Online Shopping For Electronics - Apparel - Computers - Books Amazon

Question: 1. The current competitive position together with future business projections in volume and value terms for the next 3 years. 2. The identification of new strategic marketing applications for growth from market penetration, market development and product development. 3. How market penetration can be sustained by addressing : -Marketing Mix Strategies Digital Marketing Communications Customer Relationship Management? Answer: Introduction Amazon.com developed an Amazon Kindle which is a software and hardware platform that has been designed to store and view electronic books (e-books). The e-book readers have primarily served the customers who demand for the latest technology and are ready to pay the prices for the products on premium rates. There are various market segments that the company targets and serve each of them with their demographic and geographic needs. The strategic goal of the companys marketing plan is basically to serve its clients on effective basis and deliver the product on time. The report discusses the competitive position of the company with other organization and plans the market strategies to penetrate the growing market for the next three years through digital marketing communication as well as managing the customer relationship by satisfying the needs of customers and serve them better. The purpose of the current study is to analyze the current situation of the business and provide the opportunities for future growth of the business. The study is focused on recommending strategy can be developed for the future improvement. 1. Company Background The momentum of the business lead after the dot com button made it enhance the operation of the company. Amazon.com became a wide and well known place for the storing and selling of the books, and this made it the worlds largest bookstore (Amazon.com 2016). Amazone.com brand strategy transformed the corporate level strategies of its competitors also and along with the new mergers and acquisitions with Amazon the company experienced a great success. Amazons strategy in the present time is focused on serving the clients with various branded products and aims to be the place where a consumer can purchase anything online. The technological advancement and the innovation has been the main source of success of Amazon. The power of computation, data storage and bandwidth technologies have improved and are on verge of improving and have also become relatively cheaper over time. With the expanding and growing business operations the company is a search engine, a logistic platform, internet advertising platform for the companies and fulfilling the role of being and IT platform and E-commerce. The electronic paper was used by Kindle that display the customers a little matter through illustration of the physical paper to its users. Amazon Kindle could easily serve the customer and could act as the stand alone device that could download the content of the paper through the EVDO Sprint network. The founder of the company envisioned this device for the readers to be able to become engrossed in the word regardless of the medium of reading. Battery Life, device portability, eye strain and user interface are the tailored services that enhanced the delivery of the books and best experience of the reader possible. Figure 1: Revenue and Profit of Amazon 1.1. Competitive Position of the Company There are hundreds of the companies that Amazon competes with. The online retailers are keen on increasing the product line, for the purpose of economies of scale, along with increase in market penetration through new markets with the existing products. As one of the fastest growing company Amazon is a multinational e-commerce with international presence, faces competition with the various categories of the product. They maintain unique process for the business than the business organizations that operate online e-commerce business. These competitors compete with the effective strategies of positioning in the global market and to become the market leader in physical commerce and e-commerce. The consumers market grows for experiencing efficient and convenient ways for their shopping where they may access variety of products and various price tags sitting at one place. The products are unique and it provides wide range of products to the customers (Levens 2014). Customer can select a p roduct from the different products easily. It also maintains return and refund policy for the customers. The shipment process of the company is very first. Thats why it is able to provide rapid delivery of products to the customers. Figure 2: Operating Profit Generated by Amazon Figure 3: Market Capitalization Amazon marketing strategy has been through advertising of Kindle on its own website. Amazon having a huge data base storage for improving the customer services. The availability of the books at the Kindle stores for the purchase and for online reading is the most convenient way to reach and satisfy the customers needs. One of the competitive advantages of the firm is the prices offered by the company. Some of the key competitors of Amazon are Kindle include eBay and Sony group. The growing perspectives of the company and its market share have increased the sales of the company in electronic books. The e-book reading facility of the company has provided extra advantage to attract more customers than the other customers. Company can face difficult situations if they do take new strategy for the business. It can reduce the revenues of the company in upcoming years. But if they implement new strategy it can help to increase the revenue approximately 