A larger company might address its slowing-growth problem in a more dramatic way, perhaps by making an acquisition of another company, with the goal of creating a big jump in sales (though maybe not profit). But for Amazon at the time, there were few, if any, mergers or large acquisitions that made sense. All the e-tailers we might have bought were small, and their acquisition would not have moved our sales needle appreciably. Buying an offline retailer made no sense—although it might increase the number of customers, it would burden us with the brick-and-mortar costs and inefficiencies we
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