About the Author
Brian Dumaine is an award-winning journalist and a contributing editor at Fortune magazine. In addition to Bezonomics, his works include The Plot to Save the Planet and, with three coauthors, Go Long: Why Long-Term Thinking is Your Best Short-Term Strategy. He and his wife live in York. Visit his show more website at www.bezonomics.com. show less
Works by Brian Dumaine
Associated Works
Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2012 (2012) — Contributor — 291 copies
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The book starts with the history of Amazon and then looks at how it managed to create disruption in multiple markets, from books to general online selling. A lot is made of collecting customer data to determine what you like and offering tailored recommendations. (I would say that having experienced those, sometimes they are way off the mark. Amazon, you can only have so many notebooks!) Product placement on the search pages and the ability of Amazon to use that data to make their own products also has a lot of page time, bringing up the question of whether Amazon destroys small business. There are cases for and against this, but it tends to be on the side that Amazon Marketplace is creating more opportunities for small businesses. Generally, the book takes on a supportive tone of Amazon.
The book also covers the future for Amazon, considering that they may expand into the healthcare market in the US. (This book was written before the pandemic, so I don’t know whether this is still a thing). It’s an interesting idea, particularly as the healthcare system in the US is so different to other countries – more of a free but still flawed market. It all depends if Amazon’s ‘AI flywheel’ (the constant refrain in this book) can keep spinning against a highly restricted and legislated market where the stakes are a lot higher in terms of money and patient care.
While I enjoyed the book overall, I did have to stop several times to shake my head at the differences between the Amazon US market and other countries. For example, I have Amazon Prime and ordered a book that is in stock, across the other side of the country. Shipping is free as expected, but it’s not overnight or 2-day delivery as in the US – it’s 5 weeks. And that’s not unusual – one of my Black Friday orders (a video game) took 4 weeks to travel 2500 miles. There seems to be some disparity in the services offered between countries – maybe it’s just who Amazon chooses to partner with for deliveries, maybe it’s that I’m in a relatively small market. The book is well written, and if you’re not aware of Amazon’s various expansions and rare failures, you will enjoy the insight into this huge company.… (more)