Development Of The Amazon.com Online Marketing Campaign

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ROMANIAN-AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS, BANKING AND FINANCE

International Business Field of Study

BACHELOR THESIS

Scientific coordinator Graduate

Academic rank, First Name SURNAME First Name SURNAME

BUCHAREST

2016

ROMANIAN-AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS, BANKING AND FINANCE

International Business Field of Study

Development of the Amazon.com online marketing campaign

Scientific coordinator Graduate

Academic rank, First Name SURNAME First Name SURNAME

BUCHAREST

2016

INTRODUCTION

In today’s digital context, the online environment plays a crucial role that cannot be ignored. Any business, regardless of its size, must adapt to the new rules of the society. Consumers from all over the world have turned to the online environment to shop, browse, research and compare, which is why an online presence is essential for any company.

During the past decade, a great development of online shops and platforms such as Amazon.com has been observed, as a result of the transformation of the consumers’ needs and requirements. The interest of individuals of all ages towards trustworthy online shopping platforms has increased due to many reasons. A variety of lifestyle changes caused by the increased access to the Internet and therefore, to information, the individuals’ expectations to obtain results fast and efficiently, as well as the need to save time have contributed to the development of such powerful platforms.

In spite of the fact that the commercial environment was forced to evolve and expand, becoming an important part of the online world, the entire process did not take place by itself. It took the effort of motivated, intelligent individuals and a well-planned marketing strategy to bring Amazon.com to the peak of the online world. This is precisely why I chose to discuss and analyze this topic for my bachelor thesis.

The development of the Amazon.com online marketing campaign is an interesting and intriguing topic that has been discussed by many, especially by those in the academic circle who tried to understand how the new marketing strategies work and what were the main factors that determined this company’s success.

From a marketing perspective, this is perhaps the most suitable example of how shopping was taken to an entirely different level.

Motivation

The main motivation behind the decision of choosing this subject is the fact that including an online marketing campaign in a business plan is crucial nowadays, as if the entire society has moved online. Amazon’s online marketing campaign represents a model for all the small, medium and large retailers and resellers that conduct their businesses online and offline. Analyzing this company’s steps towards success can prove to be extremely useful in order to build a marketing strategy that works for any company that wants to succeed, playing by the new rules.

Moreover, discovering how an online marketing campaign can drive the desired results, reflected in numbers, brand reputation and brand awareness, is the second reason why this topic must be of interest for any marketing enthusiast.

Objective

By analyzing and highlighting the most important aspects of the development of the Amazon.com online marketing campaign, I wish to prove the importance of the online presence in a business’ success.

Although maintaining an offline presence is also important for a wide variety of fields, an online marketing campaign must be a part of a company’s business plan and long-term strategy. Therefore, I will test the hypothesis that any company, regardless of its size and field of activity, can benefit from leading an online marketing campaign. During the four chapters of this thesis, I will bring into discussion arguments and facts that will help me validate or refute this hypothesis in the final chapter, Conclusions.

Structure

Although this subject was thoroughly researched and analyzed due to its complexity, I am aware of the limits that must be set. Amazon.com is an online platform with more than 20 years of history, which is why it would be impossible to go through every aspect of the marketing campaign that has contributed to its success. Also, it is a unified multichannel platform with a variety of business purposes that overrun this paper’s objectives.

Therefore, I have focused on subjects that will offer a better understanding of the online world and the importance of an online marketing campaign for a business’ outcome.

The first chapter, called The role of online promotional activity in the strategic objectives of the company, is meant to clarify the digital media concept and the role of an online campaign. Also, in this chapter, I will emphasize the steps that a business must follow during the planning phase of the campaign.

The second chapter, Presentation of Amazon.com, offers a historical perspective over Amazon’s development, as well as an organizational overview of the company. Throughout this chapter I will discuss about its economic and financial situations that will offer a better understanding of its evolution. Micro and macro environment factors will be thoroughly analysed in this part, as well as the characteristics of America’s online market that marked this company’s evolution. In the last part of this chapter, I will present Amazon’s SWOT analysis in order to highlight its strengths and weaknesses that could predict its evolution during the future years.

The third chapter, headed Characteristics of Amazon.com’s promotional strategy leaves the theoretical part of this thesis and moves toward a more practical approach. During this chapter, I will present the results of my research regarding the promotional strategy of the company. During this phase, I observed Amazon’s mission, objectives, business strategy and revenue model strategies, as well as its undertaken promotion campaign.

The fourth chapter, Online marketing campaign formulation, combines the classic marketing principles that should stand at the base of every business, with the online channels that play essential roles during the marketing campaign.

Finally, the Conclusions represent the part of the thesis where I will emphasize the results of my research and I will present the main conclusions that I was able to draw from studying this topic. Also, I will express my personal opinion regarding the importance of marketing campaigns in the online environment, as well as improvements that I see suitable for Amazon’s strategy.

