Introduction
This paper is analyzing the role of internet marketing within Amazon.com. This analysis is done with the help of a questionnaire, which deals with all the strategies and tools used in international marketing within Amazon.com. This questionnaire analyses the data regarding e- marketing. This deals with the level of online marketing, the tools used in internet marketing, and also the profits and the openings with internet marketing. This also explores the online marketing strategies with Amazon.com and their significance. This questionnaire method will help to study the customers who were interested in online shopping. There will be a lot of benefits with online shopping and more and more people are interested in online buying. Online advertisements are getting more attention from internet users. The increased net users were the main attraction for these sites and more profits are attained through these. This internet marketing will increase the brand names and thus increase the businesses.
Online marketing strategies
Amazon is a multinational electronic trading company which is set the online marketing versions in 1995 and is very exclusive in selling electronic items and computer software. They were now having a big market and are the most attractive online marketing sites in the world. The most important benefits for the customers with online marketing are:
- “Convenient— customers can shop 24 hours a day from anywhere without going to the store physically.
- Interactive & Immediate— consumers can interact with the seller’s site to find the information, products, or services they desire, then order or download them on the spot” (Benefits of online marketing, 2010).
These made the customers choose online shopping. The real worth of online marketing for marketers includes maintaining client relationships. They can improve the interaction with the consumers and can study more about their wants. Another advantage with this for the marketers are with the cheap rate and the increased proficiency and will be easy to maintain without a physical place to store the materials and there is a profit with the shop rents. There will be better flexibility with changing the price rates, letting the customers know at a small interval of time and can match the varying environment and can study the whole market. This is also helpful in entering the global market. We can buy from any country we like. There will be more attractive with the huge varieties also. “The advantages of using an online marketing company for sales, branding and exposure is self-evident.
As traditional off-line markets are embracing online marketing such as SEO, to eagerly promote products and services, the need to refine the sales and fulfillment cycles based on supply and demand is ongoing” (The advantages of online marketing, 2010). Instead of going for the customers, it will help in getting noticed by the web users with a click on the right hand. There will be various tools to choose those things needed through e-commerce and can buy easily. We have to notice the demerits of online marketing also. “There is no replacement for good old fashioned customer service. The majority of internet marketers lack customer service and inquiry response programs. As a result, many online visitors to your site will already have painted your site as poor service before they have even contacted you. The majority of websites also have poor navigation, which makes it difficult for your visitor to find what they are looking for. Many sites were created with a marketing view, not a customer service point of view” (Smith 2005).
Analysis of Amazon.Com – Internet marketing
This chapter focuses on the analysis section of the role of using the internet in the context of international marketing. Internet is widely used today in all the spheres of business whether it is the education business, the shopping business, or for research purposes. Amazon.com is another most important internet tool which is widely used for business. This chapter deals with a brief analysis of the questionnaire in which the questionnaire has been analyzed and suggestions have been incorporated. The chapter also contains details about the tools, benefits, challenges, and opportunities of using the Amazon.com strategy in business. How the tools and marketing techniques that support Amazon.com’s strategy in business are evaluated through the analysis of the questionnaire.
Being experienced to correlate using consumers is a very significant quality in internet marketing. And also at the same time, the surrounding of Internet marketing necessitates marketers to generate interfaces that permit communication using customers. Internet marketing influences the various aspects of the customers in the market. The study was conducted to recognize the research aim and objectives of the function of Internet marketing in Amzon.com. The study is conducted through a well-structured questionnaire, it consists of many questions to identify the customer’s attitude with regards to this. Questionnaires must congregate some individuality for the technique to be efficient in data collection for the study. Amazon offers a special program which is referred to as the affiliate program in which the customer can also indulge in online sales.
Analysis
The questionnaire that has been prepared is a detailed one and caters to all the minute details about the internet marketing aspect especially Amazon. Com. The questionnaire consists of both brief as well as detailed questions. The use of a questionnaire is a qualitative approach. The questionnaire is both close-ended as well as open-ended. In the questionnaire, the education and the age group of the participants have been included but the profession of the participant has not been included. It would be vital to also include the profession that the participants are working in to make a concrete analysis. From the questionnaire, primary data can be easily obtained as to how the participants view the concept of internet marketing through Amazon.com. The questionnaire is divided into many sections and all the sections are jumbled in one questionnaire that is why the questionnaire seems to be very long and time-consuming. This approach might not be readily accepted and might deter at least some participants from taking part in the research process. The lengthy sample of the questionnaire detects people from answering the questions even though the topic is highly important to them.
