Amazon.Com

When the name "Amazon" is mentioned one immediately thinks of the largest product information database in the world. There are thousands of products and customers range into the millions as orders are placed every day. The site is equipped to harbor the data of visitors from browsing histories to payment types and referrals. The information for products includes prices, reviews, and rankings as well as price information from other sellers. Amazon's database is used not only as a place for consumers to place orders for products, but as a tool for research to compare products, check other customer reviews, and competitive pricing information. They can find products that are similar to the ones they are searching for and with Amazon's filtering abilities they can find products based on specific details.

There can also be issues where the similarities of products are concerned however, for instance with books, the reviews of certain texts can be reliant upon the edition that is being reviewed and not all book editions are the same. At times the reviews of sellers can also be confused with the reviews of the buyers as well as the product itself. This causes a potential buyer problems as they may not be sure what it is they are reading. "In the past few years Amazon has also had a problem spending more money and a higher percentage of its revenue on IT than before. During the first nine months of this year, the company's expenses related to technology and content rose to 11.1% of net sales, compared with 10.6% in the same period last year. That translates to around $200 million in nine months this year versus $102 million through three quarters last year. Amazon attributes part of that increase to the establishment of a much-needed second data center. " (Foley, Konicki, 2010)

The data on Amazon is a result of transactions from customer information, to inventory as well as sales. The data becomes information when it is placed into a form that the customer...