1. The role of online promotional activity in the strategic objectives of the company

It is a well-known fact that every company needs a business strategy before proceeding with any actions. Its strategic objectives are usually included in a business plan and must be built in parallel with the financial objectives of the company. They must be set on a long term (3 to 5 years) or on a short term (3 months to 1 year) and short-term objectives must accomplish the long-term objectives.

Alfred Chandler, business author and professor at Harvard Business School, defines strategy as the determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals. This definition remains valid in even in a world where the Internet changes the rules of the game, as without a strategy that includes long-term goals and without adopting resources and actions that are necessary to carry out those goals, a business has very small chances of success.

Some of the most important elements in a well-planned strategy are the financial resources, the human resources, the tangible resources and the intellectual, intangible ones. Over time, the strategic management’s importance has been recognized by both businessmen and academicians and has emerged as a discipline in the 1950s in the United States. This subject received great attention since then.

When it comes to the online promotional activity of a company, its role is well-established in the marketing plan, as it represents the gateway to a commercial world where the game is played by different rules. Great communication techniques are required in order to reach the targeted public. Also, clear measurable objectives must be set using the appropriate media, relevant communication plans and creative messages to reach the right audience.

According to the authors of Online Marketing: A Customer-Led Approach, there is an online marketing mix that is highly relevant in the online world. The online marketing mix concept is not new to this field, however, a few new elements entered the scene, playing an important role in the commercial environment, such as the permission and the customer power. The authors highlight the original four Ps: the product, price, promotion and place, and discuss the relevance of the three new Ps of the service mix: product, place and promotion.

As it will be discussed in the following pages of this chapter, the online promotional activity plays a crucial role in the development path of a company, regardless of its vintage on the market.

The impact of digital media and technology on marketing practices

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the first web site (1991) has revolutionized the business world, offering a wide range of opportunities for those who were willing to take their companies to another level. Dave Chaffey, a digital strategist and the CEO of SmartInsights.com, discusses the concepts of e-commerce and e-business, emphasizing the importance of embracing new technologies and going along with the innovation processes. The author offers a variety of examples of businesses that adopted innovative business models and marketing communication approaches. Among some of the most important are Amazon, founded in 1994, Yahoo (1995), eBay, (1995), Hotmail, (1996), Google (1998), MySpace, (1999), Skype, (2003), Facebook (2004) and YouTube (2005).

Chaffey defines e-commerce as the activity of buying and selling using the Internet, but highlights the fact that it implies more than electronically mediated financial transactions. Therefore, e-commerce includes al electronically mediated transactions between an organization and any third party it deals with. Also, it refers to all the pre-sale and post-sale activities in the supply chain.

Digital marketing, also known as e-marketing or Internet marketing is closely related to e-commerce, representing the application of new technologies to the market, through various channels, such as the web, the e-mail or digital television. At the same time, digital marketing is not driven by the available technologies, but by the need of a business to connect with its target audience and to maintain good relationships with their existing customers.

Most specialty authors give Amazon.com and eBay as examples of retailers or online businesses that survived the end-of-the-decade shake-out, as their strategies were powerful and their ability to adapt to the digital world was surprisingly powerful.

The main reason why e-business and e-commerce have become popular concepts in the business world was the ability to increase the profitability, by reducing the staff, transportation and materials costs, as well as by creating a relationship based on loyalty with the existing customers.

A huge impact of the digital media was observed in companies that decided to embrace the new technologies and marketing rules. Chaffey presents a set of tangible and intangible benefits that offer a clear image of the impact that the digitalization has.

Table 1 – Tangible and intangible benefits of digitalization

Source:

In spite of the benefits that the Internet and the World Wide Web have brought, not all of the companies were ready to take their business online. In fact, the same obstacles are encountered in today’s world. The main barriers in the Internet adoption process are the lack of trust, the security issues, the lack of skills, the high costs and the impossibility to see the benefits.

Those who succeeded and were able to adapt to the new rules attempted to achieve four common goals:

Customer acquisition

Customer conversion

Customer retention

Growth in customer value

Today, traditional marketing is always performed along with online marketing promotion techniques and traditional businesses require an online presence, regardless of their location or size.

Marketing communications using online media

The online marketing communications are defined by Chaffey as Internet-based techniques that are used to generate website traffic. They are different from the offline marketing communications, also known as traditional marketing communications, as these involve media channels such as print, TV advertising and even radio to generate web site traffic. The online communication techniques involve digital media channels such as e-mail, online ads, viral marketing etc.

The most relevant examples of online communications are the interactive ads, that can be site-specific media buys, ad networks, contra-deals, sponsorship or behavioral targeting, search engine optimization (SEO), paid search (Pay-per-click), social media blogs and communities, portal representation and online partnerships such as affiliate marketing, co-branding, link-building or widget marketing. Also, buzz marketing and generating media mentions are good examples of online communication techniques that a business can use to reach its audience.

