Amazon company values: the culture of an ecommerce colossus

Tech giant Amazon is acclaimed for its innovative approach to ecommerce, a vast selection of products, fast delivery options, and influence in shaping modern online shopping.

Amazon’s core values are built around customer focus, innovation and operational excellence. As a global ecommerce leader, its culture is defined by its focus on long term thinking, high standards and a commitment to continuous improvement and accountability.

But while Amazon is considered a pioneer in modern ecommerce, the company has faced backlash and bad press for its mistreatment of third-party sellers, issues in its company culture and its large carbon footprint. 

In this article, we’ll explore the origin of Amazon’s vision and how it has evolved, the meaning behind its core values and whether these principles are reflected effectively in its operations and internal culture.

Amazon’s vision – from humble beginnings to today

What started as a simple online bookstore later became a global ecommerce giant and technology powerhouse. Here’s how Amazon’s vision and mission have expanded over the years, guiding its growth from selling books online to becoming a leader in innovation, customer experience and digital transformation across different industries.

Amazon’s original mission

Going back to the very beginning, Amazon was first founded in 1994 under the name “Cadabra” by Jeff Bezos, who established the company within a garage space of his Washington rental home. Its name was later changed to Amazon as the original was considered to be too similar to the word “cadaver”. Around a year later, the Amazon website was officially published as an online bookseller, available in the US and 45 other countries.

At first, Amazon’s original vision was simple – it wanted to create a store where customers could buy any book online. Its primary focus was on revolutionising the way people buy books by providing an extensive selection and convenient online shopping experience, particularly during the dotcom era of the mid-90s.

Becoming customer-centric

As the company expanded its product offerings beyond books, its mission statement changed to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavours to offer its customers the lowest possible prices”. This new mission emphasised its commitment to offering a vast selection of products and making online shopping easy and accessible. 

To further enhance the customer experience, the company launched Amazon Prime in 2005 – a membership program offering exclusive benefits, including unlimited one-day delivery, exclusive deals through its “Prime Day” event and access to digital content through Prime Video and Prime Music. Amazon Prime became a cornerstone of the company’s strategy, building customer loyalty and driving repeat business by making shopping cost-effective and rewarding.

Expanding into technology and innovation

With the development of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006, its mission further evolved to innovation in technology. Since its launch, AWS has become a significant part of Amazon’s business, providing cloud computing solutions to companies worldwide. 

AWS offers several benefits, including allowing businesses to quickly and easily scale their computing resources, avoid upfront expenses of maintaining their IT infrastructure, streamline the development, deployment and delivery of services, and leverage data redundancy and replication to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery.

However, AWS found itself in hot water when storage and data management company Kove filed a lawsuit in 2018. The company claimed that its products, including its S3 storage and DynamoDB data service, had infringed on three Kove-held patents. AWS was ordered to pay $525 million in damages, though it plans to appeal the verdict.

But despite the hefty lawsuit, around 2.38 million use AWS, as of December 2023. It also has a market share of 50.1% and a 31% customer growth rate – the highest among global cloud providers.

Sustainability and global responsibility

In 2019, Amazon expanded its mission further to include sustainability and social responsibility in its operations. The impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns was also a double-edged sword for the company. While its sales increased by 51% to a record £19.4 billion in 2020, customers were also becoming more conscious and realising how much extra packaging and pollution the amount of deliveries caused.

Amazon’s “Climate Pledge” aims to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. This includes regular reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and implementing decarbonisation strategies in line with the Paris Agreement, such as efficiency improvements, renewable energy and materials reduction.

The company is also committed to investing in sustainable technologies, such as electric delivery vehicles, cargo e-bikes and on-foot deliveries. Additionally, it engages in industry initiatives to remove carbon emissions from transportation (eg ocean shipping, aviation and trucking), as well as using building materials to make its fulfilment centres, offices and retail stores more sustainable.

How Amazon lives by its core values

Core values are the fundamental beliefs and principles that define a company’s organisational culture and behaviour. They also help to ensure alignment between an organisation’s goals and actions, create a cohesive work environment and drive long term success.

