Introduction
“A study on Amazon: Information systems, Business strategies, and e-CRM” by Abdullah Al Imran was published in April 2014. In this article, the author provides a comprehensive report on information technologies and business approaches used by Amazon.com that made it the largest Internet retailer in the world and brought international customer loyalty to the company. The report is divided into four major parts with several subsections each: information systems utilized for internet activity, business strategies applied for internet activity, e-CRM cycle conducted for internet activity: Customer Relationship Management, the recommendation for Amazon.com. Al Imran starts the article with a description of the company’s background.
Article Summary
Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1995. The founder’s initial intent was to create a virtual bookstore serving customers worldwide. Gaining success in the nineties, by 2000 the company progressed to become a huge platform for retailers and individuals to sell their goods.
From the outset, Amazon.com was based on Service Oriented Architecture enabling the system’s reliable and robust work. The services incorporated by the company include a B2B integration system developed in partnership with Excelon, Amazon Web Service (AWS), and Simple Storage Service (SS) used to serve millions of customers and maintain the vast availability of products. Smart Analysis Search is another important tool in the company’s information system detecting and decreasing the risk of fraud by analyzing behavioral patterns as well as personalizing customer experience on the website.
One of the biggest advantages of Amazon.com is a one-click purchase, with the company’s servers providing necessary shipment and payment information for registered customers. The activity is completely safe for users since all the data is securely encrypted. This was made possible thanks to the e-CRM system that collects the information about transaction and order history. CRM also uses customers ‘profiles, product reviews, and feedback to further improve the service and initiate effective communication. The company provides fast as well as personalized service using an intelligent recommendation system which analyzes past purchases and searching inquiries to link related products together in the recommendation to a customer. Nowadays, is vital for every business to have e-CRM to support service, marketing, and sales in the rapidly growing world of online business. Another system to play a great role in the company’s success is a perfectly built chain of supply. Enterprise Resource Management (ERM) system automatically finds the mail distribution center, which reduced in half customer service complaints and distribution mistakes.
Amazon’s most prominent business strategies include the Associate’s program, elaborate customer relations strategy, and professional marketing and promotion. The associate’s program enabling individuals and businesses to use Amazon as a platform to sell their product boosted user traffic and sales rates and proved to be extremely successful. Customer relations and marketing strategies were built entirely on Jeff Bezos’s ideas of limitless inventory, customer care, high margin, lowest price. Although initially Amazon was designed as a virtual bookstore, it expanded over the years to realize the first idea of its founder – now Amazon has a huge number of products of any kind. One of the most favorable aspects of users ‘experience has always been exceptional customer care, which benefited both the company and the people – Amazon gets many new and returning customers thanks to customer-to-customer recommendations. This fact makes the name one of the company’s major marketing strategies. As for the low price, high margin aspect, Amazon manages to sell products on average in 33 days against the competitor’s average of almost 70 days, which makes it possible for Amazon to keep the prices low without a decrease in revenue.
Conclusion
However, it might be challenging for Amazon to continue dominating the internet retail market in the fast and challenging environment of today’s world. Amazon’s competitors such as eBay and BestBuy stimulate the company to think out of the box and find new solutions. To be ahead of them, the company needs to retain its customer service on the superior level, bring new products to the market, and adapt to the technological changes.
Bibliography
Al Imran, Abdullah. “A Study on Amazon: Information Systems, Business Strategies and E-CRM.” Researchgate. 2014. Web.