Literature Review: Brand Management Strategy of E-Commerce Amazon

This literature review examines the brand management strategy of Amazon, delving into its marketing plans and tactics within the e-commerce sector. It explores the evolution of marketing from traditional to digital methods, emphasizing brand awareness, marketing mix elements like product, price, place, and promotion, and how these contribute to Amazon's success. The review analyzes various academic sources to understand Amazon's approach to market segmentation, competitive dynamics, pricing strategies, and the impact of mobile technology. It highlights the importance of brand consistency, consumer perception, and the role of strategic communication in building and maintaining a strong brand image. The paper also discusses Amazon's dominance in the e-commerce market, the effects of its market power, and the use of data to enhance sales and customer engagement.

Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW
Brand Management Strategy of E-Commerce : A study of Amazon
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
Brand
There is a difference between marketing and branding it is not a synonymous term. Brand
is the image the identity of the organization whereas marketing is the process by which
organization creates awareness about the brand presence and how will be affecting the target
customers. Branding is the basis of marketing, the tactical panning of marketing is dependent on
the branding strategies of the company.
The growing competition in the market it is important for a business organization to be
unique and to be able to stand out from the crowd. This is why branding is imperative for a
business. The brand is a name that provides identity to the product or service just like an
individual. A brand includes a motto, a logo and color scheme that will draw the attention of the
consumer towards the product or the service (Cravens and Piercy 2006). A brand is what makes
a product or service unique in its market. A brand is what consumers look up to for quality and
price assurance from time to time. A customer is always loyal to a brand. It is defiantly the most
important duty of the organization to offer a quality product or service but smart and branding is
usually what drives a company to flourish (Hollensen 2015). Some of the features of a successful
brand are: simple and uncomplicated name that is easy to recall by the target potential customer,
the name should be unique and distinctive in nature so that it is easily distinguished from the
competitors in the industry, it should have a logo etc. Consistency in a brand is one of the main
features that the organization needs to keep in mind. There is a certain perception of a brand in
the minds of the people, this perception gives rise to expectation and the brand in order to keep
up the good will or create goodwill should always be consistent in nature (forbes.com 2017).

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Brand marketing strategy
In order to achieve set goals and to create a successful brand marketing strategy are
implemented for the long term betterment of the organization. To increase the awareness of the
brand several marketing plans and strategies are implemented by the company. The first step
towards marketing a brand is the set a concert definition of the brand this definition will help
build a perception on the minds of the consumers which in return will develop the retention value
of the brand in the minds of the people. Some of the key features of branding strategies are: to
be purposeful and have a set determination of the strategy, to make the plan of action relatable
and more personal to the potential target market. The strategies should be more relevant to the
brand and also keeping in mind the consumers. Another feature of the marketing strategies is that
it should be timely and should be done when it makes more sense. For example, if the company
sells umbrellas then it is the monsoons that the company should target to market the products or
just before the season sets in man (Buil, De Chernatony and Martínez 2013).
Overview of Amazon
With the popularity of internet in the common household, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in
the year 1994. At that point of time he operated from his house garage in Seattle and use to deal
only in books. In many of his interviews he has stated that it was his passion for technology and
his loves for reading lead him to conceptualize the idea of selling books online. In June 2017,
Jeff Bezos was given the title of the world richest.
Amazon today is one of the most popular multinational companies in the world. It has
pioneered n the e-commerce sector and has been setting benchmark since inception. The views,
ideologies and the principle of an organization directly reflect on the image of the brand and so

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do with Amazon. The logo of Amazon has a unique design and reflects a lot of inner meaning.
The Arrow beneath the name directs from A-Z meaning that on their platform any kind of
products is available. Bezos said that he chose the name Amazon because it means “exotic and
different”. Initially the company was named Cadabra and then it was changed in the year 1995.
Amazon is regarded s third largest Information and Technology Company in the world and the
largest online retailer (amazon.com 2017).
Amazon is also a cloud service provider and Amazon web services launched its first offering in
the year 2006. It was initialized to provide online services for the website and the client-side
applications.
Project Objective
The objective of this project is to analyse the marketing plan and the brand marketing
strategies used by the e-commerce giant Amazon to enahnece the sales and expand the business.
Project scope
The scope of this report is to find new and innovative marketing strategies understaken
by Amazon. The useage of digital media and traditional media plans to market and promote e-
commerce. And in the process to understand the branding and the brand image of Amazon.

