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On 25 June 2024 Ethical Consumer viewed the website of Amazon.com Inc in order to assess its company ethos. Ethical Consumer was looking at a number of factors, including: director pay, lobbying, company structure, and whether the company operated in any controversial sectors, such as arms/military.

The company was not found to be any of the following: co-op, mutual, not-for-profit, charity, registered social enterprise, employee owned, or a B Corp. (0 points)

The company was not considered to be providing a social or environmental alternative. (0 points)

The company did not appear to have positive approach to pay ratios. (0 points)

Annual director compensation was found to be over £10m. Andrew R Jassy, the president and CEO, received a total of $212,701,169 in 2021, which was reduced to $1.3million in 2022. In 2023, he received a total of $1.36 million (£1.1m). Two other executives however received over $40 million in 2022. (-20 points)

The company did not appear to be Living Wage certified. (0 points)

The company was found to be in two or more lobby groups considered problematic by Ethical Consumer. It was a member of:
Coalition of Service Industries
US Council for International Business
World Economic Forum
Eurocommerce
Business Roundtable
AmCham EU
National Foreign Trade Council
ADS Group
(-20 points)

The company was not involved in any sectors considered by Ethical Consumer to be highly controversial: arms/military supply, fossil fuels, mining, nuclear power/weapons (20 points).

The company was found to be subject to a significant boycott of the whole company: Ethical Consumer's boycott of Amazon, called in 2012, was still ongoing. The boycott was called because in 2011 Amazon, the world's biggest online retailer, generated sales in the UK of £2.9bn yet paid only £1.8m in corporation tax. The figure should have been over £8 million. These tax dodging activities weren't illegal but Ethical Consumer agreed with the MP's who attacked their “immoral” accounting practices. Ethical Consumer calculated that, in 2021, up to half a billion pounds (£500,000,000) could have been lost to the UK public purse from the corporation tax avoidance of Amazon. At a time when UK public services were being slashed and household budgets were under increasing strain Ethical Consumer felt it unfair that big companies such as Amazon weren't paying their way. (-20 points)

Final scores are capped at either 0 or 100. Overall, Amazon.com Inc scored 0/100 for Company Ethos.