A few examples of offline communications are personal selling, sales promotion, PR, sponsorship, direct mail, exhibitions, merchandizing, packaging or word-of-mouth.

The communication process between a company and its target audience stands at the root of their relationship. If the Internet represents a medium for promotion, then the communication process must take place online. An advertiser can reach its audience using a variety of techniques. Direct marketing ads that request a direct action from the customer and the branding ads that have the role to reinforce a customer’s opinion by frequently exposing a set of information form the most common combination of online advertising tools. These ads can be placed on portals, community web sites, search engines, shopping search engines, chat-rooms, message boards, blogs, podcasts, or RSS aggregators.

The online advertising topic is being widely discussed by marketing specialists, as it is one of the most popular means of attracting new customers and of building a brand reputation in a relatively short period of time. According to some of the authors, online advertising and promotion can be used to incite the viewer to immediate action or to build the image of the brand.

The most frequently mentioned online tools that can help a business promote its content online are the following:

Websites and blogs

Search marketing

Email marketing

Mobile marketing

Online events

Social media channels

In Chaffey’s opinion, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO (Search Engine Optimization), paid search marketing, online PR, online partnerships, interactive advertising and viral marketing are the keys towards an ideal online communication process.

The online partnerships also represent valuable tools, as they include various promotion techniques such as the previously mentioned link-building activity. Online sponsorships and the affiliate marketing are two of the best methods for lead generation, as advertisers usually do not have to pay until they have been delivered the results.

As Dave Chaffey mentions, Amazon.com was one of the first adopters of affiliate marketing. Today, it has huge numbers of affiliates that drive visitors to the web site through links that are posted on other portals, pages or platforms.

Although offline marketing communications will never disappear and are a crucial part of the marketing strategy, the online communication methods become more and more important for businesses around the world every day, which is why it is essential to focus on knowledge management activities and to keep in place an updated marketing campaign.

Online marketing campaign planning

Online marketing campaigns are not so different from traditional ones from a planning perspective. Although the use of Internet makes it look like online marketing plans are easier to design, in reality, such an activity requires as much attention, focus and time as a conventional marketing plan.

The online marketing campaign vision differs from business to business and there is no standard workflow that works for every company. The strategy depends on a variety of factors, such as the industry, the target audience, the promotion budget, the location, the competition etc.

Even so, there is a set of key functional areas of every business. For example, in large businesses, such as corporations, the following areas must be taken into consideration when planning the online marketing campaign:

The financial strategy and planning

The human resources strategy and planning

The production and distribution strategy and planning

The information technology strategy and planning

These areas must also be of interest for smaller businesses, only at a lower scale. As previously mentioned, every business must build a customized online marketing plan, but all of them must go through an audit phase and determine the starting point, the objectives of the plan, the strategy, the tactics, the action plan and the control tools that will be used to measure the results.

The marketing plan’s complexity depends on the skills of the individuals that will undertake this activity. In any case, the following steps must be taken:

Analysis of the current situation (audit)

Analysis of the demand and the competitors

Analysis of the opportunities and threats

Analysis of the resources

Setting the online marketing objectives

Setting the strategies for the target markets

Determining the tactics for the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion)

Putting in practice the action plan, using control tools and monitoring

A SWOT analysis of the business can be extremely useful during this phase, as it will reveal the strengths and weaknesses on which the staff must focus.

Once the plan is in place, there are a few basic steps that must be taken either by the business owner or by the web developer in charge. During the initialization phase, an online business needs to organize for the Internet marketing process, by following the below steps:

Domain name registration

Detection of suitable technology for e-mail marketing campaigns

Start of the development of an e-mail list

Detection of keywords and phrases that will be included in the website’s content

Creation the pages and page elements that are required

Creation and craft the web pages

Creation Google Base pages

Optimization of the pages

Initialization of the analytics tools

Setup of Google Webmaster Tools

Submission of pages

Creation of a blog

Creation of a pay-per-click advertising campaign

Start of link-building activities

Detection of social media marketing objectives

Creation of incoming links

Maintenance of the infrastructure

Review of analytics tools

Creation of update schedule for content creation

2. Presentation of Amazon.com

2.1 General information

According to the Dictionary of Marketing, , Amazon.com is an online seller of goods and services, founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos, who used to be a book seller. Today, it is considered to be the most successful e-commerce platform that not only sells goods and services, but also helps marketers from all over the world to promote their products.

Amazon is an American based (but with an international workspace) electronic commerce company. In fact, it is one of the biggest internet companies in the US. Amazon has over 14 retail websites in 14 different countries around the world, with the still active goal to increase their retail websites into more countries.

