NEW TECHNOLOGY OR NEW MONOPOLIES? AMAZON’S ELUSIVE RETAIL REVOLUTION

Abstract

Technology companies are often described by their founders and analysts as holding the potential to disrupt the industry and revolutionise the world. In this article, we focus on Amazon Inc. as one of the trillion-dollar technology companies that are credited with having disrupted its industry. The article provides an evaluation framework built around disruptive innovation and radical innovation theories. This framework is used to assess the extent to which Amazon Inc. has revolutionised retail industry. Based on this framework, it is argued that Amazon is not a disruptor because it has not created new markets but entered existing ones. We use this framework to analyse the retail sales process and its components and show that Amazon’s technology has not brought architectural changes to the retail sales process or radically change its component parts. It is concluded that Amazon’s success is not the result of technology and innovation but arises from its monopoly that has been built on the traditional retail model.