Question:
Task
Describe and outline the 8 marketing mix concepts and then apply them to your product offerings.
In your application, explain and evaluate the 8 Ps of Marketing (product, price, promotion, distribution and partnerships), as well as all associated processes and evidence.
Your evaluation of your marketing strategies, competition, and other contemporary issues, you can make recommendations for your organization.
Each of the 8 Ps should be highlighted in your recommendations. These will help you to understand how current issues might impact your organization and your marketing strategy.
This report may, for example, address current issues such as Corporate Social Responsibility, social media interactions and advances in technology, ethical concerns and globalisation.
Answer:
Introduction
It is vital for a business to develop and implement effective marketing strategies to maintain smooth operations in spite of many market risks, uncertainties and challenges.
This report will discuss the components of the marketing mix and evaluate whether they are able to evaluate the company’s performance.
This report will evaluate the company’s overall marketing mix strategies, competitive level, and other contemporary issues.
It will provide recommendations or solutions to address the challenges or issues that Amazon faces so that it can make appropriate changes in its marketing mix strategy (Codita 2011, 2011).
This assessment is based on Amazon.com, the largest e-commerce company in the world. It acts as an intermediary retailing firm between buyers and sellers to facilitate electronic order tracking and electronic transactions for large sales in Australia.
Amazon Company Profile
Amazon is the largest e-retail company in the world based on cloud computing technology-based ecommerce operations.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon Company, established it on 5 July 1994. It has international operations and e-commerce operations within Australia.
Amazon is the largest ecommerce retailer in Australia and the rest of the globe by market capitalization as well as sales revenues.
Based on its customer-centric electronic business operations, Amazon is Australia’s most valuable public limited company.
Amazon sells a variety of electronic items, household and kitchen appliances, packaged foods and beverages, furniture, books and toys, as well as apparel, jeweler, children’s entertainment items, cloths and nutritional products, CDs/DVDs and books, along with other products for customers in different countries.
Product- Amazon Australia is one of Australia’s leading e-commerce platforms. It delivers its products (Amazon Books) to customers via its website (amazon.com.au), and its apps.
Amazon has a broad and varied product portfolio, including e-books and Kindle Books. It also offers a large selection of books that can be purchased online by Australian customers.
Amazon is the top seller of kindle books in Australia, including The Trapped girl, My Sister’s Grave, The Rise of Olympus, Victim Without a Face, What Doesn’t Kill You, Cameron of the Skies, The Agent, their Lost Daughters a Gripping, Cameron of the Skies, The Agent, their Lost Daughters a Gripping, Into the Water, From the bestselling Author of the Girls on the Train and many other kindle books available online through Amazon’s app and website and apps (Amazon, 2016).
Pricing- Amazon is the global seller of Kindle books/ebooks and has a strong brand presence in Australia.
Amazon is well-known for its low-priced, high-quality web hosting solutions. It uses the competition-based pricing strategy to offer kindle books at competitive market prices.
Amazon offers kindle books at various prices, ranging from 1AUD up to 30AUD depending on the book.
The Trapped Girl (2 AUD), My Sister’s Grave (1.28 AUD), The Rise of Olympus (1.28 AUD), Victim Without a Face (5.18 AUD), What Doesn’t Kill You (6.69 AUD), Cameron of The Skies (6.69 AUD), The Agent (6.69 AUD), Their Lost Daughters a Gripping (4.99 AUD), Rockus (3.99 AUD), The Woman who Stole My Life (4.99 AUD), The Sunday (4.99 AUD) and Into the Water (Ama bestselling author of The Girl on the Train, Amazon, 2017)
Placement- Amazon, a giant seller worldwide, has a large market presence in Australia and offers e-books/kindle book through its website at amazon.com.au.
It sells online books via its website and through apps on Amazon.com.au. Customers can place orders for books through Amazon’s distribution channels and fulfillment centres.
It owns warehouses to store customer returns and special items, such as kindle books. The fulfillment centers transfer/move a variety of Kindle books to their distribution centers. Books are then delivered to customers within two to five days after receipt of customer orders.
It uses local courier and postal services to transport the books and provide delivery personnel for home delivery (Bhasin 2017, 2017).
It creates its own distribution networks to facilitate the delivery of the books.
Promotion- Amazon is Australia’s leading ecommerce retailer for ebooks/kindle books. They use aggressive and efficient marketing campaigns to promote their branded Amazon books across Australia.
This is an essential part of the marketing mix Amazon uses to promote kindle books. It helps in creating brand awareness and loyalty among Australian customers for the Kindle Books.
It uses website promotion, social media advertising (Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. Instagram. Pinterest. YouTube Channel. Google+), TV commercials and advertising websites. E-CRM tools are also used. Publishing ads in newspapers, magazines. Brochures, pamphlets, and brochures are some of the other methods.
Amazon.com.au advertises Amazon products through television ads and affiliate programs. This includes links to Amazon Books in blogs and advertising websites (Chaffey 2015).
Amazon uses sales promotions such as discounts or reductions in cost during holidays, festivals, or other special occasions.
