E-commerce Marketing Project: Coles' Strategy & Amazon Case Study

This project analyzes Coles' internet presence and e-commerce marketing strategy, identifying challenges and suggesting improvements through better e-marketing practices. It explores how Coles can enhance visibility, connect with customers, and compete effectively by leveraging e-marketing tools. The project also examines Amazon's business model, revenue streams, and customer-centric approach, highlighting its success through innovation and a culture of metrics. The analysis covers Amazon's digital business strategy, including reach, act, convert, and engage frameworks, and how it maintains customer loyalty and satisfaction. Ultimately, the project provides insights into how companies can leverage e-commerce and digital strategies to achieve business growth and customer engagement, with a focus on practical applications and improvements for Coles.

RUNNING HEAD: E-commerce and marketing 0
E-commerce and marketing

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Activity 1
This report comprises the internet presence and strategy of Coles. The unique sets of
challenges are faced in online shopping. The online grocery is inherently more complex than
other online retails. The grocery store is a major constituent of the retail sector, the online
presence remains in an emerging state. The internet presence of Coles is impressive. Coles is
a powerful grocery store with a projected 24% market share. The website of the company
offers a wide range of product information along with the services like ‘click and collect’
feature. The presence of the company on social media does not clearly allege what it wants to
accomplish (Saha, et al. 2016). Coles is trying and the social network offers supervision to all
the marketers potential of delivering value. Coles uses social media tools on the internet such
as Twitter and Facebook to handle customer replies. The internet presence of Coles provides
informative content. The simple food recipes on Facebook get a large number of likes,
comments, and shares. The company even make use of Twitter to gain some consumer
insight (Abdallah and Jaleel, 2015). The way Coles interact with the customers on the internet
shows that it is curious and cares for customer preferences. It eventually enhances brand
reputation.
Coles is making efforts to improve the customer experience for online grocery shoppers.
Coles online is not perfect and still going on the journey. There is just 2% of grocery sales are
done online which is a very low proportion of sales. It is excessively low when compared
with other e-commerce retailers. The major hurdle faced by the company is in the form of
online operations. It takes time to fill the grocery basket by online shoppers. A fresh shopper
can spend one minute in choosing or searching for each product (Ryan, 2016). This way fifty
products soon become fifty minutes worth of the online grocery shopping. It becomes a real
challenge to maintain the interest of the customers.
The company has incorporated customer’s in store shopping data with an online profile to
address this challenge. The history of recent purchase can be imported with the help of
Flybuys card. It is helpful in cutting the process to twenty minutes. It makes the search and
review process and turns into something which is just adding and updating from the regular
products. The recommendations can also be made relevant to the regular purchase. The
problems faced by Coles in the marketing can be analyzed through the better use of the e-
marketing (Aversa, Haefliger and Reza, 2017).

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Increases visibility of the business: The e-marketing increases the visibility of the business. It
can be helpful for Coles to establish a presence on the internet. The e-marketing is supportive
in expanding visibility to a large number of population. It can represent the whole range of
the products online along with the various options (Mazzarol, 2015).
To connect with the customers: Coles can increase the number of customers online by
making better use of the e-marketing. The proportion of customers can be enhanced by
adding the latest features and products to the business. By publicizing upcoming products and
services offers a description to the customers, more customers can be involved in the
transactions. This way, customers can be attracted to the company in the future.
To cope up with the competition: The customers nowadays purchases products online with
the help of e-marketing. It has become crucial for companies like Coles to maintain the
interest of the customers. The e-marketing makes possible to manage the interest of the
consumers by providing a different category of the products. The filter easily identifies the
preferences of the customers (Tan and Carrillo, 2017).
Legitimating itself: The efficient presence online helps companies to show the active
operations of the business. It even enables companies to legitimate themselves as successful
companies. This way, Coles can tackle hurdles in online operations. The company can easily
reduce the time taken to fill the grocery basket (Chong, Bian and Zhang, 2016).
Research and development: Coles can research and develop good keywords which are
suitable for the business. Coles can make use of the keywords to place the site on the top of
search engine outputs. The experts can be hired by the company to enhance the website and
social media. It can even be helpful in reducing the time taken for filling basket and
processing. It is the best way to win new customers along with the experience of the existing
customers. The keywords can easily find the products online.
Coles online presence is comparatively new in the market. The presence of company over internet is
impressive still it inherent more challenges than any other online retailer in the market. Coles is even
facing problem in defining what it want to accomplish on the social media. The company has taken
initiative of incorporating customer’s shopping data is leading successfully. It has reduced the
processing time to twenty minutes. It can increase the visibility of the business; can connect to the
great number of customers, legitimate itself and can cope-up with the competition. The company
can invest more on the research and development to enhance the experience of the customers. The
keywords can possibly find products easily on the website. The marketing problem faced by Coles
like time taken to fill the basket can be easily solved by the better use of e-marketing. The

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number of customers can also be maintained along with the increasing number of customers
through e-marketing. The e-marketing is capable of solving the hurdles faced in the business
(Zeng, et al. 2017).

