Brand Recognition: A Comparative Study of Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba

This report provides a comparative analysis of the brand recognition strategies employed by three major e-commerce companies: Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba. It begins with an introduction that highlights the increasing competitiveness of the modern business landscape and the importance of brand awareness. The report then delves into relevant marketing theories, discussing how companies differentiate themselves through pricing, communication, and societal activities to build customer loyalty. The core of the report compares the strategies of the three companies, examining Amazon's focus on competitive pricing, eBay's efforts to support small businesses, and Alibaba's approach to global brand building through effective communication and societal contributions. The analysis explores the strengths and weaknesses of each company's approach, considering factors such as market coverage, risk, and potential for long-term success. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and highlighting the most influential strategies for generating brand recognition in the global market. Finally, the report includes a list of references used in the analysis.

Running head: BRAND RECOGNITION
Brand Recognition
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BRAND RECOGNITION
Introduction:
The modern world of business is observed to get significantly competitive and with
the entries of considerable number of new names in the market, the situation is getting
tougher day by day for the organizations (Chui & Manyika, 2015). The organizations are
observed to try their level best to cope up with the intense competition of the market with the
introduction of the attractive offers for the customers. But the option of discounts and offers
are also observed to be difficult for many organization. Several multinational organizations
are observed to think in a different manner where their focus was on the creation of a
community for their respective organization through the increment in the brand awareness.
Such organizations are observed to invest in bulk in the marketing of their products. The
promotional events from the part of those organizations are observed to be triggered in such
manner that it covers the maximum number of existing and probable customers. The main
objective of such campaigns is to make sure that the customers of their operational areas of
the organizations get to know about the positives of the businesses of the concerned
organizations. The paper is focused in specifying the comparison among the strategies and
implementation of them for three renowned organizations which are Alibaba, Ebay and
Amazon.
Marketing Theories:
The variability in the businesses of the modern day organizations are observed to be
so limited that the organizations are facing the absolute need to point out each and every
small positive variations for their organizations. This is undertaken by the organizations with
the sole interest of gaining maximum competitive advantage. The pricing, quality and the
product manufacturing tactics for the modern organizations are getting so similar day by day
that there is no significant difference that can portray a particular organization better from the
other ones. But the theory of business conduction and the generation of the profits will

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significantly depend on the customer’s choices (Malik et al., 2013). Under such condition, the
product of the organizations are manufactured in such a manner that they follow the
preferences of the customers (Solomon et al., 2014). Even in that case the organizations are
observed to consider the promotion and marketing of the goods to be the top most priority as
the concept of brand awareness in the business conduction makes it pretty evident that the
purchases are directly proportional to be people’s knowledge regarding the product. However
even in that context, organizations are observed to differentiate among themselves in the
various aspects like better pricing, better communication in terms product promotions or
better societal activities to earn the customer loyalty and the faith of the community.
For the chosen organizations, it is observed that Amazon is more concerned with the
better pricing strategies as the management knows it pretty well that the products will be
subjected to better sales when the prices for them are low. The strategy had a clear vision
from the part of the management as they considered that it is better to use the huge money
that they spends in the marketing and promotional activity of the products, in the reduction of
the selling price rather than the marketing of the products. The organization was observed to
reduce the package marketing and was focused in improving the price of the products so that
the target customers be able to buy the products (Huston, 2018). This was a significant
strategy from the part of the management as the concerned organization was able to create
such a situation where the competitor organizations was observed to lose their hope and
somewhere this was creating a monopoly for the organization as that is evident with the
comment of Cakmak in his note (Kristensen et al., 2017). On the other hand, the renowned
Chinese businessman, Jack Ma was able to make his organization one of the most profitable
one in the history of Chinese and World business. According to the comments of Mr John
Holton, Asia Partner with the Branding Strategy Agency, Prophet, Jack started from the
scratch and is able to create an emperor today just with his skills of communication. Several

