive.

Amazon.com did not invent the idea of reading books on electronic devices nor was it the first to offer an ebook reader, but its innovative Kindle spurred the market almost single handedly when it was introduced in 2007. Amazon.com’s bookstore offers more than 900,000 ebooks for sale plus audiobooks, newspapers, magazines and blogs. Amazon.com’s “buy once, read everywhere” program lets customers buy a book or publication and read it on any Kindle-enabled device whether a Kindle, computer, iPhone, Android phone, iPad or other tablet device.

Amazon Web Services, launched in 2006, rents web servers and computer storage to companies and government organizations. There is no upfront capital expense or long-term commitment. Companies pay only for the amount of computer power and storage they need and can add more or drop the service in seconds. This Amazon.com subsidiary has hundreds of thousands of customers in 190 countries.

Amazon.com has 33,700 employees around the world. It reported a net profit of US$1.2 billion on sales of US$34.2 billion in 2010.