Integrated Marketing Communication Strategies of Amazon Inc.

This report discusses the various IMC strategies adopted by Amazon Inc. to optimize its communication process. It covers segmentation, persuasion analysis, analysis of current advertisement, current IMC practices, and conclusion. The report highlights the various tools of persuasion used by Amazon and the different forms of advertising used by the company to reach out to its target audience.

Integrated Marketing Communication
Amazon Inc.

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Segmentation...................................................................................................................................2
Persuasion analysis..........................................................................................................................2
Analysis of current advertisement...................................................................................................5
Current IMC practices.....................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

Introduction
Integrated marketing communication is essentially the amalgamation of various marketing
strategies adopted by a firm in order to ensure effective communication with all its stakeholders
(Belch et. al., 2014). The idea behind using IMC is to optimize the message that the brand wishes
to convey. Effective marketing is critical to the success of any organization as it helps in building
the right positioning for the brand. This report throws light upon various IMC strategies adopted
by The Amazon Inc. in order to optimize its communication process.
Segmentation
For any business organization to identify and analyze its consumer set, it is imperative to
segment the market into various groups and target specific consumers from the same. Target
market of any organization refers to the set of consumers whose needs the business aims to fulfill
(Cross, Belich & Rudelius, 2015). Amazon has divided its market into the following segments.
Geographical segmentation: The first form of segmentation adopted by Amazon is
geographical. This means that the firm divides its market based on geographical segments. At
present Amazon has retail websites for US, UK, Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain,
Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and Netherlands.
Demographic segmentation: Demographical segmentation done by amazon divides its target
market on the basis of religion, age, nationality and income (Anable et. al., 2016). Amazon
targets customers across different age groups and nationalities. Their retail store has a sundry
variety of products catering to the needs of people across lower, middle and upper income
groups. Students, working professionals and home makers are all targeted through Amazon’s
product line.
Behavioral segmentation: In terms of behavior, Amazon target customers differently. For
frequent shoppers, Amazon has offered ‘Prime account’ facility so that their products can reach
them faster. Based on previous shopping behavior, Amazon also recommends consumers certain
products that might be of interest to them.

Persuasion analysis
Persuading a potential customer can lead to increased sales for a particular brand. Therefore
organizations apply various persuasion strategies in order to convince the customer regarding the
need for the product in their lives. The aim of these persuasion tools is to guide people towards
accepting a certain belief, attitude or behavior.
There are various processes of persuasions that a brand can adopt. Amazon uses the influencer’s
process and uses seven crucial tools of persuasions. These seven tools and their utilization by
Amazon Inc. is as described below:
Reciprocation
This tool of persuasion believes in the use of favors. Amazon often gives its customer discounts,
gift vouchers and lucrative deals in order to attract them towards buying products off Amazon.
Source 1: HAnnah Spanah
Commitment and consistency
Amazon continues to offer excellent service to its customers. They deliver the products on or
before the promised date. Their process of return and refund is extremely customer centric and
works effectively in persuading customers to stick with the brand.

Social Proof
Amazon often receives endorsements from celebrities and socially renowned personalities.
Moreover their service quality and social presence is impeccable and leads to a positive social
image of the brand. Amazon’s social listening skills allows the brand to be aware of and respond
to feedback received by the brand on these platforms.
Liking
Amazon tries to make its ads more and more relatable to the customers. Their celebrity endorsers
in every country are well liked and respected and therefore this creates a liking in the minds of
consumers leading to persuasion.
Authority
Amazon also uses authority as a tool to persuade customers to buy their products. For example,
they often use beauticians promote using amazon to buy beauty products. If a particular movie is
launched on Amazon Prime video, then advertisements including the director of the movie are
released by Amazon. This makes people trust the ads and hence leads to enhanced persuasion.
Ensure ethical standards
Amazon has various products that are marked as ‘Amazon assured’. If any particular product is
available through a third vendor, Amazon informs the buyer in advance. Amazon ensures that all
the products that are delivered to a particular country are legal in that country and reached
customer through ethical processes. These superior quality of products offered by Amazon
persuades customers to buy the products.
Source 2: Zu Adams