The number of participants who answered the questionnaire was 100 including 46 males and 54 females.
Table 1: Number of participants.
Most of the respondents were in the age range of 31-40 and then between 20 and 30. The respondents above 51 years of age and less than 18 are relatively less.
Amazon.com is very highly used in the concept of internet marketing because it has got many facilities like offering purchase suggestions. A question regarding the purchase suggestions for a product that is a special feature of Amazon.com has not been incorporated in the questionnaire. “The use of customer purchase history by Amazon.com (www.amazon.com) is an excellent example. Amazon analyses each customer’s purchase history and makes suggestions based on past purchases. In addition, Amazon makes suggestions on the fly when the customer is engaged in the buying process. And Amazon will invite you to rate your past purchases and use that information to further customize what you are offered as recommendations” (Jones 2008, p.116).
The questionnaire shows that most of the participants were having internet access. Nearly 80% of the respondents have the access to the internet and the rest doesn’t have. In this, 60 people are using the internet daily and 15 people are using this within 3-6 days. About 25 people were checking the internet in less than 3 days.
This feature or a very good benefit of using Amazon.com in internet marketing is highly important but has not been incorporated in the questionnaire. Similarly in the questionnaire details have not been mentioned regarding the business-to-business and the business-to-consumer relations which Amazon.com provides. A fundamental principle Of Amazon’s strategy had been consumer-focused modernization planned to develop the handiness of the online shopping practices. This had comprised providing the earth’s largest assortment of commodities and services where consumers could discover and purchase everything that required online from monetary services to diamonds. This particular policy or strategy of Amazon had been driven in the course of technology expansion. The strategic attention of Amazon is mainly consumer-oriented. Amazon had persistently pursued its strategy of giving attention to customer practices by providing low costs, expediency, and an extensive selection of goods. Selection, cost, expediency are three pillars used for the Amazon strategy. Besides all these strategies he used to incorporate various strategic issues to develop the most comprehensive strategies to compete with other products in the world. “Amazon strategy as drawn by Jeff Bezos in September 2001.
Tools of the Amazon.Com: Questions regarding the business to purchaser relationships that Amazon.com offers are extremely beneficial in the expansion of new commercial dealings. The advertising plan of Amazon.com is outstanding which is exceedingly targeted oriented. Amazon offers a particular plan which is referred to as the affiliate program in which the purchaser can also indulge in online sales. For this, the customer has to create an affiliate account and he can avail the option of choosing the products in which he can do trading. The customer can join the affiliate account which Amazon.com offers and can do his own business therefore it can also be termed as an employment provider. “Amazon provides you with special banners and widgets so you can integrate them nicely in your website. Place them in an adequate place on your pages and for each person buying through you, you will receive a percentage of their profit” (Doyle 2010).
Benefits
The use of Amazon.com leads to the enhancement of relations between the customer and the business because it is registered in the memory of the website the user, his previous purchases, and the new choice purchases which the customer can opt. the benefits of using Amazon. Com is immense and it is a one-point place were at the same time online advertising, as well as purchasing and selling, can be done. In the questionnaire, this special specific benefit by using the Internet marketing website Amazon.com has not been incorporated. Had this been incorporated the questionnaire would have covered the topic in depth. This affiliate program is a unique program offered by Amazon.com which provides to its user the additional facility of earning revenue along with the purchase option. It’s focused on servicing the high worth consumers; its services favor the usual customer, while efficient through the low worth customer.
It can add mutually the margin on individual consumers and be familiar utilizing their welfare. When an accessible consumer comes online, Amazon performs the direct marketing standard of distinguishing the consumer by using a ‘cookie’ previous to position on their processor Amazon offers very personalized business solutions to its customers. The website follows ethics and intrudes on the privacy of its customers only for business purposes. The question of ethics is highly important in the concept of all internets marketing businesses. In the questionnaire the ethics concept of Amazon. Com has not been asked. A question can be incorporated as to whether Amazon’s data collection system intrudes on the privacy of the participants. “Software tools help Amazon suggest new products when customers log on, narrow their site searches, track favorite authors and topics and even buying stuff they have already purchased. Privacy advocates, however, fear that by storing the vast amounts of personal information about buying habits that allow this kind of relationship building” (Kurtz et al 2010, p.110).
