Marketing Essentials Report: Analyzing Amazon's Marketing Strategies

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MARKETING ESSENTIAL

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................................................ 3
LO1................................................................................................................................................................................... 4
P1 KEY ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES OF MARKETING FUNCTION..........................................4
M1 ROLES & RESPONSIBILITY OF MARKETING IN CONTEXT OF MARKETING
ENVIRONMENT.................................................................................................................................................... 6
P2 ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES OF MARKETING IN WIDER ORGANIZATIONAL
CONTEXT................................................................................................................................................................. 8
M2 SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MARKETING AND OTHER
DEPARTMENTS..................................................................................................................................................... 9
LO2................................................................................................................................................................................ 10
P3 COMPARISON OF MARKETING MIX ELEMENTS FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF
OVERALL BUSINESS OBJECTIVES........................................................................................................... 10
M3 EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT TACTICS APPLIED BY AMAZON FOR ACHIEVEMENT
OF BUSINESS OBJECTIVES.......................................................................................................................... 17
LO3................................................................................................................................................................................ 19
P4 AND M4 EVALUATION OF A BASIC MARKETING PLAN.........................................................19
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................................... 27
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................................................... 28
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Ansoff Matrix...................................................................................................................................... 20
Figure 2: Swot Analysis...................................................................................................................................... 26
Figure 3: Pestel Analysis....................................................................................................................................28

INTRODUCTION
In this report of Marketing Essentials, there is a deep understanding of marketing
functions & their roles & responsibilities. The report will discuss how the marketing
functions are related to the wider organizational context and what is its significance.
The further part will analyze the ways in which an organization applies elements of the
marketing mix effectively. In addition to this, various tactics that are applied by an
organization for achieving the overall objectives of an organization will also be
analyzed. At last, an effective marketing plan will be evaluated that helps the
organization to make marketing strategies & plans for the achievement of overall
business objectives.
The report will be made in context to the most popular online platform for business
that is Amazon. A Public company Amazon is an e-commerce marketplace that deals in
cloud computing, digital distribution, artificial intelligence & electronics. It was
founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos. It is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

LO1
MARKETING
Marketing is the study of business management theory for creating and maintaining
the relationship by satisfying customers. It is the process of selling & promoting
products to the target customer to expand sales along with inviting more customers to
the firm (Baker, 2016).
MARKETING FUNCTION
Marketing functions are responsible for overseeing the activities of the business
involving marketing strategies, research, plan & public relations. Marketing functions
are the operations used to identify potential products & promote them in order to
maintain a strong marketing position in the market (Baker, 2016). They ensure that the
offerings of the company are meeting customer demands.
P1 KEY ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES OF MARKETING FUNCTION
 Roles of the marketing function
Product pricing
Keeping the correct price for products is an important task for Amazon marketing
manager because of the transparency of similar products. Amazon also allows its
customer to compare products value from competitors. Amazon uses different
approaches to select an effective price for products (Allen, 2016).
Dealing competitors
As Amazon works in a vastly competitive market place, around 2.5 million people sell
products on Amazon.com. This makes difficult for the marketing manager of Amazon to
differentiate its products from its competitors. The role of a marketing manager is to
identify the accurate needs of the customers to deal properly with its competitors
(Blythe and Martin, 2019).

Customer satisfaction
The major role of the marketing function of Amazon is to satisfy its customer needs &
basic requirements. Amazon is known for providing best services & value-added
products to its customer and also involves in improving customer lifestyle (Blythe and
Martin, 2019).
Strong brand image
The role of a marketing manager of Amazon is to create a brand image that attracts its
customers towards it as well as improving the brand image to be stable in a
competitive market (Blythe and Martin, 2019). Amazon partner Goat Consultancy gives
an opportunity to its brand to work with experts & brings focus to the marketplace.
 Responsibilities of marketing functions
Market research
The main responsibility of the marketing manager of Amazon is to conduct effective
marketing research for identifying the needs of the customer along with determining
the competitors & their products (Baker, 2016). It then recognizes the factors that are
required making its product better and starts working accordingly (Allen, 2016).
Identifying trends
It is necessary for a marketing manager of Amazon to identify the existing market
scenario to perform the business activities as accordingly (Allen, 2016). For Amazon,
living in trend is must otherwise its million competitors will come across its way.
Bring Innovations
Marketing manager of Amazon is responsible to generate innovations as there are
millions of sellers who are selling similar products like Amazon. Hence, it is necessary
to bring innovation to differentiate its products from others (Chaffey and Ellis-
Chadwick, 2019).

