To our shareowners:
The American Customer Satisfaction Index recently announced the results of its annual survey, and for the 8th year in a row customers ranked Amazon #1. The United Kingdom has a similar index, The U.K. Customer Satisfaction Index, put out by the Institute of Customer Service. For the 5th time in a row Amazon U.K. ranked #1 in that survey. Amazon was also just named the #1 business on LinkedIn’s 2018 Top Companies list, which ranks the most sought after places to work for professionals in the United States. And just a few weeks ago, Harris Poll released its annual Reputation Quotient, which surveys over 25,000 consumers on a broad range of topics from workplace environment to social responsibility to products and services, and for the 3rd year in a row Amazon ranked #1.
美国客户满意度指数（American Customer Satisfaction Index）近日公布了年度调查结果，亚马逊连续第八年被消费者评为第一名。英国有一个类似的指数——由英国客户服务学会（Institute of Customer Service）发布的“英国客户满意度指数”（U.K. Customer Satisfaction Index），在这项调查中，亚马逊英国也连续第五次位列第一。LinkedIn 刚刚公布了 2018 年“顶尖公司”榜单，该榜单评选在美国最受专业人士青睐的工作场所，亚马逊位列榜首。同样就在几周前，哈里斯民意调查（Harris Poll）发布了年度声誉商数调查（Reputation Quotient）。该调查针对 25,000 多名消费者，就工作环境、社会责任、产品与服务等广泛主题进行问卷，结果显示，亚马逊已连续第三年排名第一。
Congratulations and thank you to the now over 560,000 Amazonians who come to work every day with unrelenting customer obsession, ingenuity, and commitment to operational excellence. And on behalf of Amazonians everywhere, I want to extend a huge thank you to customers. It’s incredibly energizing for us to see your responses to these surveys.
祝贺并感谢如今超过 56 万名亚马逊员工，你们每天带着对客户的执着、创新精神以及对运营卓越的承诺投入工作。代表全球所有亚马逊员工，我还要向客户表达衷心的感谢。看到你们在这些调查中的反馈，让我们倍感振奋。
One thing I love about customers is that they are divinely discontent. Their expectations are never static – they go up. It’s human nature. We didn’t ascend from our hunter-gatherer days by being satisfied. People have a voracious appetite for a better way, and yesterday’s ‘wow’ quickly becomes today’s ‘ordinary’. I see that cycle of improvement happening at a faster rate than ever before. It may be because customers have such easy access to more information than ever before – in only a few seconds and with a couple taps on their phones, customers can read reviews, compare prices from multiple retailers, see whether something’s in stock, find out how fast it will ship or be available for pick-up, and more. These examples are from retail, but I sense that the same customer empowerment phenomenon is happening broadly across everything we do at Amazon and most other industries as well. You cannot rest on your laurels in this world. Customers won’t have it.
我喜欢客户的一点是，他们与生俱来地“不满足”。他们的期望永远不会停留不变——只会不断提升。这是人类天性。我们之所以能从狩猎采集时代一路迈进，并不是因为满足于现状。人们对“更好的方式”有着强烈渴求，昨日的“惊艳”很快就会成为今日的“平常”。我看到这种改进循环的速度比以往任何时候都快。这可能是因为客户比以往更容易获取信息——只需几秒钟、在手机上轻点几下，客户就能阅读评价、对比多家零售商的价格、查看某件商品是否有货、了解发货速度或到店自取时间等等。这些例子来自零售业，但我感到同样的客户赋能现象正广泛发生在亚马逊所做的一切以及大多数其他行业中。在这个世界里，你不能躺在功劳簿上，客户不会买账。
How do you stay ahead of ever-rising customer expectations? There’s no single way to do it – it’s a combination of many things. But high standards (widely deployed and at all levels of detail) are certainly a big part of it. We’ve had some successes over the years in our quest to meet the high expectations of customers. We’ve also had billions of dollars’ worth of failures along the way. With those experiences as backdrop, I’d like to share with you the essentials of what we’ve learned (so far) about high standards inside an organization.
如何才能领先于不断攀升的客户期望？没有单一的方法——它是许多因素的结合。但高度标准（广泛落实且覆盖各层级细节）无疑是重要组成部分。多年来，为了满足客户的高期望，我们取得过一些成功，也经历过价值数十亿美元的失败。以这些经验为背景，我想与大家分享我们在组织内部（迄今为止）关于高标准所学到的核心要义。
Intrinsic or Teachable?
高标准是天生的还是可以教授的？
First, there’s a foundational question: are high standards intrinsic or teachable? If you take me on your basketball team, you can teach me many things, but you can’t teach me to be taller. Do we first and foremost need to select for “high standards” people? If so, this letter would need to be mostly about hiring practices, but I don’t think so. I believe high standards are teachable. In fact, people are pretty good at learning high standards simply through exposure. High standards are contagious. Bring a new person onto a high standards team, and they’ll quickly adapt. The opposite is also true. If low standards prevail, those too will quickly spread. And though exposure works well to teach high standards, I believe you can accelerate that rate of learning by articulating a few core principles of high standards, which I hope to share in this letter.
