Strategic Marketing: Customer-Centric Strategy of Amazon Essay

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of Amazon's strategic marketing, focusing on its customer-centric approach. It begins with an introduction to strategic marketing, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer needs. The main body delves into stakeholder analysis, identifying both internal and external stakeholders, and customer analysis, highlighting the significance of data-driven decision-making. The essay then explores Amazon's strategic planning tools, including its customer-centric corporate strategy and the application of the marketing mix (product, place, promotion, and price) to achieve competitive advantage. It examines Amazon's product diversification, distribution strategies, promotional tactics, and pricing strategies. The conclusion underscores the importance of strategic planning and the implementation of appropriate theories and strategies for organizational success. The essay references academic literature to support its arguments and provides a detailed overview of Amazon's marketing practices.

Strategic Marketing
Module

Table of Contents
INTRDOUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................2

INTRODUCTION
Strategic marketing is basically the use of the various marketing disciplines for the
purpose to achieve the end results through maintaining and developing a sustainable competitive
advantage. With the help of strategic marketing, it really helps in understanding how to promote
and price a product, which services to offers and which market to target. In this essay, the
organisation chosen is “Amazon”. The organisation is an American electronic commerce
organisation that specializes in selling of the services or the products over the internet. The
present essay uses Amazon as the case study organization to criticize the statement “ The best
strategy of marketing are not top down, they are outside in, starting with the customers wants and
needs. In addition to that, it involves the use of the various academic literatures for the purpose to
evaluate the voice of the customers driving strategic marketing decisions in the company.
MAIN BODY
Stakeholder analysis is basically the process of assessing potential changes and system
changes in relation to the interested parties and relevant parties. The major focus in the process
of stakeholder analysis is identification of the individuals prior the beginning of the project. In
reference to Amazon, the main internal stakeholders of the company are the directors and the
officers. In context to organization, the shareholders are basically considered to be the most
powerful stakeholders (Siewe Wadeu and Ndjuta Bidzoh, 2021). In context to the external
stakeholders of the organisation, it basically comprises of the local communities, customers,
competitors, online sellers and the government. In the company, approximately 197 million
consumers visit the website each month. A lot of individuals have Amazon Prime Memberships
in the USA. In addition to that, the organisation takes the complaints of the customers very
seriously and also giving tough competition to the global giants. The organisation also pay much
emphasis on the communication with the stakeholders and also the website comprises of the
variety of information which covers and addresses the queries and issues of the stakeholders. In
case of the customer analysis, it is basically the process through which data from the behaviour
of the customer is generally used for the purpose to carry out effective decisions and also this
information is used by the organisation for the site selection, direct marketing and the customer
relationship management. In case of Amazon, the customer analysis consists of the middle and
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the upper class social groups who basically have a inclination towards the online shopping. Also
the majority of the strength of the customers are businessman or professional individuals who are
generally busy with the job or their business and who basically prefer shopping online rather than
visiting physical store for the objective to save money and time. In the organisations, the strategy
basically refers to the set of the actions that basically supports the organisation in order to
achieve a particular objective (Peprah, Giachetti, Larsen and Rajwani, 2022). With the help of
the strategic planning tools, it really helps the organization's managers to develop the right
strategies, defining the objectives of the business and also scanning the environment of the
business (Ahn and Kwon, 2022). Moreover, the organisation for the purpose to beat the other
organisations in the global market has implemented and developed effective corporate strategy
which is totally customer centric. As per the viewpoint of the strategies, the organisation is able
to deal with the changes in the environment and is also focusing on expansion of the operations
in various developing nations. As per the vision and mission of the organization, the company's
vision is providing a wide range of merchandise at low prices and their mission is to remain
highly customer oriented. For the purpose to achieve competitive advantage, the organisation
focuses on creation of the local cost advantage and usually attracts their customers through use of
the effective strategy of the marketing mix (Sullivan, Rennstam and Bertilsson, 2022).
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In context to Amazon, the organisation in order to succeed in the industry has focused on
development of the effective business strategy which is highly customer centric and also focuses
on the promotion of the external and internal marketing. Also the organisation has started as an
online book store and also has expanded its operations in different categories. Also the internal
