Amazon Stock to Become the Digital QVC? (AMZN)

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Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is nothing if not consistent. CEO Jeff Bezos & Co. have made a juggernaut out of Amazon stock by offering quality products and services roughly at cost in order to expand its dominance, always putting customer service and low prices first.

Amazon Stock to Become the Digital QVC? (AMZN)Case in point: Amazon is offering a new line of Kindles, including a shockingly cheap $50 Kindle tablet. The idea isn’t to make money on hardware, of course, but to get folks addicted to Amazon Instant Video or its marketplace e-books or simply to sign up for Amazon Prime for the ease of ordering with one click on their new tablet.

Investors shouldn’t be surprised, then, that Amazon is looking to its recent line of Fire TV and Fire Stick streaming gadgets as a way to bolster its overall footprint. However, AMZN stock holders may be interested to know the efforts aren’t just about natural purchases like the last season of Game of Thrones in HD.

According to reports, Amazon is rolling out a shopping feature that allows users to purchase products directly from ads that pop up when they are on the home screen of their Fire TV or Fire Stick gadget.

But wait, there’s more.

Take this, from Fortune:

” … the online retail giant is apparently also planning to release its own shopping channel, à la QVC, except that purchases can be done right from the screen, according to the report. The channel is slated to come out next year. Amazon is also looking to integrate this with its X-Ray feature, which uses Amazon’s IMDB subsidiary to display information about TV shows or movies like the actors or music, and have it display details about the products on the screen.”

If you’ve never used X-Ray, the service basically provides a reference to the various artists in whatever you’re watching and allows you to browse what else they’ve done. For instance, if you’re watching Footloose with Kevin Bacon, you can get lost in the 79 other acting credits he has, what other people have co-starred with him, or with his co-stars, or with his co-stars’ co-stars …

Anyway, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this service would allow a viewer to easily purchase other movies featuring their favorite actors, or perhaps secondary merchandise when applicable. Just imagine buying a digital copy of Star Wars, watching it via your Fire TV and then seeing ads for the Lego Ewok Village Playset.

Investors in Amazon stock shouldn’t be surprised by this comprehensive effort to expand the business, but even those who are very bullish on AMZN might be pretty impressed with the thoughtfulness of this marketing strategy.

Who knows if it will catch on, or whether a few purchases via Fire TV will ever boost the top line for Amazon stock in coming quarters. However, it’s proof-positive that Jeff Bezos and the team at AMZN stock are thinking comprehensively about the company and how it can continue its dominance in the digital age.

Jeff Reeves is the editor of InvestorPlace.com and the author of The Frugal Investor’s Guide to Finding Great Stocks. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. Write him at editor@investorplace.com or follow him on Twitter via @JeffReevesIP

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Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2015/10/amazon-stock-amzn-qvc/.

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