Amazon permeates our daily lives through services like Prime Video, Alexa, and real-time order updates. In her analysis, Emily West explores how the brand rapidly integrated itself into our routines while becoming an overlooked infrastructure. By prioritizing customer comfort over worker welfare, Amazon has established itself as a leading service brand in the digital economy. West highlights how the company fosters personalized relationships with consumers, normalizing its significant impact on individuals and communities. She examines the emphasis on fast, seamless ecommerce delivery, symbolized by the recognizable brown box, and positions its offerings—book retailing, media streaming, and smart devices—as services rather than mere sales. Additionally, she analyzes Amazon's strategies for controlling its public image. Notably, West points out that resistance to Amazon's dominance primarily arises from its workers rather than customers or competitors, suggesting that the brand's logic effectively fragments consumers as a political force. This innovative account, the first to approach Amazon from a critical media studies perspective, serves as a cautionary cultural study of the implications of corporate bigness in today's economy.