首先，有一个基础性问题：高标准是天生的还是可以教授的？如果你把我招进你的篮球队，你可以教我很多东西，但不能把我教得更高。如果我们首先需要做的是挑选“具有高标准”的人，那么这封信大概就得主要谈招聘实践，但我并不这么认为。我相信高标准是可以教授的。事实上，人们只要接触到高标准，就很容易学会；高标准是具有传染性的。把一个新人带入高标准的团队，他会迅速适应；反之亦然，如果低标准占上风，它们也会迅速蔓延。虽然“接触”是教授高标准的有效方法，但我认为，通过阐明高标准的几个核心原则，可以加速这一学习过程——我希望在这封信中与大家分享这些原则。
Universal or Domain Specific?
普遍还是特定领域？
Another important question is whether high standards are universal or domain specific. In other words, if you have high standards in one area, do you automatically have high standards elsewhere? I believe high standards are domain specific, and that you have to learn high standards separately in every arena of interest. When I started Amazon, I had high standards on inventing, on customer care, and (thankfully) on hiring. But I didn’t have high standards on operational process: how to keep fixed problems fixed, how to eliminate defects at the root, how to inspect processes, and much more. I had to learn and develop high standards on all of that (my colleagues were my tutors).
Understanding this point is important because it keeps you humble. You can consider yourself a person of high standards in general and still have debilitating blind spots. There can be whole arenas of endeavor where you may not even know that your standards are low or non-existent, and certainly not world class. It’s critical to be open to that likelihood.
另一个重要问题是，高标准究竟是普遍适用还是仅限于特定领域。换句话说，如果你在某个领域拥有高标准，是否就会自动在其他领域也保持高标准？我认为高标准是领域特定的，你必须在每个感兴趣的领域中分别学习高标准。创办亚马逊时，我在发明、客户关怀以及（谢天谢地）招聘方面拥有高标准。但在运营流程方面我并没有高标准：例如如何让已修复的问题保持修复状态、如何从根源消除缺陷、如何检查流程等等。所有这些我都必须学习并建立高标准（同事们成了我的导师）。理解这一点很重要，因为它能让你保持谦逊。你可以自认为总体上是个高标准的人，却依然存在致命的盲区。可能有整片领域你甚至不知道自己的标准是低的或根本不存在，更谈不上世界级。对这种可能性保持开放心态至关重要。
Recognition and Scope
识别与范围
What do you need to achieve high standards in a particular domain area? First, you have to be able to recognize what good looks like in that domain. Second, you must have realistic expectations for how hard it should be (how much work it will take) to achieve that result – the scope.
要在特定领域达到高标准，你需要什么？第一，你必须能够识别该领域中“优秀”是什么样子。第二，你必须对实现这一结果需要多大难度（要投入多少工作量）——即范围——有现实的预期。
Let me give you two examples. One is a sort of toy illustration but it makes the point clearly, and another is a real one that comes up at Amazon all the time.
让我给你两个例子。一个是有点玩具性的示例，但能把观点讲清；另一个是真实例子，在亚马逊经常出现。
Perfect Handstands
完美倒立
A close friend recently decided to learn to do a perfect free-standing handstand. No leaning against a wall. Not for just a few seconds. Instagram good. She decided to start her journey by taking a handstand workshop at her yoga studio. She then practiced for a while but wasn’t getting the results she wanted. So, she hired a handstand coach. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but evidently this is an actual thing that exists. In the very first lesson, the coach gave her some wonderful advice. “Most people,” he said, “think that if they work hard, they should be able to master a handstand in about two weeks. The reality is that it takes about six months of daily practice. If you think you should be able to do it in two weeks, you’re just going to end up quitting.” Unrealistic beliefs on scope – often hidden and undiscussed – kill high standards. To achieve high standards yourself or as part of a team, you need to form and proactively communicate realistic beliefs about how hard something is going to be – something this coach understood well.
最近，一位密友决定学习完美的自由倒立。不靠墙支撑，不只是几秒钟，要达到能在 Instagram 上炫耀的程度。她决定首先去瑜伽馆参加倒立工作坊，然后练习了一段时间，却没得到想要的效果，于是请了一位倒立教练。是的，我知道你在想什么，但显然这真的是存在的职业。在第一堂课上，教练给了她一条很好的建议：“大多数人认为，只要努力练习，大约两周就能掌握倒立。实际上，需要大约六个月的每日练习。如果你觉得两周就该做到，只会最终放弃。” 对范围的不切实际信念——通常隐藏且未被讨论——会扼杀高标准。要想你自己或团队达到高标准，就需要形成并主动沟通对任务难度的现实认知——这正是那位教练深谙的道理。
Six-Page Narratives
六页叙事
We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of “study hall.” Not surprisingly, the quality of these memos varies widely. Some have the clarity of angels singing. They are brilliant and thoughtful and set up the meeting for high-quality discussion. Sometimes they come in at the other end of the spectrum.
在亚马逊，我们不开 PowerPoint（或任何其他以幻灯片为导向的）演示。取而代之的是，我们撰写结构化的六页叙事备忘录。在每场会议开始时，我们像“自习”一样默读这份备忘录。毫不意外，这些备忘录的质量差异很大。有些清晰得像天使在歌唱，精彩而深思熟虑，为高质量讨论奠定基调。有些则处于光谱的另一端。
In the handstand example, it’s pretty straightforward to recognize high standards. It wouldn’t be difficult to lay out in detail the requirements of a well-executed handstand, and then you’re either doing it or you’re not. The writing example is very different. The difference between a great memo and an average one is much squishier. It would be extremely hard to write down the detailed requirements that make up a great memo. Nevertheless, I find that much of the time, readers react to great memos very similarly. They know it when they see it. The standard is there, and it is real, even if it’s not easily describable.
