Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, initially as an online bookseller operating out of Seattle. The company expanded rapidly as the World Wide Web became commercially available, building warehousing, payment, and fulfillment infrastructure that eventually supported direct-to-consumer sales of a vast range of goods across international markets. Amazon became one of the earliest and most influential examples of internet-based retail reshaping global consumer commerce.
Relevance to Trade History
Amazon's growth illustrated how the commercial internet could bypass traditional retail intermediaries and link consumers directly to global supply chains.
Read the full story in our article E-Commerce and the Reordering of Global Retail.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.