As Jeff Bezos Steps Down as Amazon CEO, These Four Industries Will Bear His Mark Forever

It seems fitting that notorious workaholic Jeff Bezos’ last day as CEO of Amazon falls on a federal holiday. Bezos said he chose the day for "sentimental" reasons. Amazon was incorporated exactly 27 years ago today, July 5, 1994. Bezos and Amazon have changed in countless ways since the early days, as the viral "I sell books”-meme proved in 2017. Light years beyond book selling, Bezos’ tenure included the launch of the Prime subscription service, the Prime Video streaming platform, cloud platform Amazon Web Services, an advertising business, and the voice assistant Alexa and its related Echo devices. Along the way the company bought a live gaming platform, launched a phone and acquired a grocery store chain. Bezos also personally bought The Washington Post. He’s also been readily willing to fail—and learn from his mistakes. This, said Larry Chiagouris, a professor of marketing at Pace University's Lubin School of Business, “makes Amazon and Bezos probably the greatest business success story of the past 100 years.” 1. Ecommerce Bezos understood the power of online shopping decades before it was a reality. “He led retail down this path by investing everything into the infrastructure to drive this future state when others effectively ignored this channel or gave up on it after the dot-com bubble of 2000,” said Bruce Winder, author of the book Retail Before, During & After Covid-19. “His use of analytics and AI transformed retail from a ‘gut feel’ industry to one that is driven by management science.” Bezos also figured out customers would be more willing to shop online if the experience was frictionless, which included free shipping and returns. “If I’m not paying for shipping, then every time I need a light bulb, every time I need a battery, every time I need Scotch tape, every time I need a toothbrush, it doesn't matter—if I just think of it, I act impulsively and order it because it doesn't cost me anything to ship. So all of a sudden, no order was too small,” said Alan Adamson, managing partner of marketing firm Metaforce. “He literally is the father of online shopping.” And while acknowledging third-party sellers have concerns about Amazon’s power today, Jonathan Weber, a seller focused on outdoor equipment and school supplies, noted Bezos also helped democratize ecommerce. “Historically these industries were closed off to individuals and small companies due to the extreme cost and knowledge barriers you would need to surmount in order to break into the market,” Weber said. “Amazon's opening up of their marketplace and [Fulfilled by Amazon] program to third-party sellers effectively unlocked ecommerce to small sellers worldwide.” And then, of course, there’s Amazon’s infamous customer obsession. Patience was a key to its success.Larry Chiagouris, Pace University “Bezos is famous for saying Amazon starts with the customer and works backwards,” said Jeromy Rew, associate director of ecommerce consultancy Wunderman Thompson Commerce. “Although he didn’t invent that concept, his implementation of it at Amazon has forever changed ecommerce and retail in general.” That’s because retailers who don’t embrace this customer-centric approach risk losing out to what Rew called “digitally native companies who are at the cutting-edge of surprise and delight.” But, Chiagouris noted, it wasn’t an overnight success story—which is part of Bezos’ legacy as well. “Amazon lost money almost every quarter for its first four or five years after its public offering,” he added. “Patience was a key to its success.” 2. Logistics Amazon reportedly ships more than 100 million packages each week in the U.S. and has well-documented ambitions in building out its own delivery network. That, coupled with promises of one-day delivery, are why logistics are next on the list. In fact, Zach Weinberg, vp of ecommerce at search marketing company Reprise Digital, said we have yet to see “the true impact of the growing logistical empire Amazon has created and how it will permanently disrupt the business of UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc.” because Bezos spent his time as CEO focused on three to seven years out rather than day-to-day operations. He made logistics invisible.Alan Adamson, Metaforce “The most interesting thing for me to think about is that in the next three to five years, possibly even seven, many of the things Amazon will do are as a result of Bezos,” Weinberg said. “His further impact, therefore, is still not fully comprehended.” But Adamson said it’s not likely Bezos will be remembered for logistics because “he made logistics invisible.” Because in part the U.S. Postal Service was “too slow,” Adamson noted Bezos not only