In Amazon’s case, the company goes by four primary core values, which are:

• Customer obsession rather than competition focus
• Passion for invention
• Commitment to operational excellence
• Long-term thinking

Amazon embeds its core values in every part of its operations – from interviewing and hiring processes to daily decision-making and strategic planning. It practices these values by:

• Evaluating candidates on their alignment with the company’s leadership principles 
• Encouraging teams to innovate and simplify processes, making decisions with data and customer feedback in mind. 
• Setting long term goals while continuously measuring progress against high standards and delivering tangible results.

Arun Prasath, former Professional Engineer at Amazon, commented that “a tremendous deal has gone into the choice and articulation of these principles that form the core way everything runs at Amazon”.

He added: “The principles are embodied in the natural way of thought and the common language spoken on a day-to-day basis by Amazonians regardless of function, domain, role, level business model or target market.”

Amazon’s leadership principles

Amazon follows a values-based approach to its leadership, which is widely discussed across its investor communications, blogs and social channels. A handful of these leadership principles include:

• Customer obsession: Working thoroughly to maintain customer trust, while paying close attention to competitors.
  
• Ownership: Thinking long term and acting on behalf of the company, not just their own team.
  
• Invent and simplify: Leaders expect innovation and invention from their teams and look for new ideas from everywhere.
  
• Are right, a lot: Leaders have strong judgement skills, actively seeking diverse perspectives to disconfirm their beliefs.
  
• Learn and be curious: Always working to improve themselves and being curious about new possibilities.
  
• Hire and develop the best: Coaching their teams, recognising exceptional talent and willingly moving them throughout the organisation.
  
• Insist on the highest standards: Continuously driving their teams to deliver high quality products, services and processes.
• Think big: Creating and communicating bold directions that inspire results, looking for ways to serve customers.

Times when Amazon’s core values fell short

While Amazon’s core values are prominent across its channels, there have been times when the company has been criticised for not fully living up to those values.

Amazon’s seller practices

The company has faced multiple investigations regarding its treatment of third-party sellers. 

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against Amazon in 2023, accusing the company of engaging in unfair and deceptive practices, thus harming third-party sellers as a result. This includes:

• Setting unfair terms and conditions to give Amazon a good level of control over third-party businesses. This includes the right to set prices and determine which products will be featured on the website. 
• Using its market power to favour its own products and services, giving Amazon-branded products more prominent placement on its website and search results. 
• Using access to third-party sales data to create competing products under its own private label, thus potentially undermining the original seller’s business.

Sustainability and environmental impact

Despite its commitments to sustainability, Amazon has also faced criticism for its own environmental impact – particularly its large carbon footprint associated with its vast logistics network and the environmental toll of its fast delivery services. A few examples include:

The removal of its Shipment Zero pledge

The company removed its “Shipment Zero” pledge from its website in 2023, which aimed to make 50% of all Amazon shipments net zero carbon by 2030. Its removal inevitably led to people questioning its commitment to reducing its carbon footprint and achieving broader sustainability goals.

However, in a statement, Amazon said that it “no longer made sense to have a separate and more narrow Shipment Zero goal that applied to only one part of the business”, and so decided to eliminate it. That being said, the company claims that it remains focused on its Climate Pledge and its goals to reach net zero carbon across its operations over the next decade.

Increase in emissions and underreporting of carbon footprint

It was reported that there had been a 40% increase in Amazon’s emissions between 2019 and 2023 – growing at 18% per annum as the business grows 24% per annum. 

Additionally, a private investigation reported that Amazon isn’t properly counting most of its emissions, only taking responsibility for climate impact for Amazon-branded products, which only make up around 1% of its online sales. 

Thousands of companies also agreed to disclose their carbon footprint with the non-profit organisation CPD (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project). However, Amazon had previously received “F” scores for nonparticipation, until it finally submitted its CDP questionnaire for the first time in 2021. It also received the same “F” score in 2019 from Wired Magazine for its lack of transparency regarding its environmental footprint.

The report was obtained by The Center for Investigative Reporting, which found that Amazon had reported 29% fewer carbon emissions from its employee commute compared to companies like Walmart and Target. Unlike these companies, which estimate fuel used while driving to and from work, Amazon only counts the emissions from its own corporate shuttles. When questioned about this, the company stated that employees can use public transportation to get to the office or walk or cycle to work if they live nearby.

Abolishing an emissions bill

Despite its sustainability pledge, the company came under fire in 2023 for eradicating a climate bill in Oregon, which would have regulated its data centres. 

