E-marketing is considered as the process of marketing services and products using internet. This is not limited to the use of internet rather marketing can be done through wireless media and e mail. E-marketing uses many technologies that include digital marketing, web marketing, internet marketing and many more to connect with customers. E-marketing has many advantages that are better return on investment; reducing cost of marketing, steady respond, and viral marketing (Stokes, 2011). To understand the theories, principles and concept of e- marketing two companies are chosen that are Mighty Ape New Zealand and Amazon US. Further, this essay consists of comparison between e marketing and traditional marketing and comparison of two companies on various aspects of e-marketing that includes e-marketing mix, relationship marketing, and analysis of macro and micro internet environment.
Mighty Ape & Amazon
Mighty Ape is e commerce retailer in New Zealand and started as video game store in 1994 and dealing in e commerce sector since 2008. E commerce businesses are mainly run on the basis of e marketing strategies and principles. Marketing principles are differentiation, segmentation, concentration and personalization. Looking into Amazon marketing strategies, the company is an international ecommerce retailer and has huge product base that includes, Amazon Kindle, Books, DVDs, Tablets, clothes, and pantry items. The company differentiated itself because of low cost leadership strategy that Amazon followed. The company mitigates cost by negotiating with its suppliers and by increasing its sales volume. Amazon segments its market on the basis of multi segment positioning as the company offers 562 million products in its sites. Amazon mainly targets wide audience who are interested in internet shopping across the world through its brick and click model. Mainly Amazon targets middle and upper class people who have access to technology. The company positioned itself as the global ecommerce retailer and in order to sustain in the market the company acquired many players named Zappos.com, pets.com, audible.com etc. (Amazon, 2019).
Mighty Ape is domestic e commerce retailer that has presence in New Zealand. Mighty Ape offers toys, games, books, collectibles, electronic and home livening products. The company targets mainly Australia and New Zealand market by offering its products and positioned as the speedy delivery e commerce retailer. The company offer same day delivery in Wellington and Auckland. The company focuses on strategy of holding stock in bulk in 5500sqm warehouse. The biggest competitor of Mighty Ape in domestic market is “Trade Me” that offers products to consumer at cheapest price. Mighty Ape is not able to compete in low cost leadership so the company focuses on differentiated by using “being the fastest supplier” (Mightyape, 2019). Marketing principles affected strategies of both the companies as all the marketing strategies are formulated on the basis of these principles. For instance, principle of segmentation and concentration help might y ape to target a segment that is people who are online shopping oriented and are business professionals of domestic market. On other side, this principle also influences Amazon practices as the company use multi segment strategy in order to deliver its wide customer base.
Both the companies have similarity in promotion of products as both use advertising as the tool to communicate with customers and to attract customers but difference is that Amazon target internationally and use geo localized strategy for advertising whereas Might ape targets domestic market only. The promotion mix of both the companies comprises of advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing. Further, for positioning their product in the market both the companies have their own strategy according to the business environment in which they operate. Mighty Ape positioned as “speedy delivery or same day delivery site” and on other side Amazon positioned as “low cost” company that offers goods or products at low cost at global level. So both the company has different strategy for positioning and similar strategy of product and promotion (Shaw, 2017).
Marketing Mix of Mighty Ape:
Product: Mighty Ape product mix consist of offering supplements, games, clothing, food, beauty products and mainly deals in entertainment and merchandise.
Price: The price mix of Mighty ape is not low cost at the company incur various cost and deliver qualitative products and services that make the company products costly as compare to other e commerce retailer.
Place: Company has many warehouses across Auckland and in other parts of New Zealand, with that company delivers its products to Kiwi people. Place strategy of the company is mainly focused on the delivery partner courier post and in future more distribution centers will be open by Mighty Ape to ensure smooth distribution channel.
Promotion: Mighty Ape stay ahead in competition by focusing on speedy delivery and its services are the biggest way of promoting its product through word of mouth in domestic market that is in New Zealand and Australia (Shaw, 2017).
Product: Amazon is an international e commerce retailer that offers a wide range that offers a wide range of products such as Amazon Prime, Amazon Video, Amazon publishing, Amazon Fresh, digital content, electronics and Amazon Pantry. Product mix of the company is effective because with help of such a wide product offering the company is increasing its customer base and attracting different customers.