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Literature Review
According to Brown and Dant 2014, big multinational organizations and companies’ realize
that the consumers of their products or services are not similar in nature and their desires form
the brand are different and hence, can be clubbed into market segments that are best dealt by
various marketing channels.
In the report Erragcha and Romdhane 2014, states that marketing is a dynamic concept it has
to be changed and upgraded according to the requirements of the consumers, upgradation of
technology, market expansion of the organization. Marketing has evolved from creating and
developing brand value to be more customers centric in the approach to finally focusing on the
increment of the business capital.
According to the authors the marketing strategies have now more focus o digital social network.
The duo indicates in the paper that the marketing strategies are now becoming more interactive
with the consumers and that is more advantageous than the traditional ways of marketing. It is
also comparatively cost effective than any other source. The authors say that the companies are
now bound to team up with their customers, employees, partners, and investors in order to keep
up with the dynamic change of the marketing system. All these parties should be aware of what
role they play. The new age of digital marketing enables more transparency and consistency of
the brands and the organizations. They say that strategic communication is no longer a question
of persuasive or conversational; it has become immersive in nature.

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Marketing and branding depends largely on the scale of the business and the industry that the
business is operating in. the other factors are dependent on these two as cost of marketing is
directly dependent on the scale of business.
According to Huang and Sarigöllü 2014, brand awareness is the recall value of the brand in the
minds of the consumers or potential consumers. They discuss that brand awareness hardly
depends on time or changes with the change in time. In addition to that they also mention that
there is a correlation in between brand awareness and market output. The results of their findings
show a positive relation. They also state that there is a optimistic relation between brand
awareness and brand value hence brand awareness is closely related to the mindset of the
customers.
If the customers are not aware of the existence of the brand then the value or the equity
associated with the brand has no importance. Marketing does not create a brand for the
organization it helps create strategic communication and plans to build the image of the brand
and to help it evolve in the future.
According to Khan 2014, marketing mix forms the base of marketing it is a conceptualized
by making use of controllable marketing tools that a business organization can use to develop a
preferred response in the from the targeted consumer base. There are four Ps in a marketing mix
product, price, place and promotion. In this paper the author discusses the dynamic growth of the
concept of Ps in the marketing mix. From the 4 Ps concepts now it h as developed to even 8 Ps.
In this paper he mentions the advantages of the concept; he says that the proper
implementation of the mix can change the competitive position of a brand.

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The Ps of the marketing mix is helps an organization to build the base for the marketing
strategy. Product: The product or service that the organization has to offer to the consumers has
to be of good quality. No amount of promotion or marketing can fix make profit for the company
if the product offered is not up to the mark. It is also important to create the brand image. Price:
the price of the product or service has to set keeping in mind the category of the product, the
target market for the product and the cost of production incurred by the company. Place of
distribution: the availability of the product in the place where the target market resides is very
crucial for sales. The place of distribution is something that has to be decided by the
management of the organization from beforehand and place the products in such a way that the
potential consumers are attracted towards the product and avail it. Lastly promotion: this is one
of the main features of market that helps in the awareness and the growth of the business. It is
due to promotion potential customers and the target market of the product is able to know about
the existence of the product. For example, television advertisement of soap brand. It is the way
for the organization to communicate with the end customers.
Amazon is the pioneer in e-commerce and recently the stocks of Amazon has soared high
making the owner of the firm world’s richest person. Amazon uses demographic and
psychographic segmentation as to reach the target market (Quigley 2015).
Haucap and Heimeshoff 2014, the authors discuss about the reasons that drive the competition
in the internet market. Internet is almost ubiquitous with its infinite reach and hence the
calculation of the competition is difficult in this case. Competition between the online
applications is characterized by direct and indirect network effects, reformation costs, goodwill
effects, and the size of the scale.