At first, the company was planned to air with the name Cadabra but ended up with the name Amazon.com. The change was due to the fact that Jeff Bezos wanted the company’s name to start with an A because it is the first letter in the alphabet which (as he saw) is an opportunity for more hits once one goes on a web spree and because it would appear at the top of any alphabetical list.

Amazon has their headquarters located in a neighborhood in Seattle's South Lake Union and it consists of 14 buildings. The European base of operations are located in the capital of Luxembourg in Luxembourg City.

Amazon.com was born from Jeff Bezos’ desire to find a way to gather the growing the number of online buyers into a single place. As he focused on selling books, these were the first products to be sold in this online shop, excluding the need for a warehouse and intermediaries between the publishers and the booksellers.

This e-commerce platform’s business model has become one of the most successful in the history of online businesses, offering entrepreneurs from the entire world the motivation and knowledge to start their own selling platforms.

Soon after its launch, Amazon started selling merchandise such as software, music, video materials, electronics and even groceries. Today, it has more than 35 different categories of products that can be sold in every country of the world.

The company expanded rapidly, although its owner did not expect it to become profitable in the first five years. Even more, at that time, analysts questioned its ability to ever become profitable, despite its large business volume. Eight years after the launch, Amazon.com started to have profit. In 2003, its surplus was of 35 million dollars and it was constantly growing. The company had 8.9 billion dollars in revenue by 2005 and a net income of $359 million. By this time, it had employed 12000 people.

Its business strategy was very much based on bringing as much innovation as possible to the market. The first innovation that it promoted was selling digital books and magazine articles, as well as video content. Kindle, the digital book reader, was the product that revolutionized reading and was introduced to the market in 2007. As the company grew, it became a habit for Amazon to acquire bookstore sites such as Borders.com or Waldenbooks.com. Its expansion was not only about buying other businesses or converting sellers into partners, but also about penetrating foreign markets such as Canada, UK, France, Germany, Japan and China.

With regards to the marketing campaign of Amazon.com, the company focused on studying its customer’s behavior and used the information it gathered about them to provide as much customization as possible. The automatically generated product recommendations based on the customer’s search history and the product review system were two of the ways that Amazon used to create a closer bond with their visitors. At the same time, the company focused on encouraging small businesses and individual users to sell and promote their own goods on the e-commerce platform. The Amazon Marketplace was launched in 2001 and was available to anyone who wanted to be an online merchant.

The referral network, through which its associates could provide links from Amazon to their own sites, became extremely popular and is still used today.

Amazon’s main competitor was eBay.com, which was trying to keep up and to make it easier for buyers to shop online. eBay was focusing on offering online users the opportunity to comment on their purchased and bring content to the website.

The online business model of Amazon became widely popular and today it is considered to be one of the most important elements of an online commerce business, being a part of the steps that any business must perform. While Facebook and Twitter offer the best social media business models based on large membership, Netflix or Google Play are the best examples of subscription models and Google offers the best advertising model, Amazon is considered to have the best merchant model.

2.2 The Organization Structure and Human Resources

As any company’s organizational structure finds its origins in its owner’s vision, mission and objectives, as well as in its experience, it is important to observe how the Amazon.com’s founder has envisioned it. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, discussed the organizational structure of his company during an interview with the Academy of Achievement in 2001, saying that:

We had so many orders that we weren’t ready for, that we had no real organization in our distribution center at all. In fact, we were packing on our hands and knees on a hard concrete floor.

Today, not only Amazon has an organizational structure, but it is also a complex one that involves a variety of roles and departments. The main roles in this company are those of the:

CEO – Chief Executive Officer

CFO – Chief Financial Officer

Director

CTO – Chief Technology Officer

In this corporate hierarchy, the CEO’s role is to obtain the financial results that stockholders expect, as well as to undertake strategic and operational activities. It identifies the right markets for the company, it ensures that its resources are being used effectively, it optimizes the organization’s processes and it heads the executive committee by arranging regular meetings during which they discuss business matters. From an operational point of view, the CEO acts towards the shareholders, employees, customer and communities’ advantage, keeps track of the financial market and develops and implements strategies based on financial reports.

The CFO’s role is to detect effective financial resources that can support the company’s development. Departments such as the accounting, tax, investor relations, control and financial planning are under the CFO’s supervision.

The Director’s role is to take part in the meeting of the Board of Directors, to manage the roles within the financial departments and to deal with governance issues. Also, its role is to facilitate new alliances with new business partners, as well as with customers.

The CTO’s role is to provide regular information about the status of the technical operations in the company, reporting directly to the CEO and focusing on technological issues.

Amazon.com’s organizational structure is comprised of 31 subsidiaries and 280 executives. Its board is formed of the CEO and 10 directors, as it can be seen in Table 2.

