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BCR Indivdual Assignment
BCR Indivdual Assignment
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report provides information on how amazon has built its customer relationship with its
target market and customers. The report is made up of five chapters that all illustrate the ways
amazon has established itself and how it uses its CRM system to its advantage. A competitive
analysis and SWOT analysis are conducted to decision the offensive strategies and defensive
strategies used by amazon to gain competitor advantage. The amazon target market is later
discussed as well as amazon’s relationship marketing innovative strategies used. Later on, the
types of bonds used amazon are explained as well as how amazon is slowly shifting to mass
customization. The researcher goes on to provide a few recommendations on how amazon
can improve and implement its CRM system.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY........................................................................................................2
2.1 SELF-HELP...................................................................................................................12
2.2 DATA-DRIVEN............................................................................................................12
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................21
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1.0 INTRODUCTION TO AMAZON
Amazon is one of the largest technology organizations in the world, founded in 1994 by
Jeffrey P. Bezos in Washington. Jeffery P. Bezos named Amazon after the Amazon River
which is the world's largest, and the letter "A" would help it appear at the top of alphabetical
company lists. In the early stages, Amazon was just a company selling books online by the
use of its website (Amazon.com). Amazon grew to become the internet's most recognized
book-related website and later ventured into dealing in all types of products with the logo
being the company name and a smile like arrow pointing from A to Z, indicating that they
can deliver every product in the alphabet as well as be able to keep customer satisfaction.
Amazon being one of the first companies to sell goods over the internet, it attracted a lot of
customers from buyers, sellers, retailers, content providers and enterprises that are allowed to
sell and buyer products using Amazon.com (Sandeep and Pohutezhini, 2019).
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1.1 COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Market
Offering the widest Free membership, Establishing an
Information
range of products, internet promotion, insurmountable
Using a customer- freebies, customer base,
friendly interface, Concentration on
Marketing
scaling easily from local and
Strategy
small to large, international trade,
Manipulating affiliate Constantly enhancing
products and resources and evolving site
functionality and
features
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Retail goods, Amazon E-commerce and Mobile Phone and
Prime, Amazon Echo, retail service, Cloud Accessories,
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1.2 SWOT ANALYSIS
S W O T
STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES OPPORTUNITIES THREATS
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1.3 OFFENSIVE STRATEGY
An offensive strategy is a method used to gain market share from competitors and strengthen
their own competitive position. This strategy includes tangible and intangible attacks as well
as expanding into new markets to avoid existing competitors (Heriyati, Heruwasto and
Wahyuni, 2013). They are different types of offensive strategies used by companies but
Amazon main two types are the flank attack and the bypass attack. Below is a diagram
showing how amazon implements these strategies.
OFFENSIVE STRATEGY
DEFENSIVE STRATEGY
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2.0 RELATIONSHIP MARKETING INNOVATION FOR
AMAZON
Relationship marketing is a marketing strategy that aims to increase consumer loyalty,
communication and long-term involvement. Its goal is to build deep relationships with
customers by offering them with data that is tailored to their specific values and wants, as
well as encouraging open conversation (Olenski, 2013). With the growth of e-commerce, a
lot of companies have resulted into applying these strategies innovatively into their websites.
Customer retention is one of the most crucial aspects in relationship marketing. Instead of
aiming to keep existing customers, most organizations concentrate their efforts on obtaining
new ones to replace those that depart. This behavior can be described by a term called leaking
bucket that states that when a business is constantly losing clients, in order for the company
to preserve market share, they must acquire an equal amount of new customers to keep the
bucket full or slow the leak (Falla, 2019). Amazon being considered to be the leader of e-
commerce, has attained and attracted new customers because of its innovative relationship
marketing strategies keeping its bucket always full. When it comes to large corporations,
most customers are exposed to bad customer relationship management, but this is not the case
with Amazon, the reason for this is because amazon has introduced a lot of innovative
features to better customer relationship and stay a step ahead of its competitors (Web
Research Report on Relationship Marketing for amazon.com - O2I, n.d.). Below are few
examples of amazon’s innovative relationship marketing strategies.
2.1 SELF-HELP
This is a feature amazon has added to their page where a customer is able to access all the
help, they need in one simplified screen. Here they are able to review orders, communicate
with customer service, read FAQs, manage account as well as search for topics if the answer
to your query is not visible. Amazon's broad variety of self-help choices makes it simple to
obtain answers on one's own and helps customers save a lot of time by not having to wait for
responses from assistance. Below is a screenshot showing self-help page.
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Figure 2: Amazon’s self-help page
2.2 DATA-DRIVEN
Almost all of Amazon's customer-facing interactions are powered by the power of big data
collected from the customers activities. This collected data is used in many ways, one way
this is implemented is when the call center is contacted by customers, the call center
personnel use the information you provide to help you feel more confident and at ease. The
most important way amazon uses this data is the more customers visits the site and signs up
for their newsletters, the better personalized recommendations they will receive. Below is an
example of a personalized based on the customers last search history.
