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1655 : STEP THREE – EVALUATING AND SELECTING IDEAS

force-ranked the product areas according to several different criteria,
including that of ‘being something that you could only do online,
something that couldn’t be replicated in the physical world’.121 Bezos
perceived that the sheer size of the product range was critical to
internet success:

‘First of all you can use computers to sort, search and organise. Second,
you can create a super-valuable customer proposition that can only be done
online, and that is selection. There are lots of categories where selection is
proven to be important: books, in particular, with the book superstores, but
also in home construction materials, with Home Depot, and toys with Toys
R Us.’122

Bezos perceived that the sheer size of
the product range was critical to internet
success

Bezos used the first evaluation phase to narrow down the potential list
of 20 ideas to just two product categories – music and books.

‘there are no 800-pound gorillas in bookselling’ Books

emerged as the favoured launch product from the second phase because
of detailed consideration of two criteria in particular – size of product
range and ease of access to supply. In terms of product range, Bezos
noted:

‘Books are incredibly unusual in one respect, and that is that there are
more items in the book category than there are items in any other category
by far. There are more than 3 million different titles available and active in
print worldwide. Music is the number two category, and there are about
300,000 active music CDs.’123

In addition, the book market was highly fragmented from the supplier
perspective. With 4,200 US publishers and the market share of the two
biggest booksellers limited to 12 per cent, Bezos was reassured that ‘there
[weren’t] any 800-pound gorillas in bookselling’.124 In contrast, the music
industry was controlled by just six major record companies, whose
domination of record and CD distribution allowed them to lock out any
new business which threatened the traditional record-store format.

It is worth noting that consistent with the recycling principle integral to
the entire idea development process, Amazon.com’s product range now