marketing plays a very important role in implementing the customer centric strategy which really
supports the organisation in dealing with the competition, improving customer services and also
building strong customer loyalties. In case of application of the theory, the marketing mix is
generally regarded as the potential approach in order to attract the consumers and also the
organisation uses a tactics and strategies combination for the purpose to achieve competitive
advantage and also the customer centric marketing strategy really supports the organisation for
the purpose to attract and retain new market shares(Benevides, de São Pedro Filho, Madeira,
Sakuno and Arenhardt, 2019). In case of the product mix strategy of the amazon, it basically put
efforts on the product line that are offered by the organisation to its end consumers. The
company also focuses on the product diversification and expansion ranging from the various
services and the goods which involves the digital content distribution, amazon fresh, web
services and video content.
All these services helps the company in becoming more customer centric. The
organisation also allows the retailers to sell and post their products. In case of the place
distribution strategy, the organisation uses its official e commerce websites in order to met the
expectations of the customers (Wang, Deng, Rod and Ji, 2021). In case of the promotional mix
of the company, the organisation basically used various tactics in order to convince the
customers to shop online and also the organisation uses it affiliate program for the purpose to
cooperate with the various website owners and with this strategy it also supports the organisation
to reach target consumers. In case of the amazon pricing mix strategy, it is totally based on the
fixing product price level which are really effective in order to attract the consumers (Toscano-
Hernandez, Alvarez-Gonzalez and Sanzo-Perez, 2021). Also the company uses a variety of
strategies related to pricing which involves market oriented pricing, price discrimination and
value based pricing which is highly common for the organisation. In case of setting prices for the
products, the organisation sets different prices for the same product also known as the concept of
price discrimination. In case of amazon, it is very important for the organisation to focus on
increasing market share and ensuring growth and also taking into consideration the
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environmental dynamism. In reference to amazon, though the organisation has establish good
relationships with the customers, it is very important for the organisations to establish
collaboration with the public institutions, for example public libraries and also developing the
offline marketing strategy (Augusto Toledo, Beatriz Madeira, Fernando Garber and Hugo
Aguero, 2019).
Although, the company strategy started as a small online retailer for the books but faced a
lot of challenges and also with the help of the long term customer centric strategy, it basically
continued to gain importance in the field of the marketing (Chernev, 2019). The organisation
also successfully positioned itself as the global e commerce organisation but the company still
struggles and thats the main reason, it is important for the organisation to keep its marketing mix
up to date for the objective to focus on the execution of the customer centric strategy.
CONCLUSION
From the above essay, it can be concluded that strategic planning plays a really important
role in the development of the marketing strategies of the organisation and also it is really
significant to apply the right type of theories and also focusing on implementation of the right
type of strategies for the company in order to be successful in its operations and also focusing on
improving the overall development of the company.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Ahn, J. and Kwon, J., 2022. The role of trait and emotion in cruise customers’ impulsive buying
behavior: an empirical study. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 30(3), pp.320-333.
Augusto Toledo, L., Beatriz Madeira, A., Fernando Garber, M. and Hugo Aguero, F., 2019.
Práticas em Marketing Sob a Perspectiva do Crowdsourcing: O caso AMAZON. Future
Studies Research Journal: Trends & Strategies, 11(1).
Benevides, S.L.M., de São Pedro Filho, F., Madeira, M.J., Sakuno, I.Y.T. and Arenhardt, V.,
2019. Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Strategic Management for Tourism,
Hospitality in Western Amazon. In Global Campaigning Initiatives for Socio-Economic
Development (pp. 206-219). IGI Global.
Chernev, A., 2019. Strategic marketing management: Theory and practice. Cerebellum Press.
Peprah, A.A., Giachetti, C., Larsen, M.M. and Rajwani, T.S., 2022. How business models evolve
in weak institutional environments: the case of Jumia, the Amazon. com of
Africa. Organization Science, 33(1), pp.431-463.
Siewe Wadeu, D.J. and Ndjuta Bidzoh, C., 2021. Strategic diversification through acquisition:
The move of Amazon to acquire Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Strategic
diversification through acquisition: The move of Amazon to acquire Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer (MGM)(May 27, 2021).
Sullivan, K.R., Rennstam, J. and Bertilsson, J., 2022. Sycomorphism in city branding: The case
of Amazon HQ2. Marketing Theory, p.14705931221108426.
Toscano-Hernandez, A.E., Alvarez-Gonzalez, L.I. and Sanzo-Perez, M.J., 2021. Cause-Related
Marketing in Retail e-Commerce as Support for the Sustainability of the University: The
Case of Amazon and University of the Andes (Colombia). In Cause-Related
Marketing (pp. 189-200). Springer, Cham.
Wang, Y., Deng, Q., Rod, M. and Ji, S., 2021. A thematic exploration of social media analytics
in marketing research and an agenda for future inquiry. Journal of Strategic
Marketing, 29(6), pp.471-491.
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