For this report discussion, the company selected is ‘Amazon’ for which marketing audits, including internal and external factors, would be conducted. Amazon is part of the online retail industry established in 1994. Its headquarters are in Washington U.S serving products worldwide. For this study, the report will discuss the company’s market positioning along with its unique selling proposition further. Moreover, market attractiveness and market growth potential for the company would be considered (Amazon, 2018).
Products that the company serves are Amazon Kindle, Amazon Appstore, Amazon Echo, Amazon Prime, Comixology, Amazon Video, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Web Services, Alexa, Fire TV, Music Unlimited, Amazon Studios, Music, Amazon Digital Game Store, Fire tablets, Amazon Wireless, and Amazon Drive. Being an E-commerce company, in today’s scenario, there are many competitors and new entrants in this industry like Flipkart, eBay, Jabong, Myntra and many more.
A marketing audit is the comprehensive, structured, scrutinized evaluation and understanding of the company-marketing environment. The audit is performed by a third party and not the company, covering the business’ internal and external marketing environment, its goals and objectives, principles and strategies to govern the areas with opportunities and challenges and to create recommendations on the best alternative plan of action to progress a company’s marketing performance (Harvey, 2009).
Considering market position, Amazon is providing services to four major consumer sets, sellers, consumers, online content creators, and enterprise serving at the retail website of the company focusing on price, convenience, and selection (West, 2011).
Major types of positioning, Amazon uses are:
Amazon, exploiting many segments at the same time, offers a number of products and services through its e-commerce website. It is selling more than 562 million products, covering a wide range of customer segments needs and wants (John, 2018).
The online retail precisely observes changes in addressing customer expectations and external marketplace by timely repositioning of services and products as per changes in the segment.
Some services like Amazon Recognition, Amazon Comprehend, and Amazon Sage maker are part of the market segment that has low turnover. Therefore, e-commerce, in order to increase demand in the future, has developed mentioned services with anticipation (John, 2018).
Amazon serving a wide range of products to wide customer segments had USP that becomes a competitive advantage for the company in the online retail sector worldwide. Amazon USP includes:
This component of the marketing audit will consider an Amazon external factor that affects the business-marketing performance of the company. For this, Malta external factors would be considered, that is:
The economic stability of developed countries escalates the possibility of success for Amazon.com Inc. in these markets. In the case of Malta, the economic development is dynamic. In 2017, GDP growth amounted to be 6.9%. Malta’s unemployment rates in 2017 were 3.5% that is the second lowest, in Europe (nordeatrade, 2018).
Amazon profits from political stability. This situation generates an opportunity for the company to enlarge or diversify its trade in developed countries. According to world bank data, Malta’s political stability index, indicate an average of 1.7 points during period 1996 to 2016, where -2.5 is considered week and 2.5 is strong. With this, it can be described that the political stability of the country is low and could be challenging Amazon to market (theglobaleconomy, 2018).
Amazon has probabilities to enhance its environmental impact in response to the rising interest in environmental programs. For example, grounded on this external factor, an enhancement in Amazon’s corporate social responsibility strategy might considerably contribute to satisfying this interest.
The culture of a country will affect the business performance of Amazon. In the case of Malta, the culture of Malta indicates many societies that are connected to Maltese islands including Mediterranean culture neighboring. The culture of modern Malta indicates a “rich pattern of traditions, beliefs, and practices,” that is the outcome of “a long process of adaptation, assimilation, and cross-fertilization of beliefs and usages drawn from various conflicting sources (Garland, 2015).”
Demographic factors of external environment can affect Amazon marketing strategies. In the case of Malta, it is one of the most densely populated countries in EU with approx. 1265 inhabitants per sq. kilometer. Age composition sifts towards the older population since 200 continued to materialize. The average age increased from 38.5 in 2005 to 40.5 of the Maltese population in 2011 (Scicluna, 2018).
This audit is closely associated with amazon’s efficiency of the marketing strategies. The factors for this audit include:
As mentioned before, the target market for Amazon is very wide, offering a large number of products, to the various customer segment. Moreover, the company is marketing its products globalized. Majorly all countries of the world are serviced by Amazon (amazon, 2018).
In the case of books or content related services like movies, books, audiobooks, and magazines, Apple is the largest competitor, with products like the iTunes store. In the case of web services, Google would be considered as biggest competitor, Netflix, time warner cable are competitors in the media segment. Moreover, In general merchandise and electronics segment, many bricks and mortar retailers like Walmart is always a threat to compete in the large retail sector, Best Buy, Staples, StyleMacs, Big Lots, Target are major competitors. Online competition to Amazon is Alibaba group, Overstock.com, Vipshop holdings, Wayfair Inc., LightnTheBoxHolding Co., PCM Inc., JD.com, and Zulily. In many countries other e-commerce companies like Flipkart, Snapdeal is major competitors to Amazon. In operating segments, some of the world largest companies with whom Amazon competes include PC connection, Citrix systems, insight enterprises, Salesforce.com, CDW, Oracle, and Accenture (owler, 2018).