在倒立的例子中，识别高标准相当直接。要详细列出一个成功倒立的要求并不难，然后你要么做到了，要么没做到。写作的例子却完全不同。出色备忘录与普通备忘录之间的差异更为模糊。要写下构成一篇杰出备忘录的详细要求极其困难。尽管如此，我发现大多数时候，读者对优秀备忘录的反应非常一致——他们一看就知道。标准就在那里，真实存在，即使难以准确描述。
Here’s what we’ve figured out. Often, when a memo isn’t great, it’s not the writer’s inability to recognize the high standard, but instead a wrong expectation on scope: they mistakenly believe a high-standards, six-page memo can be written in one or two days or even a few hours, when really it might take a week or more! They’re trying to perfect a handstand in just two weeks, and we’re not coaching them right. The great memos are written and re-written, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind. They simply can’t be done in a day or two. The key point here is that you can improve results through the simple act of teaching scope – that a great memo probably should take a week or more.
这是我们总结出的规律。很多时候，一份备忘录之所以不够优秀，并不是因为作者无法识别高标准，而是他们对工作范围的预期错误：他们误以为一份高标准的六页备忘录可以在一两天甚至几个小时内写完，而事实上可能需要一周甚至更久！他们就像试图在两周内练成完美倒立，而我们却没给出正确的指导。优秀的备忘录都是反复撰写和修改的，会与同事分享并请他们改进，搁置几天后再以全新的思维进行编辑。它们根本不可能在一两天内完成。关键在于，只需通过教授正确的工作范围这一简单行动——让大家知道一份优秀的备忘录大概需要一周甚至更久——就能改善结果。
Skill
技能
Beyond recognizing the standard and having realistic expectations on scope, how about skill? Surely to write a world class memo, you have to be an extremely skilled writer? Is it another required element? In my view, not so much, at least not for the individual in the context of teams. The football coach doesn’t need to be able to throw, and a film director doesn’t need to be able to act. But they both do need to recognize high standards for those things and teach realistic expectations on scope. Even in the example of writing a six-page memo, that’s teamwork. Someone on the team needs to have the skill, but it doesn’t have to be you. (As a side note, by tradition at Amazon, authors’ names never appear on the memos – the memo is from the whole team.)
在能够识别标准并对范围有现实预期之后，技能又该如何看待？要写出世界级的备忘录，难道必须是技艺精湛的写作者吗？这是另一项必需要素吗？在我看来，并非如此，至少对于团队中的个人来说不是必需的。橄榄球教练不必亲自会传球，电影导演也不必亲自会表演，但他们都必须能够识别这些事情的高标准，并教授关于工作范围的现实预期。即使是撰写六页备忘录，这也是一项团队合作。团队里需要有人具备这种技能，但不一定非你不可。（顺便提一下，按照亚马逊的传统，备忘录上从不署作者名——备忘录代表的是整个团队。）
Benefits of High Standards
高标准的益处
Building a culture of high standards is well worth the effort, and there are many benefits. Naturally and most obviously, you’re going to build better products and services for customers – this would be reason enough! Perhaps a little less obvious: people are drawn to high standards – they help with recruiting and retention. More subtle: a culture of high standards is protective of all the “invisible” but crucial work that goes on in every company. I’m talking about the work that no one sees. The work that gets done when no one is watching. In a high standards culture, doing that work well is its own reward – it’s part of what it means to be a professional.
建立高标准文化绝对值得付出努力，而且好处多多。最显而易见的是，你会为客户打造更优质的产品和服务——这一点本身就足够成为理由！也许不那么直观的是：高标准对人才具有吸引力，它有助于招聘和留住员工。更微妙的一点是：高标准文化能保护企业中所有“看不见却至关重要”的工作。我指的是那些无人关注却必须完成的工作，那些在无人监督时仍要做好的工作。在高标准文化中，出色完成这些工作本身就是一种回报——这正是专业精神的体现。
And finally, high standards are fun! Once you’ve tasted high standards, there’s no going back.
最后，高标准本身也很有趣！一旦体验过高标准，就再也回不去了。
So, the four elements of high standards as we see it: they are teachable, they are domain specific, you must recognize them, and you must explicitly coach realistic scope. For us, these work at all levels of detail. Everything from writing memos to whole new, clean-sheet business initiatives. We hope they help you too.
因此，我们认为高标准有四个要素：可以教授、针对特定领域、需要识别、并必须明确指导现实的工作范围。对我们而言，这些要素适用于所有层面的工作——从撰写备忘录到全新的“白纸”业务创想。希望它们也能对你有所帮助。
Recent Milestones
近期里程碑
The high standards our leaders strive for have served us well. And while I certainly can’t do a handstand myself, I’m extremely proud to share some of the milestones we hit last year, each of which represents the fruition of many years of collective effort. We take none of them for granted.
