MKT00720 Marketing

Harvard style is an author-date referencing system. It has two components:

1. In-text citation: a partial reference to the source you are citing in the text of your work, including the author surname and date of publication in brackets, e.g. (Smith 1998).
2. The reference list: a list containing the full bibliographic details of all the sources you have cited in your work. It is usually placed at the end of the document. Entries in the reference list must be in agreement to the in-text citations.

Referencing, or citing, is an essential component of academic writing, as it acknowledges the sources of information you have used to complete your assignments.

• ensures that you are not open to accusations of plagiarism
• identifies your sources and enables readers to locate them
• acknowledges copyright and shows respect to the author for their work
• demonstrates the validity or credibility of your arguments
• demonstrates the extent to which you know the relevant literature


avoid plagiarism and academic misconduct (What is academic integrity and academic misconduct?)

The purpose of citing in the text is to provide brief information about the source, sufficient for readers to find full details about the source in the reference list.

In-text citations can be presented in two formats:

- (Author Date) – used to show the source of the information you are citing, usually placed at the end of a sentence.

While an activist image of workers is sometimes presented (Rodr?guez-Garavito 2005), workers are more often depicted as unwilling accomplices in factory managers’ manipulations (Ngai 2005).

- Author (Date) – used to emphasise the author by integrating author name into the sentence, followed immediately by date in brackets.

In the long run, Saarinen (2006) argues, development of tourism may not always be the most favourable use of natural and cultural resources …

References or bibliography usually appear at the end of your article, essay or document. However, do you know which heading you use?

A list of all the references you cited in your essay, report or document. This is the heading required by the Harvard referencing style.

Most commonly refers to a list containing the sources used in developing a publication and any other sources the author considers might be of use or interests to readers, or including all the sources you read (but not cited) in preparing the article/essay/document. This heading may be used in more substantial publications (e.g. theses, books, etc.)

Answer:

Introduction

Marketing strategy is the philosophy that leads to the process by which organisational groups and individuals are able to obtain their identified value, communicating it and by offering it to others. The basic concepts of marketing and its strategies are underlying the needs, wants and values of the customers by building relationships. However, marketing is strategically concerned with the direction and scope for developing long-term activities performed by the organisation for achieving a competitive edge.  

Therefore, for the business that is seeking a successful and sustainable participation within the growing market, they are required to choose an effective marketing strategy. Based on the marketing strategy that is used by Amazon since their birth the report highlights the existing marketing strategies of the company. Moreover, it recommends a suitable marketing strategy that can be used by the company for a long-term period.

Background to the Company

Amazon is the world leading online e-commerce retailer selling more than forty categories of products taking from electronics to groceries along with jewellery and auto parts. The company also has an internet and e-commerce platform and complete logistics platform with a broad internet advertising platform provided with internet start-up incubator settings.  The head-quarter of Amazon.com is located in Seattle, Washington founded by Jeff Bezos in the year 1994 (Amazon 2018).

The tech giant retailer is known as the largest e-commerce platform after Alibaba.com in terms of total sales and market capitalisation. The company has different business retail websites for various location including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, China and India. The operating income of Amazon in the year 2017 was AU$4.106 billion with a market revenue of AU$177.86 billion in the year 2017 (Amazon 2018).

Marketing Analysis

i) The Nature of Amazon Australia’s Marketing Strategy or Strategies since it began

Since the beginning of Company Amazon Australia has never developed any marketing strategy focusing on the status of any of the competitors. Amazon operates following its well-established vision of earth's most effective strategy of customer-oriented strategy. The current online market size in Australia is almost 7.3% in comparison to regular retail business that makes the majority of the majority of the retail industry in Australia. Before, launching is Australia Amazon had a limited Australian site (Wensley 2016, p.22).

However, Australian customer had been buying their required products from the US site for several years. In this context, a current report highlighted that Amazon US transformed the site for about 49% of the Australian visits. According to Luxton et al. (2015, p.38), Amazon's unique selling proposition tactics incorporate with the broadest choice of the products and services that help them to offer competitive prices on their product, fast delivery of services and innovative customer services. In addition to this, the organisational marketing communication strategies consist of print and media promotion technique, sales promotion, events, public relation activities and direct process of marketing.

