Jeff Bezos Let Customers Cancel Their Own Amazon Orders And It Paid Off Big: 'If You Give People More Control…Maybe They'll Order More'

In a 2002 MIT presentation, Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN founder Jeff Bezos discussed the surprising success of allowing customers to cancel their own orders.

What Happened: During the talk, Bezos said that to foster innovation, companies need to make experiments affordable. If experiments are expensive, only a few will be able to run them, limiting the potential for innovation.

He gave the example of how Amazon uses A/B testing (a way of comparing two versions of something to see which performs better) as a low-cost way to experiment with new ideas like personalization algorithms. This helps test ideas without huge investments.

The Amazon founder also pointed out that predicting how consumers will behave is tough and can often lead to wasted effort. Rather than debating and speculating, it’s more effective to try something and observe the outcome.

Amazon did this with features like self-service tools for customers to cancel orders.

Despite internal concerns, Bezos defended the move, saying, "If you give people more control over their environment… maybe they'll order more."

This bold decision was based on the theory that empowering customers would build trust and drive increased sales. "We couldn't really do a low-cost experiment… so we just went ahead and built it," Bezos explained.

Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox.

Why It’s Important: Amazon currently has a market cap of $2.2 trillion, making it the fourth most valuable company in the world.

Last month, Amazon reported first-quarter net sales of $155.7 billion, marking a 9% year-over-year increase and surpassing the Street consensus estimate of $155.04 billion.

Over the past five years, Amazon shares have gained 66.92%, though they remain down 5.90% year-to-date, according to Benzinga Pro.

Amazon currently holds a consensus price target of $248.80 based on the ratings of 41 analysts. The highest target, $305, was issued by Tigress Financial on May 6, 2025, while the lowest, $195, came from Raymond James on April 21, 2025.

The three latest analyst ratings by JP Morgan, BofA Securities and Tigress Financial gave it an average price target of $264.33, suggesting a potential upside of 27.64%.

Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings also highlight Amazon’s strong price momentum across short-, medium-, and long-term periods. More detailed performance metrics can be found here.