我们的领导者所追求的高标准为我们带来了巨大收益。虽然我本人肯定做不了倒立，但我非常自豪地分享去年取得的一些里程碑——它们都是多年集体努力的结晶，我们对任何成就都不敢掉以轻心。
Prime – 13 years post-launch, we have exceeded 100 million paid Prime members globally. In 2017 Amazon shipped more than five billion items with Prime worldwide, and more new members joined Prime than in any previous year – both worldwide and in the U.S. Members in the U.S. now receive unlimited free two-day shipping on over 100 million different items. We expanded Prime to Mexico, Singapore, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, and introduced Business Prime Shipping in the U.S. and Germany. We keep making Prime shipping faster as well, with Prime Free Same-Day and Prime Free One-Day delivery now in more than 8,000 cities and towns. Prime Now is available in more than 50 cities worldwide across nine countries. Prime Day 2017 was our biggest global shopping event ever (until surpassed by Cyber Monday), with more new Prime members joining Prime than any other day in our history.
Prime——自上线 13 年以来，我们的付费 Prime 会员全球已超过 1 亿人次。2017 年，亚马逊通过 Prime 在全球发运的商品超过 50 亿件，新增 Prime 会员数量在全球和美国均创历史新高。美国会员如今可对逾 1 亿种商品享受不限次数的两日免费配送。我们将 Prime 扩展至墨西哥、新加坡、荷兰和卢森堡，并在美国和德国推出 Business Prime Shipping。我们还在不断加速 Prime 配送速度，目前 Prime 免费当日达和免费次日达已覆盖 8,000 多个城市和城镇。Prime Now 服务现已在 9 个国家的 50 多座城市上线。2017 年 Prime Day 成为我们有史以来最大的全球购物活动（后来被网络星期一超越），当天新增 Prime 会员数量创下历史纪录。
AWS – It’s exciting to see Amazon Web Services, a $20 billion revenue run rate business, accelerate its already healthy growth. AWS has also accelerated its pace of innovation – especially in new areas such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and serverless computing. In 2017, AWS announced more than 1,400 significant services and features, including Amazon SageMaker, which radically changes the accessibility and ease of use for everyday developers to build sophisticated machine learning models. Tens of thousands of customers are also using a broad range of AWS machine learning services, with active users increasing more than 250 percent in the last year, spurred by the broad adoption of Amazon SageMaker. And in November, we held our sixth re:Invent conference with more than 40,000 attendees and over 60,000 streaming participants.
AWS——看到营收规模达 200 亿美元的 Amazon Web Services 在健康增长的基础上进一步提速，令人振奋。AWS 也在加快创新步伐，尤其是在机器学习与人工智能、物联网和无服务器计算等新领域。2017 年，AWS 发布了 1,400 多项重要服务和功能，其中包括 Amazon SageMaker，它极大地提升了普通开发者构建复杂机器学习模型的可及性和易用性。全球已有数以万计的客户使用广泛的 AWS 机器学习服务，过去一年活跃用户增长超过 250%，这得益于 Amazon SageMaker 的广泛采用。11 月，我们举办了第六届 re:Invent 大会，现场参会者超过 4 万人，线上直播观众超过 6 万人。
Marketplace – In 2017, for the first time in our history, more than half of the units sold on Amazon worldwide were from our third-party sellers, including small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Over 300,000 U.S.-based SMBs started selling on Amazon in 2017, and Fulfillment by Amazon shipped billions of items for SMBs worldwide. Customers ordered more than 40 million items from SMBs worldwide during Prime Day 2017, growing their sales by more than 60 percent over Prime Day 2016. Our Global Selling program (enabling SMBs to sell products across national borders) grew by over 50% in 2017 and cross-border ecommerce by SMBs now represents more than 25% of total third- party sales.
Marketplace——2017 年，我们历史上首次实现全球亚马逊平台上售出的商品中，超过一半来自第三方卖家，其中包括中小企业（SMB）。在 2017 年，有超过 30 万家美国中小企业开始在亚马逊销售商品，亚马逊物流（FBA）为全球中小企业发运了数十亿件商品。2017 年 Prime Day 期间，消费者从全球中小企业购买了逾 4,000 万件商品，中小企业销售额较 2016 年 Prime Day 增长超过 60%。我们的全球开店项目（帮助中小企业跨境销售产品）在 2017 年增长超过 50%，中小企业的跨境电子商务现已占第三方总销售额的 25% 以上。
Alexa – Customer embrace of Alexa continues, with Alexa-enabled devices among the best-selling items across all of Amazon. We’re seeing extremely strong adoption by other companies and developers that want to create their own experiences with Alexa. There are now more than 30,000 skills for Alexa from outside developers, and customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa. The foundations of Alexa continue to get smarter every day too. We’ve developed and implemented an on-device fingerprinting technique, which keeps your device from waking up when it hears an Alexa commercial on TV. (This technology ensured that our Alexa Super Bowl commercial didn’t wake up millions of devices.) Far-field speech recognition (already very good) has improved by 15% over the last year; and in the U.S., U.K., and Germany, we’ve improved Alexa’s spoken language understanding by more than 25% over the last 12 months through enhancements in Alexa’s machine learning components and the use of semi-supervised learning techniques. (These semi-supervised learning techniques reduced the amount of labeled data needed to achieve the same accuracy improvement by 40 times!) Finally, we’ve dramatically reduced the amount of time required to teach Alexa new languages by using machine translation and transfer learning techniques, which allows us to serve customers in more countries (like India and Japan).