Despite the bill matching Amazon’s timeline of net zero carbon emissions by 2040, Oregon’s state representative Pam Marsh said that the company “helped to kill it”. While Amazon didn’t publicly testify against the bill, Marsh said that its lobbyists helped to organise the opposition and “successfully nurtured fear that our energy requirements would drive away the development of data centres”.

A spokesman for Amazon responded that many organisations, including Amazon itself, opposed the bill because it didn’t “address the build-out of electric infrastructure that is needed to bring more clean energy to the grid.” It was further elaborated that “building new renewable projects requires infrastructure investments in the grid”, but that there are hurdles in key areas, such as permitting and interconnection.

Working at Amazon – exploring its internal culture

Amazon’s workplace culture page boasts a culture of innovation and an inclusive environment for all employees. But how employees truly feel about its organisational culture is a mixed bag.

Amazon’s culture has mixed employee satisfaction

Amazon’s UK workplace holds a 3.7 score for culture on Glassdoor, with a 69% approval rating for its CEO Andrew Jassy. While employees have listed salary and good health benefits as positive points, others have expressed dissatisfaction with long working hours, lack of work-life balance and poor management in Amazon’s workplace.

Meanwhile, the company holds a “B” rating for its culture on Comparably. It also received a Best Company for Career Growth award for 2024. That being said, after browsing through the employee reviews, there is a mixed sentiment among workers regarding the work environment.

Some employees have praised its collaborative culture, honest feedback from management and a good level of diversity and inclusion. On the other hand, others have shared concerns over management setting unrealistic targets, feeling undervalued and the lack of ownership among teams. This can suggest that while Amazon has a dynamic and inclusive environment, there are challenges in maintaining a consistently positive experience for all employees.

Amazon Connections responses aren’t accurate

Employees can provide feedback on the workplace through “Amazon Connections”. Workers are given short surveys every day, leveraging real-time information to understand more about their experiences and identify potential problems.

However, Amazon employees have questioned the accuracy of the survey’s feedback, as they believe many workers don’t answer the questions honestly. This is primarily because employees are concerned that their answers aren’t guaranteed to be wholly anonymous. For example, small team members are concerned that their manager can determine who responded in what way based on their manager-employee relationship.

Moreover, other employees claim that some managers have been coaching their teams on how to answer certain questions or telling them that poor feedback can negatively impact their position as managers. Meanwhile, some employees have stated that they don’t give feedback because they’re afraid that a manager they like will be penalised for concerns that are out of their control.

Workers injured during Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day is considered to be one of the biggest shopping events of the year, next to Black Friday. But while the event is beneficial for consumers to shop for exclusive deals, the increase in demand has been known to take its toll on Amazon employees. 

For example, during US Prime Day in 2019, it was reported that 45 out of 100 warehouse employees were injured while working. A group of current and former Amazon employees also took to the company’s New York City office in 2024 – sharing their experiences of getting hurt and being overworked while on the job, as well as being denied workers’ compensation for the extra labour. One of the banners held up by workers read: “Same-day delivery, lifetime of injury”.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the GMB Union held two strikes at Amazon’s Coventry site after workers protested against poor pay and unsafe working conditions. As a result, GMB applied for mandatory union recognition to the government’s Central Arbitration Committee (CAC). GMB’s national secretary, Andy Prendergast, commented that members “face shocking levels of intimidation, fear and abuse at the hands of bosses for daring to fight”.

However, despite protests, 50.5% of Amazon employees voted against the union recognition ballot, compared to 49.5% who voted in favour. As a result, GMB made a formal complaint to CAC, arguing that the narrow win was a “stitch up” due to bullying, harassment and the use of an unlawful QR code that swung the vote against workers.

Conclusion

Amazon’s journey from an online bookstore to a global ecommerce and technology giant is a testament to its ambitious vision and continuous commitment to its core values.

But while the company has achieved remarkable success through its customer-centric approach and innovation, it has also faced challenges and criticisms regarding its practices and organisational culture – from underreporting its emissions and sustainability efforts to concerns over its treatment of third-party sellers and employee working conditions.

As Amazon continues to evolve, balancing its growth ambitions with social responsibility and employee wellbeing will be crucial in maintaining its leadership position and continuing long term success.