It also works with NGOs and public relations programs such as Amazon Smile to enhance the brand image and donate to charity organizations.
Direct marketing is also performed to increase the sales figures of e-books by directly contracting with customers.
People- Amazon is Australia’s largest e-commerce firm. It employs highly skilled, talented and experienced workers with the necessary job competencies to provide the best customer service by offering online books and Amazon Kindle to customers in Australia.
Amazon cares about its employees by offering them the right pay, remuneration, rewards and training. They also offer the opportunity to participate in skilled development programs, as well as health and retirement plans.
Amazon employs 2,30800 people worldwide to provide customer service that is efficient.
Amazon is the largest retail site with 1.27 billion visits per year.
Employee motivation and job satisfaction incentivize them to contribute their valuable contributions to the achievement of the company’s goals and objectives.
Amazon’s physical evidence- This marketing mix element shows the physical location or presence of Amazon’s service operations for the Amazon Kindle and Books. Its website is user-friendly and designed to be easy to use by the users.
To offer Amazon Kindle and Books to customers who order via its website, it has many warehouses, storage centres, distribution and fulfillment centers in Australia.
This is a tangible evidence that Amazon can tangibilize intangible elements of its company, providing physical evidence of quality service outcomes for the sale of books through its website or distribution centers (Smithson 2017, 2017).
Physical evidence includes signage that identifies the service location, the service layout, and the ambience. This is a formal and accepted way to meet customers’ needs.
Processes – This part of the marketing mix describes the processes and methods for managing customer service operations to provide effective customer services to offer Amazon Kindle and Books electronically.
Amazon is the market leader for e-commerce. It has strong processes that are customer-centered, business-led and IT supported.
Amazon Australia has its warehouses and distribution centers as well as fulfillment centers to ensure that the operations of Amazon Australia are efficient.
Amazon employs the most advanced technology to support its business operations.
The social media platforms are used by Amazon to provide information about the delivery location for Amazon books electronically.
Its strategy is based on customer relationship management and information management.
Amazon’s processes include obtaining customer orders, managing inventory, customer delivery, handling grievances or complaints from customers, as well as processes for understanding and identifying customers’ needs and buying habits.
Partnerships- Amazon has been selling a wide range of kindle books in Australia for the past two decades.
AWS Partnership Networks (APNs) are available to help you build successful AWS-based businesses.
AWS Partner Network (APN), which offers opportunities to create new business solutions for Amazon, in order to maximize the APN program’s potential to increase business growth.
APN partnerships networks allow Amazon to expand its businesses and provide better customer support (Schneider 2017).
AWS has APN technology partners (Saas and Paas), Independent Software vendors (ISVs), Management and Security Vendors) that provide the technical solution for AWS.
AWS partners include System Integrators, Agencies and Strategic Consultancies as well as Managed Service Providers and Value-Added Resellers. These partners can assist customers in designing, architecting, migrating, building, and managing workloads on AWS.
Amazon is a leading e-retailer for Kindle Books in Australia and could benefit from effective marketing strategies to increase its retailing operations in Australia. (Kerin & Olgan, 2008).
Amazon’s product development and launching strategy is less effective than other retailers or book publishing companies.
The most popular kindle books can only be purchased on Amazon’s websites. This may cause customers to have difficulty in finding the right books for their business, reading, or study purpose.
It might also work with e-books providers or book publishing agencies to offer a wide variety of literature, academic, journal, and magazine books to customers in Australia (Graham 2015).
Amazon’s marketing mix strategy has faced many challenges such as ethical concerns and CSR issues, environmental protectionist issues and community pressures.
The 2016 Australian Surveys report reveals that most Australian retailers and brands in the branded books publishing industry are not ready to launch their retailing branded products. This is due to its competition-based pricing strategy or low cost pricing strategy. This lowers the book prices online, compared with physical bookstores in the consumer markets.
Amazon could maintain a balance between its online prices and the market prices in physical customer markets to set the book prices economically (D’Onfro 2015).
It could also increase its business through its physical presence in Australian markets and online presence by opening stores under its own brand to sell books in these markets.
It could increase its warehouse capacity and establish distribution centers to better serve customers.
It could also focus more on social media advertising campaigns than publishing or printing media due to the increasing importance of social media in brand awareness and customer loyalty.
It could also use brand positioning, market segmentation and targeting strategies to target high-potential or wealthy consumer markets in Australia (Management Sudy Guide 2015).
It could also organize brand awareness programs, publicity events, and other sponsorship events to enhance the corporate image of Amazon in Australia.
It could also partner with book publishing agencies and course book providers to increase its sales capacity. This would allow it to offer a wide range of books that target diverse customer needs.
It could also improve its ability to provide accurate and timely information about products, attend customer complaints and listen properly.
The company could hire people or employees with the right job skills, market knowledge, and ability deliver efficient and frequent customer service (McKevitt 2017, 2017).