Alexa——顾客对 Alexa 的热情持续高涨，搭载 Alexa 的设备依旧是亚马逊全站的畅销商品之一。越来越多的企业和开发者积极接入 Alexa，打造属于自己的语音体验。目前，第三方为 Alexa 开发的 Skill 已超过 30,000 个，用户可通过 Alexa 控制来自 1,200 个品牌、4,000 余款智能家居设备。Alexa 的底层智能也在日益提升。我们研发并部署了设备端指纹识别技术，可在电视播放 Alexa 广告时避免设备被误唤醒。（这项技术确保了我们的超级碗广告没有同时唤醒数百万台设备。）远场语音识别能力（原本就很出色）在过去一年进一步提升了 15%；同时，我们通过加强机器学习组件并采用半监督学习技术，使 Alexa 在美国、英国和德国的语言理解能力提升超过 25%。（借助半监督学习，同等精度提升所需的标注数据量减少了 40 倍！）最后，通过机器翻译与迁移学习技术，我们大幅缩短了 Alexa 学习新语言的时间，使我们能够更快地为包括印度、日本在内的更多国家的顾客提供服务。
Amazon devices – 2017 was our best year yet for hardware sales. Customers bought tens of millions of Echo devices, and Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa were the best-selling products across all of Amazon – across all categories and all manufacturers. Customers bought twice as many Fire TV Sticks and Kids Edition Fire Tablets this holiday season versus last year. 2017 marked the release of our all-new Echo with an improved design, better sound, and a lower price; Echo Plus with a built-in smart home hub; and Echo Spot, which is compact and beautiful with a circular screen. We released our next generation Fire TV, featuring 4K Ultra HD and HDR; and the Fire HD 10 Tablet, with 1080p Full HD display. And we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Kindle by releasing the all-new Kindle Oasis, our most advanced reader ever. It’s waterproof – take it in the bathtub – with a bigger 7” high-resolution 300 ppi display and has built-in audio so you can also listen to your books with Audible.
Amazon 设备——2017 年是我们硬件销售史上表现最好的一年。顾客购买了数以千万计的 Echo 设备，其中 Echo Dot 和内置 Alexa 的 Fire TV Stick 更是打破品类与品牌界限，位列亚马逊全站销量冠军。今年假日季，Fire TV Stick 与儿童版 Fire 平板的销量同比增长超过两倍。2017 年我们发布了全新 Echo，外观升级、音质更佳且价格更低；推出内置智能家居中枢的 Echo Plus；以及体积小巧、配备圆形屏幕的 Echo Spot。我们还发布了支持 4K 超高清和 HDR 的新一代 Fire TV，以及配备 1080p 全高清屏幕的 Fire HD 10 平板。为庆祝 Kindle 十周年，我们推出了迄今最先进的全新 Kindle Oasis——支持防水（浴缸里也能看书）、搭载更大的 7 英寸 300 ppi 高清屏，并内置音频功能，方便用户通过 Audible 畅听书籍。
Prime Video – Prime Video continues to drive Prime member adoption and retention. In the last year we made Prime Video even better for customers by adding new, award-winning Prime Originals to the service, like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, winner of two Critics’ Choice Awards and two Golden Globes, and the Oscar-nominated movie The Big Sick. We’ve expanded our slate of programming across the globe, launching new seasons of Bosch and Sneaky Pete from the U.S., The Grand Tour from the U.K., and You Are Wanted from Germany, while adding new Sentosha shows from Japan, along with Breathe and the award-winning Inside Edge from India. Also this year, we expanded our Prime Channels offerings, adding CBS All Access in the U.S. and launching Channels in the U.K. and Germany. We debuted NFL Thursday Night Football on Prime Video, with more than 18 million total viewers over 11 games. In 2017, Prime Video Direct secured subscription video rights for more than 3,000 feature films and committed over $18 million in royalties to independent filmmakers and other rights holders. Looking forward, we’re also excited about our upcoming Prime Original series pipeline, which includes Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan starring John Krasinski; King Lear, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson; The Romanoffs, executive produced by Matt Weiner; Carnival Row starring Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne; Good Omens starring Jon Hamm; and Homecoming, executive produced by Sam Esmail and starring Julia Roberts in her first television series. We acquired the global television rights for a multi-season production of The Lord of the Rings, as well as Cortés, a miniseries based on the epic saga of Hernán Cortés from executive producer Steven Spielberg, starring Javier Bardem, and we look forward to beginning work on those shows this year.
Prime Video——Prime Video 仍是推动 Prime 会员增长与留存的关键动力。过去一年，我们通过引入多部屡获殊荣的原创剧集让 Prime Video 更具吸引力，例如荣获两项评论家选择奖与两项金球奖的《了不起的麦瑟尔夫人》以及奥斯卡提名影片《大病》。我们在全球范围扩充节目阵容：上线了美国剧《博世》《黑道家族 Sneaky Pete》新季、英国的《巅峰拍档 The Grand Tour》、德国的《你已被追踪》，并新增日本的 “Sentosha” 系列节目，以及印度的《呼吸 Breathe》和获奖剧《内线球员 Inside Edge》。今年我们继续扩充 Prime Channels：在美国新增 CBS All Access，并在英国和德国上线 Channels 服务。我们首次在 Prime Video 播出 NFL 周四夜橄榄球赛，共 11 场比赛累积观众逾 1,800 万。2017 年，Prime Video Direct 获得 3,000 余部故事片的订阅播放权，并向独立电影人及其他版权方支付了超过 1,800 万美元的版税。展望未来，我们对即将上线的多部 Prime 原创剧集充满期待，包括约翰·卡拉辛斯基主演的《汤姆·克兰西之杰克·莱恩》；安东尼·霍普金斯与艾玛·汤普森主演的《李尔王》；马修·韦纳监制的《罗曼诺夫家族》；奥兰多·布鲁姆与卡拉·迪瓦伊主演的《狂欢命案 Carnival Row》；乔·哈姆主演的《好兆头》；以及由山姆·艾斯梅尔监制、朱莉娅·罗伯茨首次出演电视剧的《返乡 Homecoming》。此外，我们已获得《指环王》多季剧集的全球电视改编权；以及由史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格监制、哈维尔·巴登主演、改编自埃尔南·科尔特斯史诗传奇的迷你剧《科尔特斯》的全球播映权，并期待在今年启动这些项目的制作。
Amazon Music – Amazon Music continues to grow fast and now has tens of millions of paid customers. Amazon Music Unlimited, our on-demand, ad-free offering, expanded to more than 30 new countries in 2017, and membership has more than doubled over the past six months.