Table 2 – Amazon.com Board

The second layer of its structure includes the company’s CFO, Brian Olsavsky, the CTO, Werner Vogels, who is also the Vice President of the organization, and the following departments:

Amazon Web Services

Worldwide Consumer

Human Resources

Devices

Business Development

International Consumer

Corporate Affairs

Operations & Customer Service

Legal & Secretary

The third layer of the company is comprised of the following departments, as seen in Table 3.

Table 3 – Second and third layer of Amazon’s organizational structure

Except for the above departments that respond to departments in the second management layer, in the third layer there are also independent areas, such as the Product, Alexa & Echo department, the Advertiser’s Experience department, the Audit & Competition department and the Finance for Operations department.

As it can be seen in the table and lists above, Amazon.com has evolved from an organizational perspective, from being a small online e-commerce platform with no real organization system¸ to a well-structured organization with hundreds of thousands of employees.

From a human resources perspective, Amazon.com is divided into well-organized departments. According to the information made available on the company’s website, individuals can be hired in the following departments:

Administrative Support

Audio/Video/Photography Production

Business & Merchant Development

Business Intelligence

Buying, Planning & In stock Management

Customer Service

Database Administration

Design

Economics

Editorial, Writing and Management

Facilities, Maintenance & Real Estate

Finance & Accounting

Fulfillment & Operations Management

Fulfillment / Warehouse Associate

Hardware development

Human Resources

Investigation & Loss Prevention

Leadership Development & Training

Legal

Machine Learning Science

Marketing & PR

Medical, Health & Safety

Operations, IT & Support Engineering

Project/Program/Product Management – Non-Tech

Project/Program/Product Management – Technical

Public Policy

Research Science

Sales, Advertising & Account Management

Software Development

Solutions Architect

Supply Chain/ Transportation Management

Systems, Quality & Security Engineering

The company uses attractive lines in its recruiting pages to encourage individuals to work within its departments.

We’re a company of pioneers. It’s our job to make bod bets, and we get our energy from inventing on behalf of customers. Success is measured against the possible, not the probable. For today’s pioneers, that’s exactly why there’s no place on Earth they’d rather build than Amazon.

From an outside perspective, Amazon.com is one of the most-praised companies in the United States, due to its ability to recruit a large number of employees. An article written by Taylor Soper on October 22nd 2015 published on the GeekWire, the author was analyzing the employment rate’s huge growth, stating that Amazon has reached 222,400 employees, out of which 39,000 were hired during the last quarter only. A little after three months, Clare McGrane, author at the same online publication, was writing an article called The United States of Amazon: interactive mad shows tech giant’s growing national footprint on the 25th of February 2016, in which she analyzed Amazon’s employment rate once again, by looking at the number of employees in each state.

As these articles were able to show, the Human Resources of Amazon.com hired more than 90,000 full-time employees in its 50 fulfillment centers and 20 sorting facilities in the country until October 2015. More than that, Amazon.com hires up to 100,000 seasonal employees that does not count in its employee numbers. Although it came as a surprise for many retailers, the company hired 15,000 Kiva robots by the end of 2014, declaring, however, that humans will remain key to the process.

These facts show that Amazon.com focuses on maintaining a well-organized structure and on providing large numbers of jobs across the United States. From an organizational and human resources perspective, the company is a model worth following.

Amazon’s Human Resource professionals are hands-on basic with the main intentions for them to act diplomatically and strategically in order to boost its fullest potential to their employee engagement and development. Such portrayals are extremely focused on personal touch and customer centered, and they require their HR leaders to partner heavily with procedures to support their comrades. being genuine and approachable is key to them, Amazon's HR superiors keep their employees satisfied and engaged and in this manner their fulfillment centers can stay the most creative and inventive while also maintaining cleverness. Jeff Bezos states: digital = cash flow = low prices.

Customers say that A trusted relationship is a competitive asset.

Still at number 1 on the Customer Service charts “I’m happy to report that Amazon has been rated #1 in the National Retail Federation Customers’ Choice Awards”. As the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon has been a driving force behind the e-commerce movement and changing standards for customer service excellence. Some of the words consumers used in their reasons to nominate Amazon for Customers’ Choice included “efficient,” “fast,” “reliable,” “no hassle,” “easy,” and of course, “free shipping.”

Note that these terms differ vastly from those that nominated Nordstrom, THE purveyor of traditional customer service: “experience,” “friendly,” “personal,” and “knowledgeable.”

For the Ninth Consecutive Year, Customers Rank Amazon #1 in Customer Satisfaction. Thank you! -Amazon

In 1998 the company pledged that they would always start with the customers and their requirements. They said: it is our number one priority that our customers are to be met with their needs. Amazon’s obsession over the needs of their customer has been one of the main reasoning for their huge success.

The company has identified it as their framework and that they would go to any extent in order to have pleased customers. As a company, amazon’s target market is well virtually anyone! It’s that versatile.