Price: Pricing strategy of Amazon is low cost for attracting more customers towards its e commerce site. The company gives heavy discounts on product offers in its site. Further, the company use price discrimination strategy as the same products prices differently in UK market and different in US market on Amazon website.
Place: Amazon reach to its e commerce target market using official website of the company, Amazon books and number of other sites of the companies that Amazon acquired. Further the company has physical presence and use both the models that are brick and click and brick and motor. This helps customers to evaluate products before purchasing it.
Promotion: Promotional Mix of Amazon includes advertising, sales promotion, public relation and direct marketing. Such as the company earn revenue by displaying other companies’ ads on their website. Further, the company use sales promotion strategy by offering discounts and special offers on products to remain market leader (Amazon, 2019).
By evaluating e -marketing strategies and practices of both the companies, some advantages of e marketing that are experienced by both the companies are use of internet in today’s era. In order to reach more customers online marketing has grown exponentially. Online marketing reduces cost of advertisement for companies and considered it as the effective way to reach more target customer (Frost & Strauss, 2016). E-commerce sites like Amazon and Mighty Ape with help of e-marketing established successful businesses by targeting the right audience with the right technique. Use of websites, Facebook, e commerce model and various online payment banks make it easy for companies to understand demand of customers at the right time and customize their products as per requirement of customers. However on other side, e-marketing has few disadvantages for the companies that are privacy or security issues, higher transparency of prices that leads to price war between companies and lower profit margin (Salehi, Mirzaei, Aghaei & Abyari, 2012). This is seen in case of Mighty Ape and Amazon as both are e-commerce retailer but Mighty Ape knows that Amazon follows low cost strategy as all the prices are displayed in e marketing.
Traditional marketing campaigns are offline marketing campaigns that are now in this digital era is not that useful for companies. Traditional marketing tools are magazines, newspaper, television ads, catalogues and billboards. These tools were effective earlier to reach large audiences but the companies that use e commerce model these tools are less effective as that companies don’t invest huge amount in print ads and billboards. Some of the other disadvantages of traditional marketing is limited reach, heavy investment, no control over timing, and no proper way to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the campaign. In e marketing the effectiveness of campaign is measured using various parameters such as number of organic reach, number of subscribers, SEO and price per click and website traffic.
Relationship marketing is a strategy or approaches that organization use in order to foster customer interaction, customer loyalty and to ensure longer relationship and engagement of customers. Mighty Ape in order to ensure long term relationship and for higher customer engagement take surveys and feedback of services provided by the company on frequent basis on its websites and on a portal that the company made for getting customer feedback and to solve queries of customers via email and with their after sales services team. Mighty Ape use social media to engage with its customers and to reward loyal customers. But the company is not only relying on social media sources to connect with customers rather Mighty Ape conduct programs for customer engagement in New Zealand. Further, using Facebook pages the company builds social audience engagement by engaging customers on current trend topics such as with its Games Facebook Page Company informs to their customers about the latest version of games, rumor, product announcement in gaming segment and with giveaways. This interaction helps “Mighty Ape to build an authentic relationship with customers” (Harris, 2014).
Amazon use big data in order to interact with customers, which include data driven relationship marketing. The company gives social media platform to customers to share their feedback on regular basis and they can share experience with families and friends. After, customers make purchase they are given the option to conveniently share their purchase on a social media channel of their own choice, or send it by email” and this helps the company to advertise free of cost or to gain positive publicity. The more frequently a customer visits the site and opts-in to their newsletters, the better, personalized recommendations they get. All this helps in building brand image in the market and to personalize the customer experience.
Relationship marketing is the key to unlock potential of brand and business, this helps in building brand image and to build brand loyalty with customers. Amazon face challenges in maintaining brand loyalty because of large customer base (Akbari, Kazemi & Haddadi, 2016). The company is not able to communicate with all customers using digital channels like email as to fixing each and every customer require huge efforts by the company due to that thee brand image in the market is affecting negatively resultant in poor services. Mighty Ape is concerned for the providing services to its customer in New Zealand but primary disadvantage of relationship marketing is cost of retaining and building the brand image (Yvonne, 2015). Further, advantage of relationship marketing for Mighty Ape is that the company targets domestic market and maintaining relation with domestic market is easy for local company so relationship marketing prove to be effective for building image of the company in domestic market.
An organization mainly influenced by the environment in which they operate. Micro and macro internet environment are the factors that affect customers, suppliers, government and society. Internet has greater impact on communication strategies that was adopted by companies earlier.
