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Amazon Digital Marketing Activities
Executive Summary
In this report, Amazon has been found to be on the forefront towards exploiting market opportunities created by digital technologies. The company has resourcefully applied innovative digital technology to provide flexible merchandising, as well as personalized marketing services. Through the use of digital marketing technology, Amazon has been able to establish, maintain and strengthen a long term competitive advantage within its industry and beyond. As recommended in this report, the company needs to focus on steady improvement on its digital technology infrastructure based on the market environment trends, which include investing more in research and development.
Introduction
The global marketplace is changing at an unprecedented pace. Driven by the evolving technologies, business organizations should be on the lookout, or else their competitive advantages might be surpassed within a blink of an eye. This report has comprehensively discussed the digital marketing activities executed by Amazon Corporation, a company that is well recognized globally for leading others in the area of e-commerce. In addition, this report has also evaluated the effectiveness of the company’s digital marketing activities with respect to their impact on its competitive advantage, after which recommendations are also proposed.
The Company Background
Amazon Corporation is a US-based e-commerce company that was
Amazon.com operates in the Online Retail Industry. The sector is one of the fastest growing globally and is outperforming the ordinary retail marketplace. It was created after 1995 and it was only the Internet that made it possible for such an industry not only to be established but to become one of the most flourishing sectors in the business environment. What is interesting is that Amazon.com, together with eBay is the pioneer in the field. Both companies were launched in 1995 and are still extremely successful. The creation of e-mail in 1996 had a huge impact on the development of online retail by introducing a fast and easy way to communicate with customers. For this two-year period Internet usage
This case study is concerned with the continual roll-out of Amazon’s global strategy through the development of resources and strategic capabilities. It is about global dominance through the development and use of technology and acquisitions and alliances to offer an increasing array of products and services and continually enhancing customer experience. The case discusses the widening of Amazon’s business through serving three distinct and different groups of customers. The case highlights a number of potentially disruptive technologies including Kindle and cloud computing.
Also, Amazon has emphasized on building “several distribution centers around the world to hasten deliveries”(Hof and Himelstein, 1999). Coupled with its software it provides a “laser-like focus on the buying experience”(IT Business Edge, 2012). Such a system and service is what draws customers towards Amazon and subsequently retains them.
As of January 2010, Amazon.com has three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples. By offering a large amount of varied categories through its website and other international ones (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.fr, and so on), it has managed to grow to a customer based company with over 30 million people. In addition, the online retail format enables the company to reduce costs of managing inventory (Amazon.com; online bookstore, 2008).
One of the companies that exploits opportunities and business ventures to create growth and sustainability is Amazon, Inc. Amazon was founded in 1994 and since then it has opted to take its business online and thus develop a global strategy that has paid off and turned the company into a technological business hub that serves consumers by offering an assortment of products and services in a noteworthy customer service. These strategies have made Amazon one of the leading online retailers with a revenue of US$ 88.988 billion as of 2014. This paper thus seeks to describe Amazon’s grand strategies of product development, market development, and concentration as part of its long-term growth strategy.
The story of Amazon.com is a marvelous successful one. A company ́s biography which since the foundation in 19941 (followed by webpage launch one year later in 19952) became the world’s market leader in e-tailing by fully focusing on customer satisfaction and consequently aligning all organization activities, such as for example corporate strategy as well as technological portfolio, towards the consumer needs.
Amazon stated its marketing approach in its 2011 annual report as “we direct customers to our websites primarily through a number of targeted online marketing channels, such as our associated program, sponsored search, portal advertising, email marketing campaigns, and other initiatives.”(Petro, 2017). Being the leader of the ecommerce industry, Amazon maintains that
There are currently several platforms that have been developed to support a business that is primarily done via e-commerce. These platforms will integrate with the various business channels and centralize inventory. Since KOR’s sales platforms (i.e. Amazon, www.korwater.com, etc) are decentralized, inventory will be kept in one bucket; allowing for all inventories at various locations to sync together. This would mean, if a customer purchases a product on Amazon.com, the inventory will then sync to all channels.