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Chinese organizations are observed to be market leaders in the modern business industry of
the world but it is observed that there vision in term of making the customers feel the
organization of their own is blocking the growth of the organizations. It is pretty evident that
the organizations like Huawei, Xiaomi or Lenovo even after such improved generation of
sales and generation revenue is unknown to the major section of the western society and for
that the vision is the only responsible aspect for the organizations. Apart from this the
organization is observed to follow the path of the societal wellbeing or development for the
promotion of their organization. It is evident in the case that Ebay feared the fact that with the
introduction of the Amazon into the Australian market, there will be a seizure of the market
share. Under such situation, the organization initiated a campaign in the name of the “Fill
Your Cart with Colour” in order to attract the customers. The campaign was focused in
supporting 40000 small businesses, 80 online retailers along with 11 million frequent visitors
with their exclusive and attractive offers (thedrum.com, 2018).
Comparison:
With the reference to the brand recognition and brand awareness theory of the modern
business conduction, the cases were significantly different from each other. The amazon’s
strategy was to make sure that the competitors in the industry gets reduced after acing an
intense rivalry in the pricing of the products and on the other hand, Ebay was significantly
focused in making the scope of entry shorter for the new entrant, Amazon into the Australian
market. Ebay’s policy was to generate lines of competitors for the new entrants and that was
visible with the support that it provided to the 40000 small businesses. Apart from this, Jack
Ma was observed to take the most significant policy when it comes to creation of brand
awareness (Jung, Ugboma & Liow, 2015). Jack Ma was able to do what several world market
leaders representing the Chinese territory was not able to do. Alibaba was observed to have a
good presentation of in front of the customers of both Asian and the western (Huang &

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Sarigöllü, 2014). Jack named his organization in such a manner that enabled the people of
western and rest of the world call it without any sort of difficulty (Doland, 2018). Jack’s
communication is one of the key factor in the success of the organization as it is visible that
the integrated marketing communication triggered by Alibaba was able to reach the western
society and the community as well (Barreda et al., 2015). Though Alibaba is still a company
that is unable to become a household name in the western countries, but it is having the best
strategies in order to accomplish that. The need of having a significant marketing
communication in the generation of the brand awareness and Alibaba’s accomplishment in
that is pretty evident with the fact that Jack Ma is able to convert the organization to such
heights that it is having a worth more than the total sum of Amazon and Ebay in the current
market.
Conclusion:
On a concluding note, it can be stated that among the three organization, Jack Ma had
the most influential strategy for the generation of brand not only in the Asian market rather in
the world market. Amazon’s policy was significantly attractive but it was associated with
notable amount of risk as well as the low pricing strategy could backfire as well. Similarly
the support that Ebay was observed to produce to the small businesses had the potential to
affect its own share of market as well and that was risky business strategy from the part of the
organization as well. Following the theory of brand awareness, Jack Ma had the most suitable
approach in terms of market coverage and the generation of a distinctive brand with all
possibility to rule the future business market.

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References:
Barreda, A. A., Bilgihan, A., Nusair, K., & Okumus, F. (2015). Generating brand awareness
in online social networks. Computers in human behavior, 50, 600-609.
Chui, M., & Manyika, J. (2015). Competition at the digital edge:‘Hyperscale’businesses.
McKinsey Quarterly.
Doland, A. (2018). Branding Lessons From China's Alibaba. Retrieved from
http://adage.com/article/global-news/alibaba-teach-chinese-brands/295115/
Huang, R., & Sarigöllü, E. (2014). How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand
equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors (pp.
113-132). Springer, New York, NY.
Huston, C. (2018). Amazon is taking away the power of brand names, throwing another
industry into turmoil. Retrieved from https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-is-
taking-away-the-power-of-brand-names-throwing-another-industry-into-turmoil-
2017-07-10
Jung, J. C., Ugboma, M. A., & Liow, A. K. (2015). Does Alibaba's Magic Work Outside
China?. Thunderbird International Business Review, 57(6), 505-518.
Kristensen, M., Penner, J., Nguyen, A., Moy, J., & Lam, S. (2017). Company Synopsis for:
Amazon. com, Inc.
Malik, M. E., Ghafoor, M. M., Hafiz, K. I., Riaz, U., Hassan, N. U., Mustafa, M., & Shahbaz,
S. (2013). Importance of brand awareness and brand loyalty in assessing purchase
intentions of consumer. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 4(5).

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Solomon, M. R., Dahl, D. W., White, K., Zaichkowsky, J. L., & Polegato, R. (2014).
Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). London: Pearson.
Thedrum.com (2018). Ebay Australia launches major brand campaign as it readies for
Amazon arrival. (2018). Retrieved from
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/09/04/ebay-australia-launches-majorbrand-
campaign-it-readies-amazon-arrival