Recommendations for Improving the Marketing Mix of Amazon
Amazon’s marketing mix strategy is affected by current issues such as globalization, rising competitive trends, market demand, changing demographics and distinct customer needs, life styles, CSR, ethical issues, community pressures and environmental concerns.
Amazon could make appropriate changes to its marketing mix strategy in order to run sustainable e-commerce operations via its website and apps for the products it proposes (Egan & Thomas 2012).
Amazon should not limit its offerings to Australian customers to kindle books. It should also offer course books, literature, journals, learning ebooks, magazine books, journal books and author books. This will allow it to provide a complete book solution via its website and apps.
Amazon should use the economic pricing strategy to offer books at economically or cost-effective prices. This will ensure that there is a balance between the online prices and the retail prices in the physical stores. The prices for the consumer markets would not be affected.
The economic pricing strategy can also win the trust of Australian brands and Australian book publishing agencies to sell their branded retailing products and books in large quantities (Ferguson 2017, 2017).
Amazon will have more storage space than it currently has. It can use its large network of warehouses, distribution centres, and fulfillment centers to store and distribute the books in greater quantities and sell them often as customers order.
Amazon can also open its own amazon branded physical shops to increase its brand presence. It will be able to offer a wide variety of course books and literature books, as well as academic books, cookbooks, theatre books, comics, magazines, and other publications through its stores (Glowik & Smyczek 2011, 2011).
Amazon needs to improve its corporate brand image by encouraging people to buy Amazon Books through effective marketing campaigns.
The company could use social media marketing to promote its digital posts, video contents, images and promotional videos by linking them with social media channels.
Amazon could also promote the books via sponsorship websites (usu.edu.au and manningbar.com), promotional events and sales promotional tactics and brand ambassadors.
For their retail products to be sold in greater quantities, Amazon should form strategic partnerships with Australian retailers.
It should establish trade agreements or strategic partnerships with various books service providers and book publishing agencies in order to sell a wide range of books through its website and apps.
Because Amazon is a customer-centric business, it should hire the most skilled and experienced service personnel to provide the best customer service delivery. This will ensure the reliability, speed and customer satisfaction.
It could be beneficial for the company to adopt corporate social responsibility principles for ethical conduct and high professional standards in customer commercial transactions, product-related information, employee treatment, welfare, and delivery of customer service.
For a positive corporate image in Australia, the firm should also be able to consider and implement environmental protection awareness programs such as eco-friendly programmes, sustainability brand awareness programs and community donors programs.
It should communicate directly with customers via social media, e-mails and direct mail to overcome language barriers and communication issues.
To increase book sales, Amazon should open brick and mortar bookstores in Australia.
Conclusion
The above studies and discussions have led us to conclude that Amazon is Australia’s leading e-commerce company. It has been successfully operating its businesses in Australia for the past two decades due to its marketing strategies.
To address the many challenges and issues facing the company, including corporate social responsibility, ethical concerns and competitive trends, changing customer needs and preferences, technological advances, globalization trends and environmental protection, the firm can make the necessary changes to its marketing mix strategies.
These elements include product development, pricing and distribution, promotion, partnerships and people. The evaluation of how these elements perform in meeting the company’s long-term goals and future goals was done.
The appropriate recommendations were made to improve the marketing mix elements in order to enhance the corporate, environmental, and social performance of Amazon in Australia.
Refer to
Amazon (2016).
Amazon Kindle Books Australia
Amazon (2017).
Amazon Australia Product Categories.
Amazon Marketing Strategy.
Amazon.Com Case Study.
Contingency factors of Marketing-Mix Standardization: German Consumer Goods Companies, Central and Eastern Europe.
Amazon’s Greatest Challenges in the New Year
Amazon’s International Growth Challenge.
CIM Handbook of Strategic Marketing.
UK: CRC Press.
Analysis of Amazon.com Inc.’s marketing mix.
Ferrell, CO (2012).
Marketing Strategy Text and Cases.
International Marketing Management: Strategies and Cases in Europe.
Amazon’s Biggest Challenge.
The majority of Australian retailers are not ready for Amazon Launch.
Hunt, DS & Bush FR (2011).
Marketing Theory: Philosophy of Science Perspectives.
UK: Marketing Classics Press.
Kerin, AR and O’ Regan R. (2008).
Marketing mix decisions: New perspectives and practices.
USA: American Marketing Association
Management Study Guide (2015).
Analysis of Amazon’s Corporate Strategy.
Amazon must overcome five obstacles to create its own brand products.
Strategic Marketing Planning for Customer Value: A Management Approach.
London: Springer Science& Business Media.
Amazon Marketing Mix.
International Marketing Mix Management: Theoretical Framework and Contingency Factors. Empirical Findings From World-Markets.
Overview of Amazon.com’s History and Workplace Culture.
SlideShare (2016).
SlideShare (2016). Business Strategy – Amazon’s success story.
Amazon.com Inc.’s Generic Strategy and Intensive Growth Strategies [Online].
Tran, PM (2015).
Global Retailing by Amazon: The Greatest Challenge in Selling Internationally [Online].