started building out his own last-mile delivery network, he also started shrinking the time between order and delivery. “Most people don't really think about it. They just double click and—bingo—a couple of hours later or certainly the next day, the box is there,” Adamson added. “And if they don't like it, they close the box and put it by the front door.” 3. Streaming Prime Video launched in 2006 in part as a way to make Amazon’s new Prime membership program—which at that time cost $79 a year—more appealing. Jim Nail, principal analyst at research firm Forrester, noted this made Amazon an early entrant in the streaming wars, alongside Netflix and Hulu. “Netflix was, I think, intentionally trying to change the way television is experienced by consumers as a way to salvage the dying business model of renting DVDs," Nail said. "Hulu was kind of a science experiment by ABC, NBC and Fox to initially just put a toe in the water to see if the TV business was going to change and, if it was, to protect their legacy business model. Amazon Prime Video was kind of an afterthought [or] a little bit of extra value to throw to Prime members for whom the main value was the free shipping.” But, as a free add-on, Prime members were willing to try out Amazon’s streaming service, which Nail said ultimately helped drive adoption of other streaming services as consumers realized the value they offered. “Amazon’s ability to expand into completely new markets and thrive is almost singular,” said Michael Mothner, CEO of marketing agency Wpromote. “But Bezos is never ready to just rest on his laurels, partnering with brands like the NFL and IMDb to broaden the Prime Video offering while bringing big names like Amy Sherman-Palladino and Barry Jenkins on board to develop award-winning original content—and keep people from ever needing to click out of the Amazon platform, whether they’re buying toothpaste or streaming the latest Premier League soccer game.” Serious competition for the big four networks who've been sitting fat, dumb and happy for decades.Jim Nail, Forrester Indeed, Amazon’s recent blockbuster acquisition of movie studio MGM is another sign of Amazon's—and Bezos’—commitment to disruption. “I think it is a statement that Amazon's probably going to get more serious about the streaming business,” Nail said. “What they are doing is buying the talent and some of the resources to create more originals.” Bezos built it. And the customers, and accolades, came. “Transparent won an Emmy in 2015, which at the time was utterly shocking,” Nail said. “The big networks were like, ‘Where the hell did these people come from? This is our award show,’ and I think it opened the industry's eyes, like, ‘Hey, wait a minute, this thing could really be serious competition for the big four networks who've been sitting fat, dumb and happy for decades.’” 4. Advertising Bezos may not have disrupted the ad tech industry per se, but he certainly left his mark. As Mothner put it, “Bezos’s team did what they do best: learned from everyone else to build advanced tools for marketers while always prioritizing a seamless, simple and effective customer experience.” That's why brands have to combine best practices from other channels to succeed on Amazon “from optimizing based on search intent like Google to focusing on social proof through user engagement like Facebook to creating its very own can’t miss, high volume shopping season complete with in-platform influencers,” he added. However, Nich Weinheimer, general manager of commerce and retail media at marketing platform Skai, noted Amazon’s ad platform, which is “built on the richest product search and customer purchase data in the world” has in fact shifted brands' $100-billion shopper marketing budgets. It’s a business unit that dates back to 2008 when Amazon first hired a Microsoft executive to monetize its growing owned and operated digital media footprint through managed display ads, which ultimately laid the groundwork for developing what Weinheimer called Amazon’s “golden goose audience segments,” including in-market shoppers. “He married one of the world's largest self-serve marketplaces with a self-serve ad platform and an open API ecosystem,” Weinheimer said. “For the ad tech community, this opened a total addressable market of more than a million customers across all segments of advertisers—from small sellers to the world's largest consumer brands.” As Amazon's executive chairman Bezos will remain involved in “many large, one-way door issues." Still, July 5 marks the end of an era that has revolutionized how consumers buy, how small businesses sell, how big businesses operate and how millions of people watch, play, connect and interact, all while creating more than 1 million jobs along the way.