The Ethics of Amazon

In the book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and The Age of Amazon by Brad Stone, Stone describes Jeff Bezos’s story and the origins of Amazon.  It goes through all of Amazons struggles and their triumphs.  Along the way, Amazon had many battles and was presented with many ethical issues.  One ethical issue presented was when Amazon would get authors to sell their digital copies of their books to Amazon to put in the new Kindle as an E-book.  Instead of selling these E-books for regular prices, Bezos decided to sell them for all $9.99.  Not only did this cause Amazon to lose money, but it also caused booksellers to become angry with Amazon.  Bezos knew that publishers would hate the price of $9.99, so Amazon decided not to let the publishers know what they were planning on selling the E-books for.

By using Virtue Method A, to see if the decision aligns with whom Amazon wants to be viewed as, it is easy to see that this decision was not ethical.  It may have been the right decision and ended up allowing for the success Amazon saw afterward, but it was still unethical.  It was an unethical decision because Amazon wants to be viewed as a trustworthy, loyal, and customer friendly business, and lying to publishers goes against that.  Even Jeff Steele, a former Microsoft product manager, stated “we were instructed not to talk about pricing strategy.  We knew that if we priced e-books too low, they would fear it would devalue their product. So we just said pricing had not yet been decided” (251).  Since Amazon lied, or didn’t tell publishers the whole truth, they went against what they stand for and whom they want to be.  If Amazon would have been ethical and told the truth, publishers would most likely have dropped out and not permitted Amazon to sell their E-books.  Without this unethical decision who knows where Amazon would be today, would it even exist, would it be the same, or would it just be smaller than it is now?  This unethical decision ended up working out exceptionally well for Bezos and Amazon, but learning about this makes me look at Amazon a bit worse than I did before.  Bezos knew it would benefit Amazon later. It caused more consumers to learn about Amazon and more people began using it frequently, buying the Kindle and these E-books as well.  Now Amazon is one of the highest trafficked website in the world with millions of sales each day.  If it weren’t for Bezos big dream, and some unethical decisions, Amazon may not be where it is today.