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3.1 FINANCIAL BONDS
Financial bond is linking customers mainly through financial incentives. For example, lower
pricing for customers who have been with the company for a long period or lower costs for
larger volume purchases to retain customers (Idushmita, n.d.). Amazon utilizes financial
bonds to create and maintain close relationships with its customers by providing numerous
financial incentives. Some these financial bonds used by amazon percentage off, free
shipping, buy one get one, link coupons, clip coupons, todays deal, gift cards etc. Below are
few screenshots showing amazon’s financial bonds.
Figure 4: shows amazon’s today’s deal page, where customers can find all the products that
are on promotion on that day
Figure 5: Shows amazon’s gift cards page, where customers can collect gift cards.
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3.2 SOCIAL BONDS
The social bond is the level of personal interaction that is shared by the vendor and the buyer.
Social bonds influence customer loyalty more than the product or service itself. Amazon
utilizes social bonding to build a personal relationship with customers and encourage them to
become loyal to the brand. It has done this through having a massive flow of real-time
customer interacting data in order to construct adaptable personalized customer journeys that
give engaging and delightful experience and information at every point of the customers
lifetime (Lima and Fernandes, 2015), For example, amazon offer its customers to leave
reviews about the product purchased when received it also uses the customers name to point
out certain features like deliver to Taza. Below are screenshots showing the few social bonds
used by amazon.
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3.4 CUSTOMIZATION BONDS
Customization bonds is where a company customizes the service to the needs of the customer
aimed to promote customer loyalty (Idushmita, n.d.). Amazon is known for its excellent
customer relationship approach to business. The company considers its customers in all major
decisions. Amazon uses its CRM system to utilize the customization bonds. This can be
noticed by the way amazon is always customizing the customers dashboard or home page
based on their data, customer search history, last purchase etc. Below is a screenshot showing
how amazon has customized a customer’s home page.
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Figure 9: Amazon music benefit for prime members.
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4.0 SHIFT FROM MASS MARKETING TO MASS
CUSTOMIZATION
Mass marketing is a generic marketing strategy in which a company ignores specialist
marketing and market segmentation in order to appeal to the whole market with a single
strategy or offer. The marketing must be focused on a set of products that are common to
most customers in the target audience for an effective mass marketing campaign. Usually it
focusses on social media, television / radio, newspapers, magazines and email marketing
which is a traditional style of marketing. As much as mass marketing strategy can be very
effective for a company’s new product, compared to mass customization which is a
marketing technique that involves supplying personalized goods and services to match the
needs of individual customer, mass marketing is considered to be ineffective. This because
mass marketing has serious disadvantages significant downsides, including as costly
advertising expenditures and product development costs, harsh rivalry, and ignoring clients'
specific need while mass customization is having numerous advantages such as mainly
targeted customers that are loyal, less competition and higher profit margins (Shaw, 2018).
Amazon commonly know for mass products is slowing shifting to mass customization
because the benefits to company will be huge. This shift amazon will be able to have control
over some unique types of personalized goods, as well as a better understanding of how
customer preferences impact product design, both internally and externally. Amazon made
this shift when it introduced amazon custom which is a store on amazon.com that allows
customers to personalize their products by adding text, photos, logos or from a list of options
you provide (Redaktion, 2016). Below are screenshots of a few amazons’ customization
options.
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Figure 11: Amazon customer page to allow customers to personalize products.
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Majority of amazon’s success has come from the company’s intelligent use of its in house
developed CRM system that collects customer data at the point of purchase and uses that to
customize the customer’s online experience. Even though amazon has a good CRM system,
the system has few weaknesses and the is always room from improvement.
5.1 RECOMMENDATION 1
Amazon being an e-commerce platform that felicitates third-party sellers, means the CRM
system comes with some serious limitations. One major limitation with amazon is that there
is no official certification process in place at amazon for seller, meaning anyone can claim to
be an amazon seller exposing its customers to cybercrimes. Amazon can fix by introducing a
system where third-party sellers provide amazon with certain information that will certify
them to trusted sellers, ensuring the safety of its customers.
5.2 RECOMMENDATION 2
A company like amazon where customers' expectations have shifted on many levels as a
result of the company's reputation for offering them what they want, when they want it, and
how they want it. Even when it comes to bills and statements, customers today expect
companies to interact with them in a way that is personal and relevant to them. This shows us
that amazon’s CRM system is almost perfect meaning it always collecting data from its
customers, putting it high risk for security breach which it has experienced in the past. The
company be able to protect its customers data and personal information by ensuring the
security measures are tighten by using encryption protocols and software’s.
5.3 RECOMMENDATION 3
As much as amazon CRM system interacts perfectly with its customer and reduces the need
of human support, nothing is more aggravating than needing assistance and being unable to
reach a live person. Amazon can provide its customers with live human support by either a
phone call or a live chat for instant help or response. Customer often complain about
company’s not being able to solve their queries on time, with recommendation amazon will
be able to assist its customers instantly.
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REFERENCES
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