Amazon Music——Amazon Music 仍在快速增长，目前付费用户已达数千万。我们的按需无广告服务 Amazon Music Unlimited 于 2017 年拓展至 30 多个新国家，过去六个月会员数量增长超过两倍。
Fashion – Amazon has become the destination for tens of millions of customers to shop for fashion. In 2017, we introduced our first fashion-oriented Prime benefit, Prime Wardrobe – a new service that brings the fitting room directly to the homes of Prime members so they can try on the latest styles before they buy. We introduced Nike and UGG on Amazon along with new celebrity collections by Drew Barrymore and Dwyane Wade, as well as dozens of new private brands, like Goodthreads and Core10. We’re also continuing to enable thousands of designers and artists to offer their exclusive designs and prints on demand through Merch by Amazon. We finished 2017 with the launch of our interactive shopping experience with Calvin Klein, including pop-up shops, on-site product customization, and fitting rooms with Alexa-controlled lighting, music, and more.
Fashion——亚马逊已成为数千万消费者选购时尚商品的目的地。2017 年，我们推出首个面向时尚品类的 Prime 权益——Prime Wardrobe，让 Prime 会员在家就能“把试衣间请到身边”，先试后买最新潮款式。同年，Nike 与 UGG 正式登陆亚马逊，我们还发布了 Drew Barrymore 和 Dwyane Wade 的明星合作系列，以及 Goodthreads、Core10 等数十个自有品牌。通过 Merch by Amazon，我们继续帮助数千名设计师与艺术家按需销售其独家设计与印花作品。2017 年底，我们与 Calvin Klein 合作打造互动购物体验，包括快闪店、现场个性化定制服务，以及配备 Alexa 控制灯光、音乐等功能的试衣间。
Whole Foods – When we closed our acquisition of Whole Foods Market last year, we announced our commitment to making high-quality, natural and organic food available for everyone, then immediately lowered prices on a selection of best-selling grocery staples, including avocados, organic brown eggs, and responsibly-farmed salmon. We followed this with a second round of price reductions in November, and our Prime member exclusive promotion broke Whole Foods’ all-time record for turkeys sold during the Thanksgiving season. In February, we introduced free two-hour delivery on orders over $35 for Prime members in select cities, followed by additional cities in March and April, and plan continued expansion across the U.S. throughout this year. We also expanded the benefits of the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card, enabling Prime members to get 5% back when shopping at Whole Foods Market. Beyond that, customers can purchase Whole Foods’ private label products like 365 Everyday Value on Amazon, purchase Echo and other Amazon devices in over a hundred Whole Foods stores, and pick-up or return Amazon packages at Amazon Lockers in hundreds of Whole Foods stores. We’ve also begun the technical work needed to recognize Prime members at the point of sale and look forward to offering more Prime benefits to Whole Foods shoppers once that work is completed.
Whole Foods——去年完成 Whole Foods Market 的收购时，我们承诺要让所有人都买得到高品质的天然有机食品，并立即下调了牛油果、有机褐壳鸡蛋、可持续养殖三文鱼等畅销日常食品的价格。去年 11 月，我们又进行了第二轮降价，并通过面向 Prime 会员的独家促销活动刷新了 Whole Foods 感恩节火鸡销量的历史纪录。今年 2 月，我们在部分城市为 Prime 会员推出满 35 美元两小时免费送达服务，随后于 3 月和 4 月扩展至更多城市，并计划在今年持续推广至全美。我们进一步升级 Amazon Prime Rewards Visa 卡福利，使 Prime 会员在 Whole Foods 购物可享 5% 返现。此外，顾客现在可以在亚马逊网站购买 Whole Foods 自有品牌 365 Everyday Value 等商品；在逾百家 Whole Foods 门店购买 Echo 等亚马逊设备；并在数百家 Whole Foods 门店的 Amazon Locker 取件或退货。我们已着手开发在收银端识别 Prime 会员的技术，完成后将为 Whole Foods 购物者提供更多 Prime 专属福利。
Amazon Go – Amazon Go, a new kind of store with no checkout required, opened to the public in January in Seattle. Since opening, we’ve been thrilled to hear many customers refer to their shopping experience as “magical.” What makes the magic possible is a custom-built combination of computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning, which come together to create Just Walk Out shopping. With JWO, customers are able to grab their favorite breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, and grocery essentials more conveniently than ever before. Some of our top-selling items are not surprising – caffeinated beverages and water are popular – but our customers also love the Chicken Banh Mi sandwich, chocolate chip cookies, cut fruit, gummy bears, and our Amazon Meal Kits.