Retailers affect Amazon business and its strategies. Many retailers including small-scale business are connected with Amazon to sell their products (aboutamazon., 2018). Sellers are from various countries. Some of the top sellers are World of books ltd, Wordery, musicMagpie, hippo_books, ToysNGamesEtc, Fintie, goHastings, the book house, all your music, nagiry, MEDIMOPS, CSL-Computer, Buyus, RecycLivre, momox fr, PhoneNatic, AnkerDirect, AukeyDirect, VICTECH, JEDirect UK (webretailer, 2016).
There is a number of distributors connected with amazon because of wide market covered by the company. Amazon distributor private limited is one of the non-government company associated with Amazon for distribution activities.
The validity of the marketing strategy, mission strategy, objectives, and goals of Amazon is assessed (Oral, 2014).
Employees are evaluated at different levels of management in Amazon (owler, 2018).Amazon consist of strong human resource team working for varies strategies, innovation, execution and implementation of strategies and task at all levels. Amazon organizational structure is as follows:
This includes maintaining and updating of marketing systems of Amazon such as:
There is a product development approach, “working backward” that is extensively used in Amazon. They work backward from the customer, instead of beginning with an idea for a good and trying to fasten customers onto it. With working backward, it could be applied to any product decision (Cooper, 2016).
Amazon.com is an information system based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA is completely decentralized and distributed service stage permits amazon’s information system to be scalable and robust. SOA focusses in numerous application instead of a larger process (VanBelle, 2014).
For tracing fraudsters, amazon.com assembled a system known as SAS (Smart Analysis Search). This system will detect and decrease fraud in the website by examining behavioral array. SAS permits amazon.com to personalize customer and measure, and help to assist the customer effectively (sas, 2018).
Performance of Different marketing activities is evaluated for this audit. This includes cost-effectiveness and profitability for the company. This means that the marketing activities conducted by the company are enhancing profitability (Milah, 2015). In the case of Amazon, the company expense for marketing and promotions are described in the graph below. Which is increasing brand awareness, and customer loyalty towards the brand. In addition, resulting increase in profitability for the brand.
Amazon’s critical capabilities are monitored and evaluated for this audit. This includes:
Products of Amazon are classified into four categories:
Amazon does not have any physical stores and the company depends wholly on online sales due to the nature of the business being E-commerce. Various agents are appointed in different cities and those agents distribute products to the final customers.
Amazon communication strategy aims at:
The core of Amazon pricing strategy is Cost leadership. It has been analyzes that Amazon follows the strategy of lowering the prices of the products until it is capable to beat its competitors. For example, it changes Bible prices more than hundred times within past five years.
Along with this, the company uses premium pricing for services and products where market share is strong and gain a competitive advantage.
Some other pricing strategies used by the company include penetration pricing, psychological pricing, price skimming, product line pricing, geographical pricing strategies, and promotional pricing (themarketingagenda, 2016).
Amazon new marketing mix action to achieve a gap between the external environment and present marketing mix strategy
Conclusion
From the report, we can conclude that a marketing audit of Amazon.com was conducted. Amazon is a part of the online retail sector that is growing these days. It is serving many numbers of products to various countries worldwide. It provides a platform for different retailers, buyers, and distributors to trade across the globe. The first e-commerce Company makes customer loyalty for the firm. Marketing audit of the company describes external and internal factors on which the company’s activities or business depends. For marketing audit of Amazon, it is done under various components, that are Macro-environment audit, Task environment audit, Marketing strategy audit, Marketing organizational audit, Marketing systems audit, Marketing productivity audit, Marketing function audit.
For external factors to be studied, the macro environment of Malta country was discussed with Malta’s political, economic, cultural, environmental, and demographic factors that affect Amazon marketing decision was discussed. In addition, external Amazon’s market, competitors, retailers, and distributors were discussed under task environment.
For internal factors, marketing various strategies were discussed, that includes distribution strategy, pricing strategies, corporate and business level mission strategies, competitive, and under the tent strategy. Moreover, Amazon organizational structure and its effectiveness were studied. Moreover, maintaining and updating of marketing systems of Amazon were discussed.
There were still many growth potentials for Amazon like emerging developing markets, products enhancement, delivery options, payment methods, security concerns. For these opportunities, Amazon can plan its marketing mix strategies to gain these opportunities. Product strategy, price strategy, place strategy, promotion strategy were discussed to achieve gap in the external environment and amazon present strategies.
References
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