What it is now known is that amazon stands by their simple key factors that leads to their endless customer satisfaction AKA: The amazon cycle: low prices, large selection and convenience.

2.3 The Amazon.com Product Portfolio

Despite the fact that Amazon.com started out modestly, it grew into a company with a rich product portfolio. Tom Robinson, the author of Jeff Bezos: Amazon.com Architect, mentioned the current CEO’s desire to create a new retailing opportunity by building this online store. He states that by September 1995, two months after its launch, Amazon was selling $20,000 worth of books every week.

Amazon “specializes” in an endless amount of services that one desires to purchase from home without searching the “world” for their product. To be exact amazon went from books to 16 categories offered now by them. The list goes like this: books, DVD’s, CD’s, consoles, games, to beauty products and clothing.

The variations are continuous, which clearly show the company’s diversification and the appealing part is the prices offered by amazon. Promoted and keeping their word amazon is known to be cheaper than any of its competitors. Higher margin, lowest prices.

With a worldwide access people are just minutes away from purchasing. Why look when it’s just a click away said one faithful customer. They say e-commerce is easier and carefree than real, live commerce, especially with amazon. The way they “roll” is just as simple as it sounds plain and easy 1) select, 2) order and 3) receive.

Today, Amazon.com has a product portfolio that contains categories from books to automotive parts and industrial supplies. Due to its partnerships with online shops from across the world, it includes products from almost all market fields, but does not own these products. However, the company has built a variety of Amazon branded products.

The product categories that can be found on the e-commerce platform are:

Amazon Video

Digital and Prime Music

Appstore for Android

Amazon Photos and Drive

Kindle E-readers & Books

Fire Tablets

Fire TV

Echo & Alexa

Books and Audible

Movies, Music & Games

Electronics & Computers

Home, Garden & Tools

Beauty, Health & Groceries

Toys, Kids & Baby

Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry

Sports & Outdoors

Automotive & Industrial

Handmade

Home Services

Credit & Payment Products

Except for being an online intermediary for a variety of national and international sellers, Amazon.com has also built its own products, born from the desire to bring innovation to the hands of the public. Therefore, in time, it developed products like:

Kindle E-readers

Fire Tablets

Amazon Fire TVs

Amazon Echo

Amazon Dash Button

Amazon also developed services that are renowned internationally. Table 4 shows Amazon’s unique services.

Table 4 – Products and Services developed by Amazon.com

2.4 The Economic and Financial Situation

Amazon.com’s financial sheets are public documents, as it is also listed in the stock market. Its economic and financial situations influence the decisions of numerous stakeholders, as well as those of potential investors.

Therefore, it is important to observe its evolution from the past years, in order to determine the company’s success and the results of its marketing campaign.

Table 5 – Statement of operations Amazon.com for 2013, 2014, 2015

According to the financial sheets, the gross profit of the company at the end of 2013 were of $20,271 million, comparing to 2012, when the gross profit was of $15,122 million.

The annual report that the company published at the end of 2013 showed total assets of 40,159 million dollars and a total of long-term liabilities of 7,433 million dollars. Both the assets and liabilities increased by comparison to 2012, when the company had total assets of 32,555 million dollars and total long-term liabilities of 5,361 million dollars.

In 2014, Amazon’s balance sheets showed total assets of $54,505 million and total long-term obligations of $15,675 million. The company had net sales of $55,469 million in North America and $33,519 million internationally.

In 2015, Amazon.com declared that its assets had a value of $65,444 million, while its total liabilities were of $18,161 million. Also, the statement of operations that it published at the end of the year showed that a total amount in net sales of $107,006 million. Table 7 shows similar figures as those presented for 2013 and 2014.

Image 1 – Amazon’s long term growth

As seen in the tables above, the financial situation of Amazon.com keeps improving every year, although along with the value of its assets, the value of its liabilities increases as well.

2.5 Analysis of Amazon’s marketing environment

At first, Jeff Bezos’ marketing campaigns were based on nothing more than the word-of-mouth and the promotion of customer service. He described the company as obsessively, compulsively, anal-retentively focused on customer service. However, the founder appealed to Wall Street insiders in order to get investment from major market players.

Competitiveness was an extremely important factor for him, which is why he focused on promoting the company values with every occasion. Also, this is the main reason why he was constantly looking to innovate its products and services.

Nowadays, although Amazon.com does not reveal its marketing strategy to the wide public, some of its main marketing channels are mentioned in its annual reports. For example, in the annual report from 2015, statements that reflect the company’s marketing strategy and focus can be observed, as seen below:

We are guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. In each of our segments, we serve our primary customer sets, consisting of consumers, sellers, developers, enterprises, and content creators. In addition, we provide services, such as advertising services and co-branded credit card agreements.

