"Its Amazon Prime program -- for a $79 annual fee you get two-day free shipping -- is enormously popular."
And sheer genius. It is to online retailing what frequent flyer programs once were to the airline industry. Why go somewhere else if I've already spent $79 and KNOW my package will be here Friday.
I have to echo the same sentiment. I once had CDs from Amazon left by UPS at my apartment doorstep, only to have someone else lift them. Amazon sent me new ones, with (almost) no questions asked. Cost: They ate the cost of 3 CDs one time in 1998. Value: I've rarely shopped anywhere else online in the ten years since.
And sheer genius. It is to online retailing what frequent flyer programs once were to the airline industry. Why go somewhere else if I've already spent $79 and KNOW my package will be here Friday.