Amazon Go——Amazon Go 这一全新的“无收银”商店于今年 1 月在西雅图向公众开放。开业以来，许多顾客将他们的购物体验形容为“像魔法一样”，这让我们倍感欣喜。这种“魔法”得益于我们自研的计算机视觉、传感器融合与深度学习技术的结合，实现了“拿了就走”的购物方式。凭借 JWO 技术，顾客可以比以往任何时候都更加便捷地选购心仪的早餐、午餐、晚餐、零食及日常杂货。热销商品中，咖啡因饮料和瓶装水并不意外地位居前列；但顾客也非常喜欢越式鸡肉法棍三明治、巧克力曲奇、切块水果、橡皮糖以及我们的 Amazon 即烹套餐。
Treasure Truck – Treasure Truck expanded from a single truck in Seattle to a fleet of 35 trucks across 25 U.S. cities and 12 U.K. cities. Our bubble-blowing, music-pumping trucks fulfilled hundreds of thousands of orders, from porterhouse steaks to the latest Nintendo releases. Throughout the year, Treasure Truck also partnered with local communities to lift spirits and help those in need, including donating and delivering hundreds of car seats, thousands of toys, tens of thousands of socks, and many other essentials to community members needing relief, from those displaced by Hurricane Harvey, to the homeless, to kids needing holiday cheer.
Treasure Truck——“寻宝卡车”已从西雅图的一辆卡车扩展成在美国 25 座城市和英国 12 座城市穿梭的 35 辆车队。这些会吹泡泡、播放音乐的卡车累计完成数十万笔订单，商品范围从战斧牛排到最新发售的任天堂游戏。过去一年，Treasure Truck 也积极携手当地社区传递温暖与关爱：向有需要的群体捐赠并送达数百个儿童安全座椅、数千件玩具与数万双袜子等必需品，受惠者包括哈维飓风受灾群众、无家可归者及需要节日欢笑的孩子们。
India – Amazon.in is the fastest growing marketplace in India, and the most visited site on both desktop and mobile, according to comScore and SimilarWeb. The Amazon.in mobile shopping app was also the most downloaded shopping app in India in 2017, according to App Annie. Prime added more members in India in its first year than any previous geography in Amazon’s history. Prime selection in India now includes more than 40 million local products from third-party sellers, and Prime Video is investing in India original video content in a big way, including two recent premiers and over a dozen new shows in production.
India——根据 comScore 和 SimilarWeb 数据，Amazon.in 是印度增长最快的线上商城，并且在桌面端与移动端的访问量均居首位。App Annie 统计显示，2017 年 Amazon.in 移动购物应用是印度下载量最高的购物类 App。Prime 在印度上线的首年新增会员数量刷新了亚马逊全球各市场的历史纪录。印度 Prime 商品选择现已超过 4,000 万件本地第三方卖家商品；Prime Video 也在大力投资印度原创视频内容，近期已首映两部原创作品，并有十余档新节目在制作中。
Sustainability – We are committed to minimizing carbon emissions by optimizing our transportation network, improving product packaging, and enhancing energy efficiency in our operations, and we have a long-term goal to power our global infrastructure using 100% renewable energy. We recently launched Amazon Wind Farm Texas, our largest wind farm yet, which generates more than 1,000,000 megawatt hours of clean energy annually from over 100 turbines. We have plans to host solar energy systems at 50 fulfillment centers by 2020, and have launched 24 wind and solar projects across the U.S. with more than 29 additional projects to come. Together, Amazon’s renewable energy projects now produce enough clean energy to power over 330,000 homes annually. In 2017 we celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Frustration-Free Packaging, the first of a suite of sustainable packaging initiatives that have eliminated more than 244,000 tons of packaging materials over the past 10 years. In addition, in 2017 alone our programs significantly reduced packaging waste, eliminating the equivalent of 305 million shipping boxes. And across the world, Amazon is contracting with our service providers to launch our first low-pollution last-mile fleet. Already today, a portion of our European delivery fleet is comprised of low-pollution electric and natural gas vans and cars, and we have over 40 electric scooters and e-cargo bikes that complete local urban deliveries.
可持续发展——我们致力于通过优化运输网络、改进产品包装以及提高运营能效来降低碳排放，并设定了以 100% 可再生能源驱动全球基础设施的长期目标。我们最近启用了迄今规模最大的德克萨斯亚马逊风电场，100 多台风机每年可产生逾 100 万兆瓦时清洁电力。到 2020 年，我们计划在 50 个物流中心部署太阳能系统；目前已在全美启动 24 个风能与太阳能项目，另有 29 个以上项目正在筹备中。所有可再生能源项目合计每年可提供足以覆盖 33 万户家庭用电的清洁能源。2017 年，我们迎来了“无挫折包装”十周年庆；作为一系列可持续包装举措的开端，该项目在过去十年累计减少了 24.4 万吨包装材料。仅 2017 年，我们的相关项目就显著减少包装浪费，相当于消除 3.05 亿个运输纸箱。在全球范围内，亚马逊正与物流服务商合作，推出首支低污染“最后一公里”车队。目前，我们在欧洲的配送车辆已有部分采用低排放的电动与天然气面包车和轿车，并投入 40 余辆电动踏板车与电动货运自行车执行城市内配送任务。
Empowering Small Business – Millions of small and medium-sized businesses worldwide now sell their products through Amazon to reach new customers around the globe. SMBs selling on Amazon come from every state in the U.S., and from more than 130 different countries around the world. More than 140,000 SMBs surpassed $100,000 in sales on Amazon in 2017, and over a thousand independent authors surpassed $100,000 in royalties in 2017 through Kindle Direct Publishing.