Also, Amazon states that:

We serve consumers through our retail websites and focus on selection, price, and convenience. We design our websites to enable millions of unique products to be sold by us and by third parties across dozens of product categories. Customers access our websites directly and through our mobile websites and apps.

As mentioned earlier in the paper, competition plays an important role in the decision-making process of Amazon.com. In the same annual report, it is stated that:

Our businesses are rapidly evolving and intensely competitive, and we have many competitors in different industries, including retail, e-commerce services, digital content and electronic devices, and web and infrastructure computing services. Some of our current and potential competitors have greater resources, longer histories, more customers, and/or greater brand recognition. They may secure better terms from vendors, adopt more aggressive pricing, and devote more resources to technology, infrastructure, fulfilment, and marketing.

The same material shows that Amazon.com has invested $5,254 million in marketing by the end of 2015. With regards to the investment in the on-going marketing campaigns, the company states that the increase in marketing costs in absolute dollars in 2015, 2014 and 2013, compared to the comparable prior year periods, is primarily due to increased spending on online marketing channels, as well as payroll and related expenses.

Moreover, the report includes information about its marketing channels. The company states that it directs its customers to its websites primarily through a number of targeted online marketing channels, such as the Associates program, sponsored search, portal advertising, email marketing campaigns, direct sales and other initiatives.

As it can be easily observed, Amazon’s marketing environment is built around macro and micro factors, such as the market competitiveness, customer’s demands, technology, innovation and environmental factors. Also, the organizational structure and the collaborations within departments that form the micro-environment of the company, such as operations, finance or technology, play an important role in Amazon’s potential to lead successful marketing campaigns.

2.5.1 Amazon’s micro-environment factors

The competitive advantage that Amazon.com has comparing to other online retailers are its expertise in technology, the one-click system that it developed in the first years of existence, the economies of scale and the company culture. The brand name and reputation of this company were mainly obtained due to the company’s ability to offer its customers extensive product offerings, low prices, shipping and delivery advantages and manufacturing of own devices at the lowest rates.

Amazon sends the same message to its shareholders as it did since 1997, stating that the fundamental management and decision-making approach is based on the following ideas:

Focus relentlessly on our customers.

Make bold investment decisions in light of long-term leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations. There is more innovation ahead of us than behind us, and to that end, we are committed to extending our leadership in e-commerce in a way that benefits customers and therefore, inherently, investors – you can't do one without the other. Some of these bold investments will pay off, others will not, but we will have learned a valuable lesson in either case.

Focus on cash. When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we'll take the cash flows.

Work hard to spend wisely and maintain our lean culture. We understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost-conscious culture.

Focus on hiring and retaining versatile and talented employees, and weight their compensation to significant stock ownership rather than cash. We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like, and therefore must actually be, an owner.

Therefore, it is easy to withdraw the conclusion that the primary way of marketing the benefits of the company was by remaining anchored in its beliefs and philosophy and offering the public exactly what it had promoted. Using this strategy, Amazon.com grew to be one of the most trustworthy e-commerce platforms in the world, gaining more and more customers, regardless of the competition.

2.5.2 Macro-environment factors

There are plenty of macro-environment factors that Amazon.com takes into consideration when planning its marketing campaigns. Although its representatives do not reveal the marketing techniques they use in order to drive the public’s attention to their store, there are conclusions that can be drawn from its actions.

First of all, Amazon grew to be an international company that operates in 13 countries outside of the United States: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom. Having given this international context, it is obvious that the international, economy, politics, social and cultural factors play an important role in their strategy. Although the headquarters of the company are located in Seattle, Washington, its staff operates across the United States and the 13 other countries actively. Therefore, the prices, shopping style, customization and business strategy must be adapted to local demands.

The use of Internet and the consumers’ access to the advertisements placed by Amazon online and offline is a major factor that can influence the website’s traffic in some countries, as well as its sales volumes.

Sophisticated infrastructure systems are also required in order for Amazon to be able to penetrate a certain market, as it promises its customers a variety of benefits, such as fast shipping and short turnaround times. However, this objective cannot be fulfilled in the presence of a poor infrastructure.

The competition is another factor that has the power to reflect on Amazon’s power to penetrate a certain market. Despite of its credibility and reputation, every country or state has physical-world retailers, as well as other e-commerce platforms and companies that sell both online and offline, which could detain the consumers’ trust.

2.6 Characteristics of the United States online market

Amazon.com operates in all of the countries that were mentioned above, but it obtains the majority of its profits from its activity in the North American market. According to Statista, a statistics portal, the revenue in the e-commerce market amounts to $313,980.5 million in 2016, so far.

Between 2016 and 2020, the e-commerce market is expected to increase annually by 7.66%, resulting in more than $4.2 billion in market volume by 2020. With regards to the user penetration rate, the 65.13% recorded in 2016 is expected to grow to 70.18% by 2020 (189.4 million online users).