In this context, it has been found that the organisation specifically focuses on print and media promotion technique and sales promotion method to enhance marketing communication networks. As stated by Mistilis et al. (2014, p.779) from the decade of its conception in the year 1995, Amazon has successfully outgrown many competitors in its field. Since then Amazon has been using a customer-oriented marketing strategy following different trends: they are:

Lower price

Amazon offers lower process on the products compared to other retail stores and e-commerce platform. They also offer a huge number of special discounts and packages for the consumers (Hunt 2014, p.24).

Shipping advantages

Amazon has been offering free shipping and fastest delivery service that is an attractive marketing service for the customers. Although Amazon prime not yet much popular in Australia but delivering local products through marketing within one or two would not be difficult for them (Weerawardena et al. 2015, p. 221).

According to an evaluation report published by Brain and Company, it has been found that Amazon will be the sixth largest retailer in Australia within the period of 5 to 10 years due to the effective marketing strategies. On the contrary, Helm and Gritsch (2014, p.419) stated that another study by UBS reported that Amazon will have a high influence on the earning of major Australian retailers in near future,

Digital marketing

Amazon initial digital business is dependent on SEO initiatives and Ad words operations that target millions of keywords provided with a clear set of experiences through testing and learning capabilities (Liu et al. 2014, p.326). Apart from these activities the company uses personalisation to make a relevant suggestion and a clear checkout procedure that is currently replicated by many organisations.

Positioning

In the recent past, sites such as India plaza and Allshoolstuff were forced to be closed owing to the lack of trust while purchasing goods online. However, Kumar et al. (2016) state that, it is the marketing strategy of Amazon that enables them to provide a far and wide presence within the bottom-line of the company that helps them to secure their websites.

Promotion

Amazon has a huge broadcast television commercials that are mostly present in the Australian market. Amazon uses mostly web-based advertising by which they make use of the billboard and smaller methods of promotion. Apart from these, promotional strategy Amazon also uses advertising networks in an online way, so that whenever a customer’s check the updates for the product, there is another advertisement on the similar thing on another website (Li et al. 2016, p.19). Moreover, search engine marketing is getting high on the company that helps them to provide smart promotional tactics.

ii) Strategic Marketing Options for Amazon Australia moving forward

Presently, several Australian businesses are not aware of the expansion of Amazon in Australia. According to Commonwealth Bank report, it has been found that only 70% of the retailers are aware of the plans made by Amazon for the purpose of Australian expansion (Woodside & Sood 2017).

Recommended marketing strategy

Amazon needs to lower down the prices of their products so as to undercut the local retailers for their products. The online giant needs to be perspired to post losses in return for obtaining a threshold in the market. Therefore, a price cut for other retailers will help them to maintain competitiveness in the market.

Shipping

Amazon is popularly known for providing prime service in the current days with free shipping on numerous items that can be fast delivered to the specific location. However, in order to enhance the service, the company needs to expand their prime service in a broad area of the network to improve their supply chain management and level of automation process in their system of logistics.

Search traffic

The Amazon domain name is one of the most secured and authorised domains on the internet. However, expansion of marketing strategies in Australia will trigger new and smaller e-commerce retailers to compete with the domination organics search on Google (Valos et al. 2016, p.48). Therefore, to address these issues, Amazon Australia needs to improve their SEO, ad words strategy to dominate the front page of Google.

Developing a relationship with the customer

Amazon is a large corporation and its six shows that they are not able to provide personalised customer service. Therefore, the organisation needs to act in a more corporate way to give a robotic feel to the customer. There are several creative ways that may help them to enhance communication through social media platform while allowing them to respond faster to customer enquiries (Gottlieb & Bianchi 2017, p.18). These will help them to keep their customer base in loops with regular updates, promotional message and regular deals.