Scarcity
Scarcity of a particular product creates an automatic demand for it (Koch & Benlian, 2015).
Every time a user selects a particular product, Amazon informs the user about how many of these
products are now remaining in stock, leading to an increased urgency within the consumer to buy
that product. Amazon offers ‘Today’s deals’ to customers by letting customers know that
various offers are available only for today. This in turn persuades customers to buy those
products.
Source 3: Coupon Queen
Analysis of current advertisement
Amazon started as an online book store which further expanded into a plethora of products. This
product line expansion has been possible through continued demand which is a result of
extraordinary advertisements. Amazon has hired Ogilvy and Mather which is the most
renowned advertising agency in order to curate effective content to reach out to its target market.
Various forms of advertisements used by Amazon include television, newspaper, event,
billboards, hoardings and influencer marketing.
The current advertisments by Amazon are extremely creative and bang on point. The logo of the
brand itself marks an arrow from A to Z throwing light on the massive product line of the brand

(Kristensen et. al., 2017). A lot of user generated content is also making rounds on the internet
which effectively helps the brand in building trust among consumers. Analysis of the brand’s
current advertisement is as below:
Creative: Amazon’s advertisements are creative and grab immediate attention. They introduce
new forms of advertising and curate creative content to lure customers.
Source 4: Cargo collective
Need Identification: Through its advertisements, Amazon aims are identifying a particular need
of a customer and tries to fulfill that need. This form of advertisement automatically grabs
attention and creates interest.

Source 5: Petkoelling
Regional understanding: Amazon creates different advertisements for different markets based
on the brands understanding of the markets. This makes the organization a lot more relatable to
its consumers.
Source 3: Alamy and Media for growth

Emotional appeal
Lastly, Amazon also utilizes emotional appeal to reach out to its target customers
Source 4: Pinterest

Current IMC practices
Amazon uses both traditional as well as 2.0 marketing strategies in order to reach out to its target
consumers. Various IMC practices adopted by Amazon are as below:
Television advertisments are used by Amazon to target family audience. These advertisements
are creatively curated and aim to attract viewers by being broadcasted on leading channels across
different countries.
Social media marketing includes any form of marketing through social media platforms like
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat or Twitter (Tuten & Solomon, 2017). Amazon has
effectively used these platforms in order to set the right positioning in the minds of its consumers
and to reach out to its targeted audience.
Event marketing is conducted by Amazon by sponsoring national and international level events
including conferences, concerts and sports events. Event marketing allows brands to reach out to
a wide variety of customers under a single roof (Winklemann et. al., 2016).
Newspaper advertisements by Amazon are also designed creatively with an intent of gaining
attention of various readers. These ads are published in leading newspapers and help in gaining
website traffic.
Billboards and hoardings are forms of outdoor advertising. These forms of advertising by
Amazon allows the brand to reach out to various customers during a single day (Wilson, Baack
& Till, 2015).
Conclusion
Integrated marketing communication strategies by Amazon are highly creative and the brand has
been able to retain the position of the market leader with the help of these promotional strategies.
Amazon’s IMC strategies have enabled the brand to have a strong positioning in the minds of its
consumers (Blakeman, 2018). IMC plays a significant role in ensuring the growth and success of
a brand and Amazon has played the card just right.

References
Anable, J., Kinnear, N., Hutchins, R., Delmonte, E. and Skippon, S., 2016. Consumer
segmentation and demographic patterns (No. PPR769).
Belch, G.E., Belch, M.A., Kerr, G.F. and Powell, I., 2014. Advertising: An integrated marketing
communication perspective. McGraw-Hill Education.
Blakeman, R., 2018. Integrated marketing communication: creative strategy from idea to
implementation. Rowman & Littlefield.
Cross, J.C., Belich, T.J. and Rudelius, W., 2015. How marketing managers use market
segmentation: An exploratory study. In Proceedings of the 1990 Academy of Marketing Science
(AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 531-536). Springer, Cham.
Koch, O.F. and Benlian, A., 2015. Promotional tactics for online viral marketing campaigns:
how scarcity and personalization affect seed stage referrals. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 32,
pp.37-52.
Kristensen, M., Penner, J., Nguyen, A., Moy, J. and Lam, S., 2017. Company Synopsis for:
Amazon. com, Inc.
Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. Sage. United Kingdom.
Wilson, R.T., Baack, D.W. and Till, B.D., 2015. Creativity, attention and the memory for brands:
an outdoor advertising field study. International Journal of Advertising, 34(2), pp.232-261.
Winkelmann, S., Dickenson, P., Souchon, A.L., Lee, N. and Michaelidou, N., 2016. Event
marketing and event sponsorship: can too much of a ‘good’thing harm the brand?.