And here you were thinking you had to be dirt cheap to be successful in this economy.

Predictions that only Walmart would be this holiday’s only victor were soon shattered when we woke up on a brisk Friday morning, the day after Christmas, to reports that this holiday season was Amazon’s “best ever.” Ah, lucky number 14.

The company’s press release uses nary a hyperbole as it illustrated just how much stuff consumers purchased:

- Twilight Series’s “Breaking Dawn” books: “stacked end to end they would reach the summit of Mt. Everest eight times”;
- GPS devices: “…combined weight of 151 Mini Coopers”;
- High-performance headphones: “…everyone attending the last three Super Bowls could grab a set and rock out”;and, perhaps a favorite for many in our office
– Coffee: “…enough to give each resident of the highly caffeinated city of Seattle a cup per day for two months.” (Metropolitan area population of 3,263,497, according to Wikipedia)

If you think about it, the news is not so surprising considering Amazon’s track record of consistently being the retailer of all retailers. In a conversation I had with Richard Owen, chief executive officer of Satmetrix, Amazon, and its neighbor Starbucks, have focused on the customer experience to drive their business — and especially since the economy depends on the (happy) customer, that’s not such a bad model to have.

He adds that Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com has been “relentless” in his assertion that the company will grow because “[its] customers have good experiences and they will call [their] friends. You [rarely] see Amazon commercials on TV,” as they focus instead on word of mouth economics as a mechanism for growing their business. Though Amazon’s initial investments suffered criticism from financial analysts in the beginning, Owen says, suffice to say they made some smart choices.

Still, we can probably count on a few companies that will continue to have a slightly skewed version of what creating a good customer experience really means. Companies, perhaps, that think like Dwight Schrute,who may strike a few wins, but for how long?