Amazon

v.

To take away business from a more established rival by being the first to build an online presence.

Example Citation:

Although [Amazon.com CEO Jeff] Bezos emphasizes his obsession with the customer and plays down his concern with rivals, the way he toyed with Barnes & Noble was so instructive that any established brand getting bushwhacked by an Internet upstart is now referred to as "getting Amazoned.

—Peter de Jonge, "Epic of Amazon.com a Product of Imagination," Chicago Tribune, March 29, 1999

Earliest Citation:

The biggest fear that packaged goods companies have is that they are going to get Amazoned. If you look at what Richard Branson is doing with Virgin Cola, he should be all over the Net because he can Trojan Horse his way into the mind of the consumer.

—Gene De Rose, quoted in R. Sukumar, "Gene De Rose: The Net Is About Brand Action Marketing," Business Today, October 29, 1998

Notes:

This new verb comes from e-commerce pioneer Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/, which currently (as of May, 1999) owns 75% of the online book-buying market, while the Web arm of book retailing giant Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ owns only 15%.

Related Words:

B2B

clicks-and-mortar

Dell

disintermediation

disruptive technology

dot com

dotbam

e-business

e-commerce

e-tailer

first-mover advantage

friction-free capitalism

Gulliver effect

last-mover advantage

netco

personalized pricing

showroom

Categories:

E-commerce

Verbed Nouns