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Budzinski and Köhler 2015, Said that Amazon is often said to be dominant because of it’s the
relevance of its market in any sector and also because of its presence. The authors said that with
the help of predatory pricing and monopolization, Amazon has cancelled its competitors in the
retail market.
They say it is a possibility that Amazon purposely lets go of the profit to first monopolize
the market and then exploit customers by raising price. The pricing strategies of Amazon also
raise distress among the market place of its business. Amazon behaves in two folds one form the
buyers or customers end and the other from the seller end they allow a platform for the vendors
to sell their items in Amazon just like in a shopping mall.
According to Zhao et al. 2015, The way to maximize the discount is to foretell the consumers’
willingness-to-pay (WTP) that is the maximum price that the customer is willing to pay for a
particular product.
Chaudhari 2015, in this paper the authors discuss about how the mobile technologies like
tablets or smart phones have helped market like Amazon to develop free application and increase
the channel of sales.
Because the platform of Amazon has the server on both the buyers and the sellers it has a growth
of two folds as well. There are now thousands of entrepreneurs who have built businesses and
sell products and services on Amazon. Together, these retailers—who operate as complementors
to the platforms—create significant value. Amazon chose to use the data with the third party
products instead of using some other way to independently process these products (Zhu and Liu
2016).

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The marketing strategies of the platform are also two folds. In many interviews owner of
Amazon has discussed how he wants to give small and medium industries a chance to grow and
Amazon is a platform where they can sell their items and focus on growing in the long run.
Amazon has a view of building an image of mutual benefit through the marketing strategies be it
for the buyer end or the seller end (Sharma 2015).
Conclusion
The literature that has been gather concludes that there is cocept of marketing mix is
goign to from the base of the research. Amazon is the pioneer and the benchmark organistion in
the e-commerce sector. It has ganrnerd quit a reputation in it’s marketing strategies and in an
effective way the policies of the company has led to its market expansion and market growth to
finally annocing Jeff Bezos as the worls’s richest person in July 2017.

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Reference List
amazon.com. 2017. About Us. [online] Available at:
https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/rzekmvyjojcp6uc [Accessed 19 Aug. 2017].
Brown, J.R. and Dant, R.P., 2014. The role of e-commerce in multi-channel marketing strategy.
In Handbook of Strategic E-Business Management (pp. 467-487). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Budzinski, O. and Köhler, K.H., 2015. Is Amazon The Next Google?.
Buil, I., De Chernatony, L. and Martínez, E., 2013. Examining the role of advertising and sales
promotions in brand equity creation. Journal of Business Research, 66(1), pp.115-122.
Chaudhari, H., 2015. The Impact of Zero-Price Promotions on Sales: A Case Study of Amazon
Appstore. Technical Report.
Cravens, D.W. and Piercy, N., 2006. Strategic marketing (Vol. 7). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Erragcha, N. and Romdhane, R., 2014. New faces of marketing in the era of the web: from
marketing 1.0 to marketing 3.0. Journal of Research in Marketing, 2(2), pp.137-142.

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forbes.com. 2017. Characteristics of successful brands. [online] Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2013/11/12/the-top-7-characteristics-of-successful-
brands/#760f38cf42f9 [Accessed 19 Aug. 2017].
Haucap, J. and Heimeshoff, U., 2014. Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay: Is the Internet driving
competition or market monopolization?. International Economics and Economic Policy, 11(1-2),
pp.49-61.
Hollensen, S., 2015. Marketing management: A relationship approach. Pearson Education.
Huang, R. and 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.
Khan, M.T., 2014. The concept of'marketing mix'and its elements (a conceptual review
paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p.95.
Quigley, J.F., 2015. Consumer behavior in digital markets.
Sharma, S., 2015. Internet Marketing: The Backbone of Ecommerce. International Journal of
Emerging Research in Management &Technology, 4(12), pp.200-202.
Zhao, Q., Zhang, Y., Friedman, D. and Tan, F., 2015, September. E-commerce recommendation
with personalized promotion. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Recommender
Systems (pp. 219-226). ACM.
Zhu, F. and Liu, Q., 2016. Competing with complementors: An empirical look at amazon. com.