The Mighty Amazon

譯/蘇揚

The one-time bookseller has become a conglomerate.昔日書商已經成為企業集團。

For shoppers in 2017, it can be hard to remember what life was like in the early 1990s.There was mail order, but by and large if you wanted to buy something you went to a shop.Jeff Bezos,Amazon’s founder, who was then working for a New York hedge fund1hedge fund〈經〉套利基金 , 對沖基金。, noticed the exponential growth of the internet.His idea was to create an online company that would bring together shoppers and manufacturers around the world,starting with books.

[2]Not everyone was convinced.A cover story in 1999 inBarron’s, a business weekly, entitled“Amazon.bomb”2亞馬遜公司網址為amazon.com，此文將域名后綴謔改為bomb，與com押韻，并以此為封面報道的題目，直指亞馬遜的商業模式易崩潰。,argued that the company would struggle to compete with mighty Walmart and Barnes & Noble3沃爾瑪和貝諾公司分別是彼時美國零售和書店巨頭。.But like many of Amazon’s competitors, it failed to predict the firm’s ever-expanding scope,the feverish pace of its spending and the enthusiastic support from investors.

[3]The company has pursued a strategy of relentless investment to win new customers and generate more cash so it can win yet more customers.What is remarkable about this effort is the scale.In the year to June Amazon spent about$13bn on new technology products for its cloud and e-commerce businesses,nearly 20% more than Google and more than three times as much as Facebook,according to Goldman Sachs.

[4]Amazon aims not just to meet customers’ expectations but to set new ones.Its Prime annual subscription($99 in America)initially just made it easier to buy things online and covered shipping, but now includes audio and video streaming.

[5]With its cloud business, launched in 2006, Amazon created a new way to serve its own computing needs and those of other companies.Instead of investing in their own facilities, firms can rent computing power from Amazon.

[6]The cloud-computing business,now the company’s most prof i table arm and in 2016 earned 74% of its operating income, is larger than that of its three closest competitors combined.

[7]But Amazon’s biggest impact is still in e-commerce.In America it accounted for more than half the growth in online spending in 2016.More searches for products begin on Amazon than on Google.

[8]Brian Nowak of Morgan Stanley reckons that in America more than a third of all households have Prime.Its success depends in part on the speed of delivery, usually within a day or two,and the absence of incremental shipping costs.The result is that consumers buy more kinds of goods online.

[9]The company’s investments in its warehouses have persuaded ever more independent sellers to use them, too.Amazon’s own inventory now accounts for less than half the sales on its site.Revenue from independent merchants around the world that list their products on Amazon reached $23bn in 2016,about twice as much as two years earlier.Customers enjoy a broader selection and Amazon reaps more prof i ts to reinvest.

[10]It is a dizzying way to do business.Amazon’s many sources of revenue, as well as its masses of data and comprehensive distribution system, make it difficult for competitors to keep up.And when new ones have emerged, Amazon has often ended up buying them, as it did with Quidsi4一家以大宗商品零售業務為主業的電子商務公司，麾下擁有在線尿布網站Diapers.com。, an online nappy business, and Zappos, a shoeseller.

[11]The next thing it might do is to reinvent physical stores. In an experimental Amazon shop in Seattle, customers can choose items and pay automati-cally, without stopping at a checkout,thanks to sensors and machine learning.

[12]Among the company’s most interesting new tools is its voice assistant, Alexa, available through its Echo speaker.It offers a way for customers to order goods from Amazon.In this field,Amazon is competing against Google,Microsoft and Apple.Techies reckon voice assistants could replace phones and tablets as the interface with the digital world.

[13]Amazon is still seeking new ways to enmesh5enmesh使陷入。itself further in its customers’ lives.Consumers in rich countries, in particular, are spending more on services, health care and entertainment as opposed to goods.Amazon intends to follow that business.In America,customers can already use the company to deliver a Chinese meal to their home,hire someone to assemble a flatpack6flatpack平板家具（買主自己拼裝）。,manage their newspaper subscriptions or search for a local dermatologist.