Apart from these, the organisation in terms of marketing tactics needs to focus on the over and beyond of providing customer service by over delivering the promises. Therefore, the company needs to adopt stellar customer service by creating a strong identity for the brands that are necessary for creating a loyal customer base.

In order to do so, Amazon can engrave their customer names on the product to allow the customer to stick to Amazon. They can provide the customer to customise and personalise products that may differentiate them from their growing competitors in the niche market. Moreover, launching personalised products and the campaign can be an effective strategy for boosting productivity and marketing sales while providing a friendly relationship with the customers. According to Woodside and Sood (2017, p.98), content and email marketing can also provide a huge value for the audience on different social media channels through sharing of informative and relevant content, like writing daily blogs, creating infographics and intersecting creative content.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above study, it is evident that Amazon Company is the largest online retail market has been depending on customer-oriented strategy for a long period. In most of the cases, it has been seen that Amazon enjoys providing low prices and fastest delivery service. Apart from these, Amazon has limited restrictions on the selling of the products. People are able to buy everything including groceries, cooking appliances, movies, books and many other electronic and fashion products. Considering the larger Amazon market in the UK and US Australia retail market is much smaller.

However, to improve the sales and productivity through marketing provision, Amazon needs to take some new strategies on marketing for enhancing the service and to retain increased customer base. The company will have plenty of opportunities in Australian. Therefore, they need to enhance and improve their digital marketing and traditional marketing strategies to attract increased customers from all age group and locations.

Reference list 

Amazon 2018. Home: Amazon Australia Finder, viewed 12 September 2018. <https://www.finder.com.au/amazon-australia >

Gottlieb, U. & Bianchi, C., 2017. Virtual trade shows Exhibitors' perspectives on virtual marketing capability requirements. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, vol. 21, no.1, pp.17-26.

Helm, R. & Gritsch, S., 2014. Examining the influence of uncertainty on marketing mix strategy elements in emerging business to business export-markets. International Business Review, vol. 23, no. 2, pp.418-428.

Hunt, S.D., 2014. Marketing Theory: Foundations, Controversy, Strategy, and Resource-advantage Theory: Foundations, Controversy, Strategy, and Resource-advantage Theory. Abingdon: Routledge.

Kumar, V., Dixit, A., Javalgi, R.R.G. & Dass, M., 2016. Research framework, strategies, and applications of intelligent agent technologies (IATs) in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 44, no. 1, pp.24-45.

Li, Z., Zhang, H., O’Brien, L., Jiang, S., Zhou, Y., Kihl, M. & Ranjan, R., 2016. Spot pricing in the Cloud ecosystem: A comparative investigation. Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 114, no. 2 pp.1-19.

Liu, C.Z., Au, Y.A. & Choi, H.S., 2014. Effects of freemium strategy in the mobile app market: An empirical study of google play. Journal of Management Information Systems, vol. 3, no.3, pp.326-354.

Luxton, S., Reid, M. & Mavondo, F., 2015. Integrated marketing communication capability and brand performance. Journal of Advertising, vol.44, no. 1, pp.37-46.

Mistilis, N., Buhalis, D. & Gretzel, U., 2014. Future destination marketing: the perspective of an Australian tourism stakeholder network. Journal of Travel Research, vol. 53, no. 6, pp.778-790.

Valos, M.J., Haji Habibi, F., Cassidy, R., Driesener, C.B. & Maplestone, V.L., 2016. Exploring the integration of social media within integrated marketing communication frameworks: Perspectives of services marketers. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, vol. 34, no. 1, pp.19-40.

Weerawardena, J., Mort, G.S., Salunke, S., Knight, G. & Liesch, P.W., 2015. The role of the market sub-system and the socio-technical sub-system in innovation and firm performance: a dynamic capabilities approach. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 43, no. 2, pp.221-239.

Wensley, R., 2016. The basics of marketing strategy. The marketing book (pp. 75-107). Abingdon:  Routledge.

Woodside, A.G. & Sood, S., 2017. Vignettes in the two-step arrival of the internet of things and its reshaping of marketing management’s service-dominant logic. Journal of Marketing Management, vol.33, no. 1-2, pp.98-110.