Why Amazon Could Make it Big?

While I was working on “Would Reliance enter e-tailing”series on SBR, I did some research on internet retailers in US and in the process, stumbled upon some interesting facts.

•          Top 10 online retailers list is dominated by offline retailers – only Amazon and Netflix are pure play internet companies.
•          Top most internet retailer, Amazon, is a pure play which is greater in volume than combined online revenues of other 9.

Why no other pure play online retailer could make it big? 

What did Amazon do right that made it attain e-tailing volume greater than next 9 combined – and this list of 9 includes formidable retailers such as Walmart, Staples, Sears etc.? These giants had money, supplier relationships, retail experience far beyond what Amazon had in its early days and they too had entered online retailing early.

And yet Amazon somehow managed to beat them all at selling online – How? And why no other online retailer could do the same?

These are some very interesting business questions that caught my fancy and I shall try and answer – Why Amazon could make it big?

As we did for answering the Reliance e-tailing question, I began with looking up on Google for any ready answers (shortest possible way is always worth a try), and surprisingly, even though the question had been asked and there were several opinions and thoughts, there was no concerted effort to figure out why Amazon clicked and everyone else flopped.

What do you think, “Why Amazon could make it big?”