10-15% per year. On the other side, th e amount of increase can increase approximately 8-10% per year. Figure 4: Sales of eBook Figure 5: Estimated Book Sales Revenue in 2018 Figure 6: Sales Revenue in United States from 2008-2018 2. Strategic Marketing Application for Growth The e-commerce and online retailing market is increasing and spreading their access throughout the world. Therefore, the company Amazon, being an online retail brand should emphasize more implementing strategic marketing applications throughout their business. The company should keep their focus on product diversification to combat with the increasing demands of customer. The more would be the variety of products, the more customers would be attracted (Grewal and Levy 2012). The reason of expanding the products was to compete with the growing e-commerce businesses and serving the clients with the variety of the products of various brands. Being a renowned e-commerce brand, the company should focus more on its research and development area for innovative product formulation and acquisition of new and innovative technologies. The arrangement of website campaigns, online advertisements, viral marketing would be effective for the company to attract more customers by meeting their specifi c needs (Levens 2014). The company should also focus on the e-book facilities, as with the growing technology-based applications, people like to read e-books for more comfort (Elmoslhey 2011). The companys should undertake strategic planning for analyzing their customers. It would help the company to offer specific opportunities based on the customers nature and buying behavior. For this, the organization should also focus on their E-commerce portals and develop system for keeping and recording tracks of the details of each customers purchase. It would help to enhance both organizational efficiency and the customers satisfaction. A number of different strategic analysis tools are available including BCG and Ansoff matrix to analyze the internal environment of the organization, which would help the organization to identify specific strategic needs and areas of improvement of the company (Grewal and Levy 2012). 2.1. Market Development The company needs to market development strategy for increasing the market share and increase the market share (Laudon et al. 2011). The business of Amazon has constantly been evolving as well as existing with the intense competition. Though the market is very tough, but there are also huge opportunities of the business (Laudon et al. 2011). The trend of shopping is changing day by day. Using of internet technology has emerged the growth of online business. Customers are more interested for buying the products through online due their hectic lifestyle. Figure 7: Number of e-reader Users Best Buy, eBay are the other potential competitors of Amazon for the e-commerce marketing and selling of the products. Though there are so many competitors are available in the market but they are not to fulfill the requirement of the customers and to cover the all market. According to the experts, it is expected that the future demand of online e-commerce will grow further in the future. So, amazon can develop and grow the market through developing innovative product and service to the customers. Figure 8: Market Share of Online Seller Company Figure 9: E-reader Shipments Worldwide On the basis of above figure, it can be explained that the market share of amazon is very less and it has decreased from the previous year. So, they should focus on increasing the market share for the sustainability in the industry. The growth of business is also very less. So, it can create difficult situation for the organization. So, they should take effective strategy for the growth of the business. One of the major challenges of the company is to setback the suppliers. The success of Amazon is majorly through the product selling at the low prices and speed delivery of the product to the buyers. The strategy has been a bit complicated when dealing with the suppliers. One of the cases with MacMillan, a well known book publisher, demanded the agreement to set the prices for their books and provide Amazon a fixed discount, the buy options on the Amazon website for MacMillan published books got deactivated. The news spread around and for this agreement Apple approached MacMillan, see ing this Amazon re-activated the buy buttons. This showed the susceptibility of the company to the external competitive forces which may have great influence on the organization. 2.2. Market Penetration Being the e-commerce giant, the company should focus on the least risky approach. The organization should focus on advertising programs, should organize different marketing programs for the customers. Arranging loyalty programs for the potential and long-term customers would help to retain more customers; here the company should put more effort in offering specific offers to customers. Additional of sales resource is also a way to protect market penetration by holding customers satisfaction towards the brand. The company should expand the range of products along with effective and attractive services for satisfying their existing trustworthy customers (Martin and Schouten 2012). Another major area of concern regarding the protection of market penetration is analyzing and modifying the pricing strategy. As it is a renowned company and provides offers to all class customers, the company should involve differentiated pricing strategy, which would help to attract all class of customers. Therefore, the company should adapt the pricing strategy, which is favorable for mass marketing, it would help the company to retain trustworthiness of the customers belonging from various classes, thereby protecting customer base. Amazons strategies adopted for the market penetration is basically dominating the markets by driving out the competitors, increasing the customer base and retain and increase the share market for products (Peter and Donnelly 2013). 