Alexa, one-day delivery, security cameras, and in-house brands have extended the company?s already formidable reach Back when Jeff Bezos was trying to get a scrappy startup called Amazon off the ground, the best the entrepreneur could hope for, in terms of establishing a beachhead in a consumer?s home, would be to get some space on a bookshelf.
That ambition, and reach, seems quaint, when compared to the extensive reach of Amazon today. A consumer sitting in her living room, looking at said bookshelf, could be watching Amazon-produced TV (the streaming service with the second-biggest market share behind Netflix), sitting on an Amazon-brand couch purchased on the website (the company launched more than 100 brands last year), checking her Ring security camera (a company bought by Amazon for $1 billion in May 2018), waiting for a grocery delivery from Whole Foods (which Amazon also owns), and contemplating purchases for Prime Day, a company-created consumerist holiday (last year, $4.19 billion in goods were sold in just 36 hours). All of this is in addition to the company?s dominance of e-commerce, boasting a 38 percent share of all online purchases last year, per research firm eMarketer.
In myriad, and sometimes misunderstood, ways, Amazon has firmly established itself as one of the most pervasive brands inside American homes. It?s not simply a popular way to order products. Thanks to new technology, and an increasingly diversifying line of Amazon-owned or branded pro...