Amazon The Category Killer

Remember bookstores before Amazon? There were more of them. Amazon was founded in 1994. And in the intervening years, the number of bookstores dropped from 12,151 in 1998 to 6,045 in 2019 (see County Business Patterns, Book stores, and Don’t Turn The Page On Bookstores). While Amazon alone is not responsible for this—with the rise of on-line book sales and e-books—they ushered in the new era of books.

This phenomenon in the book market earned Amazon the moniker of "category killer". That phrase is defined as a large retailer or disruptive product that . . .