Looking into internet micro environment, it is analysed that internet changes the way companies communicate with their stakeholders and mainly through customers. Companies use digital marketing tools such as email marketing, website and social tools to communicate with customers such as to aware people about their product offering, to communicate regarding any new feature or product range or to take any feedback from customer. Earlier, in order to communicate with customers companies choose print as, banner and surveys to take feedback from customers. But use of internet changes communication strategies choose by companies from traditional channel of communication to digital era (Weinberg, Milne, Andonova & Hajjat, 2015).
Macro environment consist of government rules, taxes, society, technology and economics. Companies earlier depend on news channel, print media, face to face interaction and paper work written document in order to communicate with government and to adapt to any changes happen in the environment. But some of the social factors in macro environment such as accessibility of internet and use of internet by society changes the communication strategies of companies. Developed countries promoted use of internet in the society due to that the company spend huge amount in e marketing rather than traditional marketing. On other side, legal and ethical issues related to internet also influences the strategies used by companies for communication. For instance, e-commerce business requires to protect all information of consumer regarding big data, behavioural information, contact details and this is gathered through different communication channel so use of save and secure channel or legal and ethical factors of internet also affect communication strategies of companies. Nowadays, “modern technology is disruptive in nature” it forces the companies to change its strategies and use of internet and different channels leads to companies to opt for other channels to communicate with customers and influence communicate strategies (Laudon & Traver, 2016).
Mighty Ape has opportunity to expand its business at global platform using internet as it does not require huge investment for e commerce model to expand business to international market. Mighty ape can positioned itself as the speedy deliver e commerce retailer and can customize its products as per the market demand. The company can tie up with other international sites to expand its business. The main challenges in e marketing and for e commerce at global stage is tough competition from big players in the market. Might Ape has to change its strategies in order to survive at global level. Amazon is an international e commerce retailer already has resources and potential to compete at global level. The challenge that company face at global stage is disruptive innovation from new players this can influence the marketing strategies of the company and Amazon has to change its strategies as per the changing global scenario (Sozinova & Fokina, 2015).
Conclusion
It is concluded from above assessment that e marketing is a process that nowadays companies use in order to remain competitive. Mighty ape a domestic player that offers speedy services to consumers frame marketing strategies for its target market in domestic area. On other side, Amazon is an international e commerce retailer that offers products and services across the world. But both the companies offer similar product line and use similar promotion strategies. Further, it is also concluded that relationship marketing strategies of both the companies differ because Mighty ape targets domestic market and Amazon has to made relationship with pool of customers that make it difficult for the company to implement relationship marketing effectively.
References
Akbari, M., Kazemi, R., & Haddadi, M. (2016). Relationship marketing and word-of-mouth communications: Examining the mediating role of customer loyalty. Marketing and Branding Research, 3, 63-74.
Amazon, (2019). About us. Retrieved From: https://www.aboutamazon.com/
Frost, R. D., & Strauss, J. (2016). E-marketing. Routledge.
Harris.C.,(2014). Mighty Ape strong-arms online business. Retrieved From: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/10659078/Mighty-Ape-strongarms-online- business
Laudon, K. C., & Traver, C. G. (2016). E-commerce: business, technology, society.
Mightyape, (2019). About us. Retrieved From: https://www.mightyape.co.nz/
Salehi, M., Mirzaei, H., Aghaei, M., & Abyari, M. (2012). Dissimilarity of E-marketing VS traditional marketing. International journal of academic research in business and social sciences, 2(1), 510.
Shaw,A.,(2017). Why Amazon does not scare mighty ape. Retrieved From: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11948623
Sozinova, A. A., & Fokina, O. V. (2015). Special aspects of studying the internet as a marketing communication channel of the service industry. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(4), 139.
Stokes, R. (2011). eMarketing: The essential guide to digital marketing. Quirk eMarketing.
Weinberg, B. D., Milne, G. R., Andonova, Y. G., & Hajjat, F. M. (2015). Internet of Things: Convenience vs. privacy and secrecy. Business Horizons, 58(6), 615-624.
Yvonne, (2015). Mighty successful: Insider tips for online business from Mighty Ape. Retrieved From: https://community.bnz.co.nz/t/mighty-successful-insider-tips-for-online- businesses-from-mighty-ape/452
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