As discussed in the case study, the advertising and marketing strategy of Amazon have been focusing on how the products would gain interest from their target market and how they can be able to generate sales with their products. This is Amazon’s stronghold where it continues to yield strong sales revenue by leveraging off its excellent online shop in different locations, such as in UK and other country, strong brand name and excellent reputation among customers. Amazon has also been continuing to create affiliate websites to expand their business market among various consumers.
Founded in 1995, Amazon.com Inc. is one of the leading e-commerce platforms, with over $74.45bn (Statistica 2013) in worldwide revenues, 132,600 employees as of June 2014 as well as operating within 220 countries. Not only does it operate as an e-commerce website, trading millions of products, but also manufactures its own products such as the Kindle e-reader which has over 73.7% market share (Statistica 2013); Amazon Fire smartphones; various games through Amazon Game Studios as well as providing a video streaming service similar to that of Netflix. The Seattle based company also implements vast amounts of information technologies within its processes and operations, from its products through to how it provides its services. Its e-readers and smart phones are prime examples of the information technology used by the company, however as of December 2014, Amazon has implemented robot workers within 10 of its 109 shipping centres around the globe in order to move heavy merchandise (Griffiths, S 2014) while at the same time testing delivery drones within the UK so that parcels may be delivered by air. Five emerging technologies have arisen to have substantial practical uses within the company: Autonomous vehicles; holographic displays; scent technologies; the internet of things; and immersive virtual reality technologies. Each of these has its own potential applications which would be beneficial within various parts of the organisation as well as their own
The objective of this case study is to outline and provide a brief overview of Amazon.com’s (Amazon) mission, strategic direction, core competencies, relied technologies and their future impact of new technologies, and how management and use of consumer data will impact future business.
Amazon has grown rapidly since their inception. The company experienced a surge is sales of 313% until 1998, supported by 8.4 million customer accounts in over 150 countries, of
Amazon.com is a Fortune 500 company that has revolutionized the retail industry. In recent years, Amazon has faced increased competition in the highly competitive online retail space as competitors invested heavily in their online storefronts and infrastructure. Positioned in a highly fragmented industry, Amazon must find solutions that can sustain its long term profitability and maintain its market share. To that end, Amazon should grow the Amazon Prime membership base and expand on its media and mobile offerings.
The purpose of this video is to inform the viewer about all the different categories Amazon provides for the consumer and related news. When people think of Amazon, they most likely think of just the online shopping platform. However, the company has expanded into much more. Galloway predicts in his video, Amazon will be the first one trillion-dollar market capitalization company by 2020. Within the past couple of months, Amazon purchased Whole Foods. This is a win for the consumers because it will drive the price of groceries down at Whole Foods. Not only has Amazon captured the grocery market, but they are on track to pass the most dominant company in screen television, Netflix. Amazon is the fastest growing media company in the world in 2016-2017. They will soon be capturing big sporting events like NFL football games, The Olympics, and March Madness. This will put a huge strain on television companies causing them to slowly go out of business. Amazon also had the most innovative tech-product this year over Apple. They created a smart speaker in 2015, what is known as an Amazon Echo. The Echo is capable of voice interaction, music, setting alarms, telling jokes, providing the forecast, and other
Marketers are faced with new challenges and opportunities within this digital age. Digital marketing drives the creation of demand using the power of the internet, and satisfies this demand in new and innovative ways. In other words Digital marketing is the utilization of electronic media by the marketers to promote the goods and sell in the market. Digital marketing can give value in the form of time, attention and advocacy from the consumer. Digital marketing strategies build on and adopts the principles of traditional marketing, using the opportunities and challenges offered by digital medium. This paper focus on the importance of Digital marketing for both marketers and consumers. This paper additionally includes difference between traditional and digital marketing.