Performing promotion activities
Marketing functions of Amazon includes preparing the promotional activities and
implement it for marketing the products. By the way of advertising & distribution
channel, Amazon can promote its brand throughout the world. This activity will make
customers aware of Amazon products.
M1 ROLES & RESPONSIBILITY OF MARKETING IN CONTEXT OF MARKETING
ENVIRONMENT
The activities that are used in the planning of the marketing management involve price,
sales, distribution, promotion, etc. as according to the customer base (Baker, 2016).
The roles & responsibilities of Amazon can be identified with respect to marketing
environment by discussing the following ways
Marketing strategy
Amazon follows the marketing strategy to attract customers towards its product pages.
Its strategic management is further divided into five factors that are marketing services
of Amazon, SEO, direct marketing, affiliate marketing and reviews (Chaffey and Ellis-
Chadwick, 2019).
Marketing information system
Amazon has used several information systems to market its product and gain a
competitive advantage in the market that includes the e-CRM system to control their
online operations. Under this, it allows the end users to compute actions at the same
time control the computer environment of Amazon (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019).
Marketing research
Amazon follows the agile approach for market research as there are various benefits of
using this approach. It works by testing and checking different types of user interfaces
for making aware of the customer feedback for products (Brito et al., 2015). Agile
approach for Amazon is the reason for its success.

Brand Equity
Customers at Amazon rely on its brand due to its value-added products & services.
Marketing has a huge hand in creating a strong image for its brand by promoting its
products. Ultimately, this process also helps Amazon to increase the volume of its sales
(D'Agostino, 2018).
Monitors market environment
Marketing plays a vast role in identifying the environment and developing countries
where a product can earn a large number of sales (Kingsnorth, 2019). As a response to
the monitoring environment, Amazon makes certain changes in its internal & external
forces.
Market segmentation
In this big competitive era of industries, market globalization is not permanent.
Therefore, it is required for Amazon to make accurate segmentation that is offered by
the marketing (Brito et al., 2015). The marketing manager of Amazon is responsible to
figure out the range of customer base in the large market those are interested in
Amazon products and promote its services throughout the market (Brito et al., 2015).

P2 ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES OF MARKETING IN WIDER
ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT
For Amazon, it requires to make an interrelation with organizational other
departments to perform several activities of the business while maintaining continuous
progress in the company. All the departments & functional units are connected to each
other, therefore shares a great link in performing business operations (Karjaluoto et al.,
2015). At the same time, if any one of the department fails in its operations then it will
lead to harm for the whole company & may cause a certain crisis for the company.
Hence, it has an impact on Amazon in both positive & negative manner.
Following departments shares a link with marketing function of Amazon
Finance Department
Marketing manager of Amazon shares a link with the Finance department to create an
accurate budget for products & services and at the same time provides sufficient
financial resources for performing the business operations. It performs the finance
operations of the business that includes overseeing the revenue policies & procedures
(Hattula et al., 2015).
HR Department
Amazon requires a team to perform business operations as well as sell products to the
consumers. Therefore, the HR department is responsible to recruit the potential
workforce team those have the capability to handle customers & can deal with the new
trends and technologies (Karjaluoto et al., 2015). Marketing functions are responsible
to provide research output to the HR department so that they can choose the right
candidates for the organization.

Operation department
There is a significant relationship between operation & marketing departments of
Amazon where the operation department is responsible for analyzing the procedures
and practices followed by Amazon to perform the business operations (Kingsnorth,
2019). It ensures that the operations are performed accurately to run the business
smoothly. Amazon is an e-commerce market place that means its business is scattered
all over the world where it operates with value creation services (D'Agostino, 2018).
M2 SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MARKETING AND
OTHER DEPARTMENTS
There is a great significance of the link sharing with the marketing and other
departments of Amazon. This interrelationship helps Amazon in achieving the business
objectives effectively. Through this interrelationship, the whole company works as a
team in fulfilling customer requirements and basic needs (D'Agostino, 2018). Financial
department at Amazon helps to make a proper budget plan and also provides efficient
financial resources for launching its products along with marketing & promoting
(Hattula et al., 2015). The functional unit of HR helps to select the potential workforce
for Amazon that is motivated towards achieving desired goals. Operation department
performs the full analysis of Amazon operations and checks its accuracy. Thus, the
interrelationship brings several benefits to Amazon business operations (D'Agostino,
2018).

LO2
P3 COMPARISON OF MARKETING MIX ELEMENTS FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT
OF OVERALL BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
Here is the comparison of marketing mix elements of Amazon with its top competitor
Walmart.
Product
Amazon has a wide range of products and it is categorized into four different factors that
are: Amazon websites, Electronic devices, Media content & Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Hundreds of million customers are aware of purchasing Amazon products from its websites.
As of 2017, Amazon sells more than 5 billion products across the world. It includes Fire TVs,
tablets & millions of Echo products along with services of cloud computing, database,
global, etc. (Baltes, 2016).

Like Amazon, Walmart products are also categorized in several factors that are Groceries,
Entertainment, Hardlines, Apparel, Hardware, etc. Other than this, Walmart deals in
millions of products that include Pharmacy, Home furnishing, household appliances,
stationery, etc. (Kingsnorth, 2019). Due to its wide range of products, it is considered as
the leading e-commerce store in the world.
Place
Amazon didn't have any traditional or physical stores in the country as it deals in the online
business. As of 2015, Amazon has opened a physical book store along with an alternative
store where students who order books online come here and collect them. It reduces
shipping charges (Baltes, 2016). Prime services are scattered in over 8000 cities.