2.3. Product Development The company should increase the availability of the product and also should focus on devolving innovative product for the customers (Wymbs 2011).It required the customers need assessment and a path for extension of the brand which was successfully adopted by Amazon. So, they need take product development strategy for developing new products for the customers (Lee and Carter 2012). The choice of the customers is changing day by day. So, they should focus on the changing demand of the customers. They should identify the requirement and trend of the customers properly and should provide the products according to their requirement. This strategy is generally adopted when the product life is at the decline stage in the markets while the e-commerce and mobile commerce is still in the introductory stages. The following is the Ansoff matrix for Amazon: PRODUCT EXISTING NEW E A B X I MARKET PENETRATION PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT S T (Low Risk) (Medium Risk) M I A N Build / Protect Existing capabilities R G Consolidation Core than current expectations K With new capabilities E T C D N E MARKET DEVELOPMENT MARKET DIVERSIFICATION W (Moderate Risk) (High Risk) New markets, new segments and new users Existing capabilities With new capabilities and more than current expectations Core than current expectations With new capabilities Ansoff Matrix (Source: Romero 2010) 3. Market Penetration Strategies Amazon market penetration could be sustained by selling Amazon products and Amazon Kindle promotion in the existing markets with the extensive and aggressive marketing strategies so as to gain the higher market share in the existing market with low risk and increasing sales. The three tools for market penetration are as follows: 3.1. Marketing Mix Strategy Amazon is one of the worlds largest online sellers of the various products such as books, games, music, movies and clothes, accessories and grocery products (Romero 2010). The company has chosen the intelligent and careful investment and acquires the small and medium businesses to enable itself move forward with the e-commercial business and expand fast by delivering the products with packaging for its customers. The marketing mix for next three years for the company to expand its market share consists of 7 Ps which are as follows: Product: Amazon is a multinational e-commerce company that connects to the potential customers through internet from various gadgets- PCs, Laptops, Mobile and Tablets. This allows the customers to easily browse from sitting home and purchase the products immediately. The increase in the product of the company has time and again delivered the customers with satisfaction from the products including the timely delivery services of the companies. Figure 10: Most Preferred e-reading Device The company should make stock of new innovative products and it should increase the category of products for increasing the market (Martin and Schouten 2012). The other products include- DVDs, Books, mobile Phones/tablets, clothes, jewellery and games. The initial product of Amazon was books and was known as the highest book seller which is still present. The market share of e-reader is high i.e. 73.7%. So, if the company gives more focus on this aspect it can help to increase the market share. The best experience of the customers is when they type the need of the product or the book in the search list; there is cent percent chance that Amazon has the availability of that product. As the industry grew the company expanded the Amazon Products for good online shopping experience to its customers. Place: The Company being the worlds online store for the variety of products, it must keep the existing markets target group with the customized products needs. They need to effective strategy for providing delivery of products to the customer within quick time (Morison and McMullan 2013). Sometimes, it has found that they make delay to deliver the products within specified time. It can create bad reputation for the company. So, they need to build shipment hub in each large town for making the availability of products and ensuring quick delivery (Romero 2010). Amazon has a large base for customer service in various countries where it has online presence, this help companys product to reach the customers. Price: Amazon is known for providing competitive prices and this is the reason for it being ahead in the preferences of the price sensitive customers. According to market reports, it has found that the amazon is facing certain challenges for the pricing strategies. Pricing strategies play effective role in marketing (Bosik 2011). A company can become to compete with the competitors if they are not able to set effective pricing strategies. The competitors of amazon are providing high quality of products and services with low prices. So, the company should focus on competitors pricing for setting the price of products. Sometimes, it takes high delivery charges from the customer for low price products. They should focus on competitors and follow their pricing strategies before setting their own strategies. Promotion: The Advertising and mass media promotion strategy has created the awareness of the brand products and services. Introducing of smartphone is laying effective for promoting products and services by the organizations (Morison and McMullan 2013). The marketing through word of mouth also provides the key benefit for the company to get access of various new customers in the existing market. The people who probably would like to buy the book can do so through online shopping. They can promote their products and services through developing new apps for smarphones, tabs and other electronics devices (Cavusgil, Knight and Riesenberger 2012). There are cases when the customer orders for the book which is not available with online store, the customer my click the button for his preference and within few hours the book is available for the customer and he is intimidated about it. The customer gets easily directed for the activities in the Amazon website itself and advertises and sells Kindle in the website, which is the most efficient strategy. According to Diamantopoulos et al. (2012), this is the strategy by which the company may easily expand the market by capturing new customers and retention of existing customers. Though they have already apps for various electronics but it should develop new app with high design and graphics. The apps should be easy to use and to identify the products, services and related information. People: People or the employees who will play the front line are the post important part of the business. The employees of the organization of the marketing and sales department are the important people for the marketing strategy. These employees play the vital roles in the advertisement giving and public relationship making. The employee of the marketing department interacts with the customers by campaigning and different types of promotional activities. Effective customer services are provided by the frontline employees of the sales department of the company. Process: The company is using the internet as the platform of their business. They are providing the home delivery services of their products to the customers. The effective level of managing the website of the company and the efficient delivery of the products is helping them to have the high level of success in their business. Physical evidence: The physical evidence of the product and services are the physical presence of the products and the invoices of the products and services. In case of receiving the e-receipts, the customers are still having the physical evidence of the products as the form of pdf files. 3.2. Developing of Digital Marketing Communications Digital technology can help to provide advantage for the improvement of the organizations (Du Plessis, Strydom and Jooste 2012). Though amazon is using advanced technology for operating its business but it should develop more advanced technology for maintain communication with both publishers and customers. Technology is not fixed and it changes time to time. So, the company also needs to keep update with the technology for the sustainability of business (Wymbs 2011). For amazon kindle, internet and web are main platform for fulfilling the requirements of the customers (Nahari, Krutz and Chapa 2011). The company cannot able to survive in the industry without developing effective communication with its all satkeholders (Jolibert 2012). The company operates direct marketing. So, in this case proper communication with the customer is essential for achieving the goal. Both telephonic and web communication are required for the business. There are certain issues related to getting the answ er of query. Sometime customers need to wait for long time for connecting the call with the customer care representative. They also get feedback through web after waiting long. So, they need to increase the telephonic call receiving capacity and also to improve the web technology for the improvement of the business. 3.3. Customer Relationship Management Amazon Kindle targets over 35 year old to 60 years of age group that contributes to about 60 percent of the market, rest of the market are young generation involved in studies and assignments which are targets for the company. The relationship of the company and customers have always been positive as the customers get satisfied of the products, their availability, quality, prices and most importantly its timely delivery (Hawkins, Mothersbaugh and Best 2012). This is the key market penetration strategy which succeeds for the Kindle brand. The company seems to have best stock of the books of about 350,000 e-books also available for download. There are major competitors in the same horizon including Barnes Noble, Apple, and IREX Technologies, but Amazon Kinder provides the stock readily available at the demand of the customer with the best prices (Noble 2016).This manages the customer relationship with the e-readers of Kindle and fulfills the needs of the customers by providing product s at differential prices and on time delivery (Homburg, Krohmer and Kuester 2013). 