Costco founder Jim Sinegal’s first impression of Amazon was when he bought a Kindle with a defective screen and had it immediately replaced by the company, with an email from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos telling Sinegal to consider him his ‘personal customer service representative.’ Since then, Sinegal has supported Amazon’s customer-centric service and long-range business perspective. In turn, Sinegal told CNBC that he thinks Bezos is inspired by Costco’s membership model.
“I think what will stop [Amazon shareholders] is if, number one, the pressure of becoming profitable becomes so great that they’ve got to change their game plan,” Sinegal told CNBC. “I think that eventually they have to figure out how to become a little more profitable in their business.”
