Amazon & Online Shopping

Amazon's major purpose is to supply people worldwide with items of their choice. Online shopping is traditionally "greener" and Amazon is no exception. They use less packaging for their sent items and everything is transported in less vehicles than there would be if the customers themselves were to go out shopping. However, a secondary purpose could be to make online shopping more environmentally friendly or "green".

Here are some things that Amazon do to make shopping with them more environmentally friendly:

Amazon's target audience is mainly people who have access to a bank account and want to buy items online to save both time and, in some cases, money. But, furthermore, Amazon's target audience is also people who care about the environment because Amazon does its best to be environmentally friendly, much more so than other online websites who might only transport a few things in one vehicle which causes more pollution than necessary.

There is not really an auction process on Amazon. If the item is in stock then you can order it and it will arrive in anything between one day to a week, depending on what price you pay for postage.

Amazon fulfils its purpose by successfully posting out the ordered items to its customers and rightfully earning itself good feedback on how quickly it sends out items and how quickly it can have them in stock.

The limitations of Amazon are that, if the item is not in stock, you have no way of getting the item until it is in stock which could take anything up to a few weeks. Another limitation is that, if you don't have access to a bank account or a credit/debit card, you cannot purchase an item and so you have to go without.

The advantages are that, if you can pay, the items can arrive very quickly indeed, even the next day in some cases, and there is a wide variety of things you can purchase at Amazon.

Here are the categories of the items Amazon stocks to give you some idea of the scale of the items you can purchase:

Websites I used:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon-and-our-Planet/b/ref=footer_planet?ie=UTF8&node=299737031
http://services.amazon.co.uk/services/fulfilment-by-amazon/features-benefits/?ld=AZUKFBAFooter
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=471044
http://www.greenlogistics.org/SiteResources/ee164c78-74d3-412f-bc2a-024ae2f7fc7e_FINAL%20REPORT%20Online-Conventional%20Comparison%20(Last%20Mile).pdf