MKT600 Principles of Marketing: Recap of The Amazon Company

The marketing plan is to be based on a company (product) of your choice. You are expected to analyse the current market conditions, target market, marketing mix and then formulate recommendations.

Amazon segmentation, targeting and positioning mainly involve a set of activities that are aimed as determination of specific groups of people as customers. Accordingly, they had developed products as well as services that are attractive to the groups.

Segmentation:

Market segmentation is the first step of the process of the Segmentation, targeting and positioning. It can be described as the process that involves entailing division of the customers into different groups that harbor unique characteristics. Customers who have similar characteristics are often placed in the similar groups. Marketing segmentation mainly helps the organizations in understanding their consumers. It helps organizations to define as well as understand the characteristics of the clients and accordingly develop marketing strategy for them (Schneider, 2018). Amazon utilizes demographic as well as psychographic segmentation for segmenting its market. Close analysis had shown that Amazon’s segmentation is actually based on the actual purchase behaviors of the clients. Their segmentation does not depend on what might people have expressed their interests for but rather what they have already purchased. It is also seen that that the organization’s micro-level segmentation had targeted each customer individually. This had helped them to convert visitors into ling-term as well as high value customers. Researchers are of the opinion that E-commerce segmentation mainly includes creation of personas who buy in particular ways and certain products (Falk & Hagsten, 2015). Similarly, the organization had also targeted the middle class and upper classes people who have hands on experience on the basic technologies but do not have enough time or do not prefer convenience over shopping from physical outlets.

Targeting:

This process involves selecting market segments that will finally become the focus of the marketing programs of the organization. The segmentation procedures mainly help in identification of the target market segments and accordingly in this step, the organization needs to select few market segments that will form the foundation of the marketing campaigns. The organization had aimed at a wide variety of audience in the present generation who are interested in internet shopping. From the different ranges of articles that are found in the website, suggest that it targets customers who are of all the ages ranging from young to old (Torres et al., 2018). The site has been developed in ways by which it even the technologically backward individuals can also able to handle the site successfully. It has been seen that the website is not developed targeting a “type” of cohort as it has been seen to offer items to consumers who come from all walks of life as well as interests. However, it is seen that the organization mainly tries to target people who have access to internet and have financial paying tools mostly like through credit card, debit card, PayPal and others (Kim et al., 2017). However, the audience for the Prime program is mainly seen to appeal to older shoppers than the younger ones as data shows that individuals who are above the age 40 are more loyal to the service than people who are less than 40 years of age.

Positioning:

This process involves the tailoring of the offers of the firms so that it can stand out from that of the competitors and thereby attracts consumers who can buy this offer. The organization is operating in an industry where it is highly competitive. Therefore, Amazon needs to standout from the rest of the competitors in order to survive in the market. Amazon is mainly seen to provide two types of positioning. One of them is the multi-segment positioning. The organization provides a wide range of products as well as services that have successfully exploiting more than one segment at the time (Kozareva, 2015). Data has shown that specifically, the online retail giant sells more than 562 million products that have already appealed to the needs and wants of the wide range of the customer segments. It is also seen to undertake adaptive positioning where the organization closely monitors the changes in the external market place and can thereby address customer expectations. This is mainly done by periodically repositioning of the products and services according to the changes in the segments. Their activities also reveal that they follow another form of positioning called the anticipatory positioning. They have developed services like Amazon Sage Maker, Amazon Comprehend and Amazon Rekognition. These have low turnover currentky but they have the anticipation that their demands will increase in the future resulting in greater outcomes.

Marketing mix:

Product:

Amazon had become an international e-commerce company. By the use of connections to the internet  through different types of gadgets  like that of phones and tablets for allowing customers for browsing and purchasing important products immediately. With the help of delivery service companies, they deliver the products to the customers (Zhao et al., 2015). They had successfully built up a huge product base which are seen to sell almost every important things like Kindle, Books, DVDs, Clothes for men/women and children, Mobile phones/tablets, Jewellery, Gardening equipment, Gaming consoles and games. Initially, they had started with books but as the organization contributed to grow, more and more different products were introduced for selling.

Price:

Amazon is seen to follow the market leader as well as the competition based pricing strategies. The pricing strategies are different for the different kinds of services that are offered by the organization. The firm is mainly seen to use technology to its advantage for setting the prices and set tge price of the products using the competitive pricing strategies. The organization is seen to offer the lowest  of the prices and this is made possible by the efficiency of the operations and according to its web-based business models. The prices are adjusted according to the category of the product as well as the time of the day and the season (Sorokina et al., 2016). They are also seen to provide value added services like that of Prime where the consumers have to pay certain subscription charges for one day delivery as well as early access to the different deals.

Place:

Amazon has become one of the global brands, which is experiencing demands for services from across all places in the world. Not only consumers from America, people from various parts of the world can easily access the website and the application for amazon.com. Once, the customer had placed an order, the distribution channel of the Amazon takes the responsibility.  Here the products are procured and stored at the Amazon’s fulfillment centers that are actually huge warehouses that are constructed by Amazon in strategic locations for reaching out to the remotest of the places. They are seen to use the local postal and courier services for the transportation of the packages (Einav et al., 2014). However, in the year 2015, the organization had been seen to open round about 6 to 7 bookstores that are physical retails. They also have alternative store format that are seen to operate in a cost effective manner, students are seen to order books online and form furnishings online. They then come to the centralized pick-up location      for picking them up. It actually helps in reduction of the shipping expenses. They are now preparing to launch grocery pickup service at two locations in Seattle. This will help the prime members to order groceries online and then visits the stress for picking up. They have also introduced Prime Free Same Day and Prime Free One Day services which are available for more than 8000 cities and towns.