赋能中小企业——全球数以百万计的中小企业现正通过亚马逊销售商品，触达世界各地的新客户。这些卖家遍布美国 50 个州以及全球 130 多个国家。2017 年，有超过 14 万家中小企业在亚马逊的年销售额突破 10 万美元；同时，通过 Kindle Direct Publishing，自主出版的作家中也有逾千人年度版税收入超过 10 万美元。
Investment & Job Creation – Since 2011, we have invested over $150 billion worldwide in our fulfillment networks, transportation capabilities, and technology infrastructure, including AWS data centers. Amazon has created over 1.7 million direct and indirect jobs around the world. In 2017 alone, we directly created more than 130,000 new Amazon jobs, not including acquisitions, bringing our global employee base to over 560,000. Our new jobs cover a wide range of professions, from artificial intelligence scientists to packaging specialists to fulfillment center associates. In addition to these direct hires, we estimate that Amazon Marketplace has created 900,000 more jobs worldwide, and that Amazon’s investments have created an additional 260,000 jobs in areas like construction, logistics, and other professional services.
投资与就业——自 2011 年以来，我们已在全球履约网络、运输能力及技术基础设施（包括 AWS 数据中心）上投入逾 1,500 亿美元。亚马逊直接和间接创造的就业岗位已超过 170 万个。仅在 2017 年，我们就直接新增 13 万多个岗位（不含并购带来的人数），全球员工总数突破 56 万。新岗位涵盖人工智能科学家、包装专家、运营中心员工等多个领域。除直接雇佣外，我们估算，Amazon Marketplace 还在全球带动了 90 万个就业机会，亚马逊的投资又在建筑、物流及其他专业服务领域额外创造了 26 万个岗位。
Career Choice – One employee program we’re particularly proud of is Amazon Career Choice. For hourly associates with more than one year of tenure, we pre-pay 95% of tuition, fees, and textbooks (up to $12,000) for certificates and associate degrees in high-demand occupations such as aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technologies, medical lab technologies, and nursing. We fund education in areas that are in high demand and do so regardless of whether those skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. Globally more than 16,000 associates (including more than 12,000 in the U.S.) have joined Career Choice since the program launched in 2012. Career Choice is live in ten countries and expanding to South Africa, Costa Rica, and Slovakia later this year. Commercial truck driving, healthcare, and information technology are the program’s most popular fields of study. We’ve built 39 Career Choice classrooms so far, and we locate them behind glass walls in high traffic areas inside our fulfillment centers so associates can be inspired by seeing their peers pursue new skills.
Career Choice——我们尤为自豪的员工项目之一是 Amazon Career Choice。对于在职满一年的小时工，我们预付 95% 的学费、杂费和教材费（最高 12,000 美元），帮助他们获取飞机维修、计算机辅助设计、机床技术、医学实验室技术及护理等紧缺行业的证书或副学士学位。无论这些技能是否与亚马逊的工作直接相关，我们都愿意提供资助。自 2012 年启动以来，全球已有 16,000 多名员工（其中 12,000 余名在美国）加入该计划。Career Choice 已在 10 个国家上线，年内还将扩展至南非、哥斯达黎加和斯洛伐克。最受欢迎的学习方向包括商用卡车驾驶、医疗保健和信息技术。迄今我们已建成 39 间 Career Choice 教室，并将其设于运营中心内人流量大的玻璃房中，鼓励员工看到同事学习新技能而受到启发。
The credit for these milestones is deserved by many. Amazon is 560,000 employees. It’s also 2 million sellers, hundreds of thousands of authors, millions of AWS developers, and hundreds of millions of divinely discontent customers around the world who push to make us better each and every day.
这些成就离不开所有人的共同努力。亚马逊不仅拥有 56 万名员工，也包括 200 万卖家、数十万作者、数百万 AWS 开发者，以及遍布全球、永不满足、不断促使我们进步的亿万顾客。
Path Ahead
This year marks the 20th anniversary of our first shareholder letter, and our core values and approach remain unchanged. We continue to aspire to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, and we recognize this to be no small or easy challenge. We know there is much we can do better, and we find tremendous energy in the many challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
前景展望——今年是我们首次致股东信发布 20 周年，我们的核心价值观与经营方法依旧未变。我们仍矢志成为全球最以客户为中心的公司，并深知这绝非易事。我们清楚自己还有很大的提升空间，而未来的种种挑战与机遇正是激励我们不断前行的动力。
A huge thank you to each and every customer for allowing us to serve you, to our shareowners for your support, and to Amazonians everywhere for your ingenuity, your passion, and your high standards.
衷心感谢每一位客户给予我们服务的机会，感谢股东们的支持，也感谢全球所有 Amazonian 的创造力、热情与高标准。
As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. It remains Day 1.
一如既往，我随信附上 1997 年的原始股东信。对我们而言，这仍是“Day 1”。
Sincerely,
Jeffrey P. Bezos
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Amazon.com, Inc.