Marketing Plan For Amazon.Com

Marketing Plan for Amazon.com

Executive Summary Amazon.com has a leading edge in the e-commerce world. It has a strong competitive advantage. However, as with many online retailers, there are certain aspects of conducting business over the web that creates difficulties and the need of marketing planning.

This marketing plan consists of environmental scan, customer behavioural patterns, current segment market, marketing strategies and recommendations in strategies.

2) Introduction Amazon.com is the largest online retailer. The company opened its virtual doors in July 1995 by Jeff Bezos in Seattle. Since then it has enjoyed rapid expansion in all aspects of its operations, including business turnover, and a spectacular rise in share value since public floatation in 1997.

Amazon.com sells only on-line and is essentially an information broker. Amazon.com has constantly growing database of over 12 million customers in more than 160 countries. Amazon.com is the place to find and discover anything customers want to buy online. They have earth's biggest selection of products, including millions of books, free electronic greeting cards, online auctions, videos, CDs, DVDs, toys, games, electronics, kitchenware, computers, and more.

2.1) Competitive position - Amazon.com is the biggest on-line international retail store in the world - Strong in-house internet technology with excellent offline customer services - A huge database of loyal customers - base of over 12 million shoppers - The company has grown to a massive online superstore with recent sales of $1.64 billion in 1999, an increase of 270% from the previous year's sales - Amazon.com has a very powerful position in the media industry.

- Amazon.com is use the Internet to transform book buying into the fastest, easiest, and most enjoyable shopping experience possible.

Market share of online book business 2.2) Amazon's mission - To become the largest selection of select retail categories Amazon.com seeks to be the world's most customer-centric company, - To provide the best shopping experience and become the place where people come to find and discover.

- To convince all online customers to use Amazon as their search platform.

- Provides excellent customers personalize services and discount profitable prices.

- Let customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online at Amazon.com 2.3) Corporation objectives There are 4 important objectives of Amazon.com as below: a) Improve customer relationships Amazon.com will continue to invest heavily in building relationships with new customers. Customer obsession is the key focus at Amazon. There will be nothing to worry about if the competitors stay focused on Amazon and Amazon stays focused on the customer. There are three main factors that matter most to customers: selection, ease of entry and price. Amazon.com will make sure it continues to be the best in those three areas.

b) Expand products and services Product and service expansion is important because it will also encourage repeat customer, as the company becomes increasingly well known to a wider customer base. As long as people keep coming back to purchase new types of merchandise, Amazon.com will make money.

c) Expand partnerships Amazon.com's partnership ventures have been successful in the past so the company hopes to continue that success. These partnerships like drugstore.com, gear.com, and ashford.com, provide a large selection and great customer service, just like Amazon. Effective partnerships have been proven to greatly enhance a business.

d) Profitability in every Amazon.com business Sustainable profitability is the main motive for every company. Currently, Amazon generates revenue that is reinvested into the company. The goal is to continue to reinvest and make a profit in all business sectors. It is now time to cut its fixed costs and generally improve on company spending.

They have to look at delivery costs, quality of merchandise, and the service provided. After evaluating all three factors, Amazon can determine the highest value, lowest cost supplier.

2.4) Marketing Objectives - Achieve a 200% increase in sales per year for books - Achieve a 250% increase in sales per year for music - Achieve a 275% increase in sales per year for movies - Achieve a 100% increase in sales per year for electronics & software The percentage increase in sales for the above categories were determined by each category's required strength minus the current strength of that product line all divided by the number of years left on the loan. This is the percent increase necessary per year for the specific product line to create enough profit to exactly pay off the loan.

3) Environmental Scan 3.1) TWOS framework Threats - Decreasing economy: Amazon can no longer get cheap capital from the stock market because of the amount of failed Internet companies.

- Uncertain Internet business trends: Business risks related include amount of indebt, competition, potential fluctuations in operating results and rate of growth, foreign currency exchange rates and government regulation - Competition with suppliers: suppliers selling directly to customers may make more profit than through a middle man. It will lead suppliers cannot offer low prices to Amazon.

- Interruption of services: System interruptions caused by power losses, bad weather, hardware failure and computer viruses often make Amazon.com unavailable and prevent efficiently fulfilling orders.

Opportunities - Increasing Internet markets: Amazon.com did have a large group of customers that wanted to shop online. Global Internet users are increasing rapidly.

- New technology: Amazon.com Web Services harnesses the vast product information already available on its website and turns it into a resource for developers as users. Currently, over 800,000 sites have enrolled in the Associates Program worldwide.

- Cooperation with other businesses: Customers can buy products from other vendors through Amazon's website. They attract new customers through links on other sites. Customers can access Amazon's services from within partner websites.

Strengths - Good customer services: The one-click service function lets customers feel a sense of immediacy when ordering online and satisfied with the improved electronic confirmations service.

- Fast access to supply. When customers find the products and click the order key. The data