[14]In effect, Amazon has become a conglomerate—a model that has had its ups and downs.The company is happy for some of its ventures to flop as long as many thrive.So it will probably continue to expand, reaching ever farther into people’s daily lives.That may seem overambitious, but a precedent already exists: Alibaba in China.■

2017年購物的人們，可能已經記不清上世紀90年代初的生活模樣。當時雖有郵購，但若要購物，大抵還得親自去商店。亞馬遜的創始人杰夫·貝索斯當時供職于紐約的一家對沖基金，他覺察到了互聯網的爆發式增長，萌生了一個念頭：做一家網絡公司，把全世界的買家和生產商匯聚起來，業務從書做起。

[2]并非人人覺得這事靠譜。商業周刊《巴倫周刊》1999年做過一期題為Amazon.bomb的封面報道，稱亞馬遜要與巨頭沃爾瑪和貝諾公司競爭，很吃力。然而，與亞馬遜的許多競爭對手一樣，文章沒有預測到這家公司不斷擴張的業務范圍、狂熱亢奮的燒錢節奏和來自投資人的熱情支持。

[3]公司采取的戰略是，以持續不斷的投資來贏得新客戶、賺更多錢，然后再以此贏得更多客戶。此舉的可圈點之處是規模效應。高盛公司統計顯示，截至1999年6月，亞馬遜在云業務和電子商務的技術投入約130億美元，超出谷歌公司20%，是臉書公司的3倍多。

[4]亞馬遜的目標不只是達到客戶的期望值，而是為客戶設定新的期望值。開始時，Prime會員（在美國年費99美元）只是購物更便捷并免運費，而現在增加了音頻視頻流套餐服務。

[5]2006年，亞馬遜推出云業務，為滿足自身和其他公司的運算需求開辟了新的途徑。眾多公司機構不必自掏腰包投資設備，只需從亞馬遜租用算力即可。

[6]云計算是公司目前盈利最為豐厚的業務，2 016年占總營收的74%，超過其后三家最強競爭對手該業務的總和。

[7]但亞馬遜最大的影響力仍在電商領域。2016年，美國線上消費的增量有超過一半來自亞馬遜，人們搜索產品時首選亞馬遜，其次才是谷歌。

[8]摩根士丹利公司的布里安·諾瓦克估計，美國三分之一以上的家庭是亞馬遜Prime會員。亞馬遜的成功離不開送貨及時（一般一到兩天）和滿定額免運費，其結果是網購物品的種類增加了。

[9]公司在倉儲方面的投資也吸引了越來越多的第三方賣家入駐。亞馬遜自營的商品種類只占網站平臺商品種類的一半不到。2016年，世界各地第三方賣家在亞馬遜平臺上交易的收入達230億美元，較兩年前翻了一番。買家享受更多選擇，亞馬遜收獲更多利潤用于追加投資。

[10]這樣做生意令人目眩。亞馬遜擁有海量數據和全面配送系統，加上收入來源眾多，競爭對手難以追趕；新的對手一旦出現，往往又被亞馬遜吃掉，比如尿布平臺Quidsi和鞋品銷售平臺 Zappos。

[11]亞馬遜下一步可能會做的是重塑實體店。在西雅圖，它開了一家試驗性商店，傳感設備和機器學習技術使顧客可自選商品、自助支付，無須柜臺結賬。

[12]該公司最有意思的新工具是語音助手Alexa（需配合Echo智能音箱使用），客戶可用來在亞馬遜下單。在這一領域，亞馬遜正與谷歌、微軟和蘋果等公司展開競爭。技術界估計，語音助手可能會替代電話和平板設備，成為數碼世界的交互界面。

[13]亞馬遜仍在探索新的途徑，進一步深入客戶的生活。特別是在富裕國家，消費者在服務、健康和娛樂方面的支出多于購物。亞馬遜有意拓展這類業務。在美國，客戶已經可以通過亞馬遜點購中餐外賣、請人組裝家具、訂閱報紙或搜求周邊的護膚師。

[14]實際上，亞馬遜已經變成了一家企業集團，這種模式有利有弊。只要眾多業務興旺，即使部分業務出了問題，亞馬遜也不會不滿意。所以，公司業務還會繼續拓展，更加深入人們的日常生活。這看起來很貪心，但先行者在彼：中國的阿里巴巴。□

（譯者曾獲第八屆“《英語世界》杯”翻譯大賽一等獎）