Promotion:

Amazon is seen to undertake committed rigorous promotional strategies for promoting its brands. Amazon mainly focuses on advertising and this is done through print ads in the newspapers. Amazon is also seen to use creative television commercials as well as undertake rigorous social media marketing. This is done through search engine optimization and customers are targeted according to their searching patterns (Bogue, 2016). Moreover, Amazon had also mastered the art and give effective sales promotions and discounts during holiday seasons and festivals resulting in high visits to the websites. Public relation exercises are also seen to improve brand image and was seen to include Amazon smile that donates to the charity organizations.    

People:

Amazon is seen to provide huge importance to its employees in the workplace. Irrespective of the positions where the employees are working, they are seen to get huge number of benefits from amazon, which makes it a desirable employer. These benefits that are provided to the employees are seen to include the health, financial, assistance programs and might also involve the vacations and even the equity programs (Lin, 2014). Around 2,30,800 employees are seen to work across the globes all around the clock which help in ensuring  best experiences by the customers. It is also seen to provide its employees with various raining and even developmental activities.

Process:

Amazon is the world leader in the e-commerce as well as in the web-based services. It is the strong process oriented business. The organization had already divided the warehouses and its fulfillment centers for operational efficiency. It is also seen to use the best in the business technologies for supporting the daily activities as well as manage its advertisements and serving the customer like providing detailed information about the location of the packages (Currim et al., 2015). The customer relationship department and the information management are mainly the cores of the business strategies.

Partnership:

Amazon has partnered with more or less every brands that it promotes and sells on tits websites. Apart from that they have also partnered with DC comics, united states postal services, Nike, Amazon fresh, and many others.

Physical evidences:

Researchers state that the biggest physical presence of the Amazon is its websites. It is mainly the online retailer   and therefore the place of service is the website and the apps that are very user-friendly and are also built with great designs and styles. Moreover, the warehouses and its fulfillment centers of Amazon present all over the countries are the largest that anyone can find. The packages are also seen to sport their logo that shows an arrow from A to Z meaning that all commodities of use can be found on the websites (Wittig & Wittig, 2016).

Conclusion and recommendation:

From the above discussion, it becomes clear that Amazon had emerged as one of the most valuable e-retailer company not only in United States but also all over the world. They have developed modern business technologies by which they have set the pricing strategies that help in developing lucrative pricing options for the consumers. They have attracted consumers that range from young to even the old clients and have kept products that attract all consumers of all cohorts. Apart from the online selling strategies, they are also establishing physical outlets for books and even pick-up points for many consumers. However, they are into a rigorous competitive zones with similar other successful competitors like Alibaba, Ebay and many others. Therefore, they have to continuously come up with new strategies that are not only innovative but also attracts the consumers either by being of reasonable prices or due to variety of products or due to easy convenience in getting them as fast as possible.   A strong research team needs to be be employed who would work on the marketing analysis and identify the demands and needs and accordingly position the marketing strategies accordingly. This would be of high advantage to the brand in the competitive market.

References:

G. (2018). Amazon Business Strategy: Insights Of Its Operation And Investment Plan To Become A Trillion Dollar Corporation. Retrieved from https://www.greyb.com/amazon-business-strategy/.

Bogue, R. (2016). Growth in e-commerce boosts innovation in the warehouse robot market. Industrial Robot: An International Journal, 43(6), 583-587.

Clauser. G. (2018). What Is Alexa? What Is the Amazon Echo, and Should You Get One?. Retrieved from https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/what-is-alexa-what-is-the-amazon-echo-and-should-you-get-one/.

Currim, I. S., Mintz, O., & Siddarth, S. (2015). Information accessed or information available? The impact on consumer preferences inferred at a durable product E-commerce website. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 29, 11-25.

Einav, L., Levin, J., Popov, I., & Sundaresan, N. (2014). Growth, adoption, and use of mobile E-commerce. American Economic Review, 104(5), 489-94.

Falk, M., & Hagsten, E. (2015). E-commerce trends and impacts across Europe. International Journal of Production Economics, 170, 357-369.

Kim, Y., & Peterson, R. A. (2017). A Meta-analysis of Online Trust Relationships in E-commerce. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 38, 44-54.

Kozareva, Z. (2015). Everyone likes shopping! multi-class product categorization for e-commerce. In Proceedings of the 2015 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (pp. 1329-1333).

Lin, Z. (2014). An empirical investigation of user and system recommendations in e-commerce. Decision Support Systems, 68, 111-124.

Schneider. L. (2018). Overview of Amazon.com's History and Workplace Culture [online]. Retrieved from https://www.thebalancecareers.com/amazon-com-company-research-2071316 [accessed on October 31, 2018]

Sorokina, D., & Cantú-Paz, E. (2016, July). Amazon Search: The Joy of Ranking Products. In Proceedings of the 39th International ACM SIGIR conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (pp. 459-460). ACM.

Torres, A., Behe, B., & Barton, S. (2018, June). E-Commerce Adoption in the Amazon Era: Evidence from the Green Industry. In 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, DC (No. 274051). Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

Wittig, M., & Wittig, A. (2016). Amazon web services in action(p. 424). Manning.

Zhao, Q., Zhang, Y., Friedman, D., & Tan, F. (2015, September). E-commerce recommendation with personalized promotion. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (pp. 219-226). ACM.