Indeed you are right, that's what people kept talking about when Amazon started to rise in popularity: long tail sales strategy. They had everything that you s

Indeed you are right, that's what people kept talking about when Amazon started to rise in popularity: long tail sales strategy. They had everything that you simply couldn't get anywhere else, a strategy that only an online shop could manage. Borders and other big chain had a similar-ish strategy, however they were hampered by their physical shops: they are forced to curate to fit floor space and, for a customer, delivery is not a positive outcome of going to a physical shop, so it does not matter how fast you can get something if it takes longer than the customer is willing to stay in the shop. Amazon has continued to refine its online shop, but the key was to always offer as much as possible, even offering themselves as a platform to independent seller in order to vastly increase their catalogue. ( I have done business with amazon sellers that had sold only a handful of time per year, for a perishable product - that's ultra long tail )