Amazon is one of the major and mainly visited sites globally. Marketing through the Internet refers equally to the procedure of advertising employing online resources and to the procedure of selling and trading in the course of an electronic procedure. Employing Amazon, we can equally promote and sell the goods and even put up for sale someone else’s goods for earnings share. Amazom.com has been considered as good and above average by the 25 respondents who participated in the survey. 44 people rated it as an average site in the promotion of the new products and their advertisements.
Globalization has carried on the subject of enormous challenges in addition to enlarged opportunities. The main challenge is enlarged rivalry. In worldwide commerce surroundings, a business has to participate using extra and even tactically competitive corporations. Apart from these above-mentioned disputes, globalization also arrives using a lot of opportunities. Companies have to think of novel approaches to make sure that they stay applicable or viable. Considering that the continued existence of organizations depends on their capability to make worth at the same time as value based on consumers, marketing has an extremely important contribution to the enlargement of an organization.
Internet marketing offers a wide variety of strengths and opportunities for a firm to be victorious in worldwide business surroundings. The knowledge offers an effective and very less expensive medium for communicating to clients. So that it will provide various opportunities to increase the amount of profit in the business environment. Notwithstanding of enormous opportunity offered by the know-how, not all marketers achieve something in internet marketing there are also various loop points to the overall success of the company. “Building traffic and maintaining customer loyalty are the two main challenges facing online stores and catalogues. Online shoppers are extremely price sensitive, demand high levels of customer service and are easily lured away to competitor sites making it difficult for small businesses and even large brands to remain competitive” (B2C internet marketing strategies, n.d).
Opportunities
Likewise another very significant concept in internet marketing is that of ethics in internet marketing. Internet marketing should be based on ethics like not intruding on the seclusion of its clientele, the copyright principles, etc. With developments in internet technology, it is achievable for persons to converse at any time. In addition to these developments in the internet, purposes have direct applications that maintain complicated business dealings above the internet. Electronic commerce has been rising more quickly in the recent past. As more and more citizens have the right to use internet connectivity and expend most of their occasion using a computer, transacting dealing over the internet turns out to be the most well-organized method to perform business dealings. Growth of moveable digital devices for example phones that can entrée the internet offers huge opportunities for companies. The research objectives of the study are to assess the impact of the internet on the worldwide promotion and marketing mix of the role of the internet in the present economy.
And also to analyze the apparatus, advantages, disputes, and opportunities of using the internet on a worldwide level to improve international marketing. As well as to analyze the marketing methods that hold up Amazon.com’s strategy. Marketing is an extremely significant activity in a company. It is in the course of marketing that a company is competent to present its merchandise to consumers and inspire them to create decisions to purchase the products. With no marketing, an association cannot be capable to put up for sale goods and services that are created. Like other actions, marketing is manipulated by alterations in technology. Development in internet technology has considerable influence on the marketing of the product. Due to the impact of globalization the marketing and its activities have been changed a lot. Internet marketing helps the customer in many ways; it will help to reduce the time taken to complete the purchase. Another thing is that in the case of high involvement product the customer needs more time to purchase the product. Amazon is one of the world’s recognized brands so the online shopping facility of Amazon helps to reduce the purchasing time of the customer.
Online shopping changed the attitude as well as the lifestyle pattern of the women of women in the present-day situation. The research study plans to assess the function of the internet in worldwide marketing. International marketing is significantly different from marketing and local markets. In global marketing, the targeted marketplace is dissimilar: the marketplace could be wider, varied cultured, varying flavor and dissimilarity in language. The internet has a momentous influence on worldwide marketing. Achieving this aim will lead to an elaboration on how internet knowledge has influenced marketing policy in the international marketplace, particularly on its influence mechanism of marketing mix of the product that the company is offered. Amazon demonstrates a lot of the opportunities that are obtainable in the course of the make use of good knowledge. As verification of this, Amazon has been tremendously victorious in generating extremely high levels of consumer bonding. “Amazon makes use of one of the characteristics of the Web that is regarded as its particular strength. This is the ability to allow people to dialogue with each other. The way it does this is by allowing customers to review books and other products. Direct marketing has always aimed to involve the customer and this is a very powerful technique for doing so“(Jenkinson & Sain 2005. p.5).
