If we can arrange things in such a way that our interests are aligned with our customers, then in the long term that will work out really well for customers and it will work out really well for Amazon.

We've done price elasticity studies, and the answer is always that we should raise prices. We don't do that because we believe, and we have to take this as an article of faith, that by keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term.

If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet,they can each tell 6,000 friends.

I think technology advanced faster than anticipated. In that whirlwind, a lot of companies didn't survive. The reason we have done well is because, even in that whirlwind, we kept heads-down focused on the customers. All the metrics that we can track about customers have improved every year.

You don't want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.

The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies. The right way to respond to this if you are a company is toput the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shoutingabout it, marketing it.