4. Resources Needs for the Proposed Changes In long run of e-books market, the positive growth of the potential market is likely seen in the future. The marketing strategies of Amazon would be the base for the companys success. The main stem for the company is the large amount of publishers who have the bargaining power that exist in the print media. The publishers have significant access to the delivery of the books and its supply chain that retains the large portion of surplus of producers in print media. The small amount which the retailers receive of all the profits on the books, Amazon faces the same difficulty. The effective communication with all stakeholders is essential for the success of the organziation (Weinman 2010). So, it is required to create a media through which proper communication can be maintained. In this case, social network can help to improve the business. The reputation of the brand has been the substantial barrier to the new entrants in e-book selling market. The another strategy of Amazon would incl ude the partnership with the hardware based companies that includes Sony, Blackberry, and more that would limit the selling of the e-book reading content up to Amazon Kindle. They should implement new strategy for entering into locations that yet not covered by them for the growth of business (Wild 2011). Thus contract with the publishers would make it profitable for the business to maintain competitive advantage. Figure 11: Application of Social Network in Marketing Another strategy for sustaining in market includes the price altering for Amazon Kindle and E-books. They should conduct market research and collect information from the competitors before developing new strategy (Shaw, Zhang and Yue 2012). Information related to pricing and products is important for developing the new strategy. The increase in the number of the e-reader and e-book sales, the revenue would increase from the e-book selling. The company should maintain such system which can help to maintain the stock of wide range of products for the customer (Weinman 2010). So, in this case, information related to publisher is essential for maintaining the stock and take decision of making order of products. They should develop the web using advanced technology and graphics. It should identify more publishers and increase the availability of books, newspaper, magazines and other e-reading materials for attracting more customers. The developing of new strategy can help to provide the easy option to read a newspaper, books and magazine in different regional languages (Shaw, Zhang and Yue 2012). Automatic dictionary will be available in the software to translate in different languages (Romero 2010). Dictionary functions can also help to identify the meaning of any word if readers face any to understand the meaning. So, they need to store huge words and their meaning in different languages in the database for providing the dictionary words. Figure 12: Essential Resources for Changes The marketing of the Amazon Kindle plays a significant role for spreading awareness about the product to the potential customers. The advertising and marketing methods of Amazon must include marketing campaign about go green marketing for e-books and purchase of e-books rather hard copies made of paper by cutting down trees. The advertising must also include the following strategies of marketing: Media coverage Personal appearances Social media Book trailers Online radio and Podcasts Blogs Tele-classes and courses Articles on sites and email or newspapers Email correspondence by providing link of e-books The marketing budget for the above strategies would primarily depend on the audiences involved to be targeted after the analysis and research. Budgeted Figures and Action Plan Forecast 2016 2017 2018 Sales Forecast Sales units (million) 15 15.8 16.5 Sales Revenue (million) 530 583 641 Estimated Market Share 5% 8% 11% Table 1: Budgeted Plan Action Plan Activities Start Date End Date Budget 2016 Identifying potential market 15/02/2016 28/02/2016 $22,500 Conducting of Market Research 3/3/2016 30/04/2016 $128,200 Identify the competitors 2/4/2016 15/04/2016 $28,000 Setting of target customer and positioning 17/04/2016 18/05/2016 $36,000 Upgrading of website 2/4/2016 25/07/2016 $128,000 Developing of new apps 15/04/2016 30/07/2016 $150,000 Identifying of suppliers 20/05/2016 10/6/2016 $12,800 Advertising and promotions 2/8/2016 3/10/2016 $25,000,000 Increasing the availability of books 3/8/2016 30/9/2016 $12,360,280 Setting of pricing strategy 2/10/2016 15/10/2016 $24,500 $37,890,280 2017 Identifying of gap in the market 2/1/2017 15/1/2017 $28,800 Upgrading of website design and adding of new functions 3/2/2017 15/03/2017 $118,500 Identifying the feedback of the customer 16/01/2017 15/02/2017 $32,000 Estimating the requirement of the customers 16/02/2017 28/02/2017 $12,500 Upgrading of apps 18/03/2017 12/4/2017 $98,000 Conducting of promotional activities 2/5/2017 4/7/2017 $1,120,000 Development of mobile sites 13/4/2017 25/05/2017 $85,000 $1,494,800 2018 Identifying of new market 5/1/2018 9/2/2018 $36,500 New product development 15/03/2018 25/04/2018 $47,500 Conducting of strategic analysis and identifying of gap 20/02/2018 13/02/2018 $34,200 Adding of more function in website and app 3/5/2018 12/6/2018 $75,000 Online advertising 15/03/2018 19/04/2018 $12,250,000 $12,443,200 Table 2: Action Plan Conclusion The marketing strategy of the Amazon would help it to achieve the stable and dominant position in the e-book services during the journey till maturity. In the short term which is the three year marketing strategy plan of Amazon, it must focus on the expanding the market share by targeting the new customers with the existing products and market which is through market penetration strategy through digital advertising. The company must also target the commuters and travelers and reach them through direct advertising methods and retaining the customers by focusing on customer relationship management. The prices of the e-book are already low for Amazon providing it a competitive advantage over the competitors, but may try to lower it down for the e-book reader in Kindle so as to attract the price sensitive customers. This will certainly allow the Amazon to sustain its market position and achieve the maximum market share and remain leader in developing the e-book market. References: Amazon.com, 2016. Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs more. 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