To appraise a clearer examination on the subject of the apparatus and advantages, opportunities of internet to improve the global marketing, and appreciate the marketing disputes that a business will countenance in global surroundings selling in the course of Internet. The internet gives a variety of opportunities and disputes. In the course of these aims, the opportunities, advantages, and disputes will be assessed. This will offer significant information to the company that needs to make use of the internet to promote their products. “Internet Marketing offers anybody over a certain age with access to a computer and access to an Internet connection, the opportunity to go into business for themselves with little or no start-up costs. There are two main ways to conduct business over the Internet” (Journey into internet marketing –part 1, 2010).
Internet is now widely accepted as a strong media for marketing globally. This will provide more and more benefits to the marketers. The increased usage of the internet in the global world makes international marketers attract this and they are exploiting this popularity among the customers. There are many factors which have to be concentrated with this mode of marketing through the internet. There will be problems with the small and medium scale industries, differences with the foreign agents and suppliers, matters with the exporting, market absorption, market distribution, etc. As a tool for international marketization, the internet has developed very much. Before these, there should be a proper study of the international market, its growth, development, and various strategies to improve. The usage of the internet will target the competitive market by producing more novel products and their promotion, in the research field, for communication, data transfers, etc. These will create a new corporate face.
It will increase associations with the consumers and the shareholders and will discover innovative predictions for the clients. There are lots of advantages like reduced rates, market extension, augmented visions, and better in-house interactions with this internet marketing. The spirited worth of an organization will imitate the communication of client associations and outside functions. With this, there will be product alteration with the growth of internet-based materials and services and it will prop up the effective group and will make joining hands in resolution-making and managerial flexibility. Some allegations of the internet have impacts on global marketing. Internet usage will make way to the rising regularity of the price levels across the boundaries. The customers can know the various price levels across the globe. There will not be any conventional mediators between the customers and the manufacturers of the products. This makes them present a wide range of products and services. There will be much transfer of information and this will pass through every channel which makes a narrow way in the marketing and sales. An important gain with internet usage for international marketing is starting online buyer boards, getting feedback from clients, and following person shopper manners.
Table 2: Internet applications in small and medium-sized exporters. (Source: attachment 3, given by the customer).
International marketing has made the variety in the marketing mix including product, price, place, and promotion. There will be different strategies to make this a successful outcome. The product will be known easily to the customers. With the product case, the internet usage made all the customers know about the complete details of the product, its effects, and other decisions. They have to study the foreign marketing environment to know the details of the manufactured goods and their services. It must be important for a good marketing plan. The Internet also affects the pricing terminologies. All peoples across the borders can view the price and the price standardization is enlarged between the global customers. The internet usage made more attractions in the sales part. Promotion is carried out successfully through the internet. There will be good communication between the customers and promoters through this. But the costs for the promotion on the internet made a small block on this part. The place and the distribution will enhance the new tactics in the marketing, which is another important aspect of the marketing mix. The Internet offers diverse surroundings for global marketing and needs a dissimilar outlook. These four marketing mixes will make a better impact on international marketing.
Table 3: Effect of the internet on the international Marketing mix.
Conclusion
The overview of this analysis of internet marketing through Amazon.com with the help of a questionnaire helped to identify the customer’s needs and their recommendations. These questionnaires touched all the areas of marketing and made it clear to the customers. The response was very positive and was able to know the success of the online marketing through Amazon.com. It also showed the increasing preference for online shopping by the people and it also explains why they go for online shopping. The more number of online shopping sites made a tough competition within the internet marketers and they are ready to make the changes that the customers think easy to buy. “There are some disadvantages of Internet marketing. There is a possibility that you could be participating in illegal or unethical online promotions. That is why it is extremely important that you familiarize yourself with the appropriate ways to obtain emails and to avoid spamming” (Advantages of internet marketing, 2008). By arranging all the securities, internet marketing will be safer and will make easy online shopping.
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