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Activity 2
Amazon was established in 1995 and has come in a long way. The mission of the company is
the earth’s most customer-centric company. The customers of Amazon have grown
worldwide along with the millions of sellers, developers, content creators, and enterprises.
Amazon has launched a number of business model innovations concentrated on hardware and
new services (Atwal and Williams, 2017). The latest innovation of Amazon’s business model
is the launch of Amazon Go. It is a new kind of store which requires no checkout. Add on
kindle, fire tablet, grocery delivery, smartphone, Amazon fashion and expansion to the
Amazon Web Services. Along with this, Amazon is pursuing cloud service destructively.
Amazon focuses on offering low prices and a wide collection of merchandise to the
customers. Customer loyalty and repeat purchases have a role behind the success of the
company. The lower prices are the popular products whereas less popular products
demanding higher prices are of a great margin for Amazon (Katsikeas, et al. 2016). The
strategy of free shipping encourages customers to increase the basket size up to a specific
limit to avail free shipping. Amazon concentrates more on customer satisfaction metrics. The
site is diligently monitored with the standard service availability monitoring. The company
has focused on the increasing importance of technology, artificial intelligence, and machine
learning (Fill and Turnbull, 2016). The new technologies help the company in gaining
competitive advantage. For instance, the company reported selling more Kindle books than
paperback books. Amazon uses a digital business strategy to focus on the customers and test
market opportunities. The digital technology as a part of the business strategy has a profound
impact on the world. It reflects the core essence of the business. Amazon has created a virtual
store with lower costs and larger inventory. It became popular rapidly. The digital business
strategy comprises the following framework:
Reach: The initial business growth of Amazon is based on the detailed approach of SEO and
Adwords targeting millions of keywords.
Act: The company creates flawless and simple experiences with the help of testing and
learning.
Convert: Amazon uses personalization to form relevant recommendations along with the
clear checkout process which can be imitated.

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Engage: The focus of the strategy is on the customer experience known as “customer
obsession”. The company consistently outperform with other retailers and attains customer
satisfaction. Amazon has even its own internal experimentation platform known as “Weblab”
which is used to evaluate improvements (Zhang, et al. 2017).
Amazon follows a diverse revenue model. Amazon performs exceptionally efficient against
revenue per visitor. It is identified as one of the key measures of any commercial website.
The company is capable of developing new capabilities against its competitors. Amazon is a
customer-centric along with the product and technology focused (Dolata, 2017). The business
model of Amazon is continue to measure the programs and effectiveness of the investment
made. The commissions and fees are the primary source of revenue for the company.
Amazon provides a marketplace assuring standardized experience to the buyers and sellers.
The company also sells advertising on its website. It is one of the most visited pages. It
comprises a great vision for digital agility. The company claims to the mass market. Its
biggest channel of Amazon is amazon.com. The revenue model of the company makes
internet shopping easier for customers. It appreciates long haul links with a great number of
customers. The recent example of the business model of Amazon is Amazon Go. It is a new
kind of store which requires no checkout. It is just walking out shopping experience. The
users of Amazon Go app can enter the store, pick the products required, go with no line and
go with no checkout (Garner, 2018). Amazon tests the business model for the long term
perspective rather than considering short term profitability. The company depends on the
range of business model innovations concentrated on hardware and new services. The
expansion of the Amazon web services (AWS) is hire tablet, Kindle e-readers, smartphone,
echo, Amazon fashion, grocery delivery, and Amazon Prime. The company is still pursuing
cloud service destructively.
Amazon uses a measured approach in all the aspects of business except the finance. The
company has adopted a culture of metrics comprising web-based business. It will enable web-
based business and offer the company an amazing window into human behavior. The
company kept a record of the moves made by the visitors, every last click and click of the
mouse. Amazon can improve its performance by using improvement measures. The
customer-centric metrics were used to know and calculate the time spent by the customers on
the site along with the frequency of the visits (Gassmann, Frankenberger and Csik, 2016).
The culture of metrics allowed Amazon to:

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To keep eyes focused on the customers: Amazon can successfully track its performance in
contradiction of 500 measurable goals. Out of which 80% of those goals have to do with the
customer objectives.
Allow for lively debate and knowing the best idea will succeed: The employees of Amazon
generally debate about various metrics is worth watching. If a person stands with the barrage
of questions, then it reflects picking up the right metric.
Weed out customer turn-offs: Everything is measured at the site which explains when the site
begins to function which can irritate and turn off the customers. for instance, as per one of
Amazon’ s metrics, even a minuscule .1 second delay in the web page loading can result in
1% drop in the activity of the customers (Gerrikagoitia, et al. 2015).
Take risks: The company focuses on what is going to be better for the customers then
focusing on the optics of the next quarter. Such an aspect of culture is found rare. For
instance, after fusing hundred data points, Bezos came to know that customers want an e-
reader which is capable of downloading a book in less than sixty seconds. As a result, the
idea of Kindle was born.
Amazon has initiated a number of business model innovations focused on hardware and new
services. The company focuses on offering low prices and extensive collection of
merchandise to the customers. Customer loyalty and repeat purchases have a role behind the
success of the company. Amazon follows a diverse revenue model which helped the company
in gaining competitive advantage.

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Atwal, G. and Williams, A., 2017. Luxury brand marketing–the experience is everything!.
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Sloan Management Review, 58(4), pp.49-54.
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