The difference between the United States market and other markets in which Amazon.com operates is obvious, as the US market has a volume of over $3.1 billion. The next most powerful market in the e-commerce field is China, with $3 billion, Japan, with $85 million, the United Kingdom with $74 million and Germany with $61 million.

The key market indicators used to determine these results are the population, the household income, the penetration of the Internet and the penetration of the smartphones.

Users in the United States within the age group of 25-34 are the best buyers of the market, followed by those between 16-24 years old and 35-44 years old, which is an advantage for the US e-commerce market, giving the fact that the individuals in these age groups have the highest salaries in the country.

2.7 SWOT Analysis of Amazon.com

Amazon.com managed to grow fast in a competitive market and strives to provide its customers with high-quality services and devices that satisfy their needs. However, Amazon’s strengths are sometimes shadowed by its weaknesses, which is why a SWOT analysis of the online retailer can offer a better perspective over its selling potential.

Table 6 – SWOT Analysis of Amazon.com

3. Characteristics of Amazon’s promotional strategy

3.1 Mission Statement and general company objectives

In 1998, Amazon was revealing its business strategy and objectives, stating that this company’s goal is to become the best place to buy, find and discover any product or service available online. At that time, Amazon’s main objective was to continue to enhance and broaden its brand, customer base and electronic commerce expertise with the goal of creating customers’ preferred online shopping destination, in the United States and around the world.

Later on, the CEO, Jeff Bezos, affirmed that the company’s mission is to leverage technology and the expertise of the invaluable employees to provide customers with the best shopping experience on the Internet. His vision was to be Earth’s most customer centric company and to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.

The values that helped the company promote its products and services were the customer obsession, the innovation, the bias for action, the ownership, the high hiring bar and the frugality.

3.2 Amazon’s promotion strategy

As stated in the AMZN 10-K Form, the company employs various means of advertising, which consist primarily of online advertising, including through the Associates program, sponsored search, portal advertising, e-mail campaigns, and other initiatives.

The Associates program directs customers to Amazon’s websites by enabling independent websites to make millions of products available to their audiences with fulfilment performed by the company or third parties. In return, the company pays commissions to participants in the Associates program for click-through customer referrals and customer referrals resulting in product sales, subject to the terms of the specific commission agreement.

Renouncing profits and abiding slim borders while drafting expansion and customer practice has been the big picture regarding Jeff Bezos's approach. A constant focus has been to eliminate competitors through the use of the lowest prices. Also, making other firms their associates by making them come in as a part of the Amazon team. Basically, keeping the enemy closer by bringing them onto your marked territory. Whether it’s fair game or not, ultimately this strategic approach defines Amazon for what it is now.

Amazon’s of both direct and indirect competitors are numerous

Direct: Target, Walmart and Overstock. These three specialize mainly in extended variations of products (like Amazon). Then we have Barns & Noble (who have marked their territory when it mainly comes to books). Inevitably we now have Apple and Samsung (with iPad’s / tablets) these battle against amazon’s Kindle. This is a constant battle between the brands due to the fact that physical copies of books have dropped and the purchase of e-books has increased drastically.

Website wise we have eBay. And in the media department we have Netflix and obviously Apple’s ITunes with whom amazon’s neck in neck when it comes to the electronic purchase of music, movies, TV shows and of course e-books and apps.

Now it comes down to indirect competitors: starting with the one in the top chart and that is Google. With Google being the ultimate search engine! It’s where consumers can find what they want wherever they want it. Any desired wish can be “Google” and the customer’s need fulfilled. In contrast to Amazon, truth be told, Google stands on a much, much higher pedestal then Amazon. However, Google does not ensure a hundred percent guarantee nor satisfaction when in search of one’s desire. In this case, Amazon exposes its strong suits and it’s not so perfect side.

Amazon services are numerous, starting by selling damaged items (categorized as Used) to brand new, each having their own review and product description. Surely through all the customer feedback and product reviews positive and negative evaluations are enclosed. Initially when it comes down to neglecting the bad feeds, amazon declines that possibility. They never take down the bad ones because they say that they want to expose customer choices and feedback. Furthermore, Amazon has an endless extension. This includes many ecommerce stores which have associated themselves with amazon. So basically they are amazon’s 3rd party sellers. Independent book stores claim and blame amazon (and any top charting book selling website) for their downfall that inevitably leads to them shutting down for good and going out of business. Digital gets blamed for just about everything these days

However, there are competitors who like to think that they can overshadow amazon. They believe it’s just a matter of time in order to see Amazon downfall. Like for example start-up companies: Lee Hnetinka the CEO and founder of New York based start-up company WunWun claims that his company diminishes Amazon in numerous manners:

WunWun is an application that allows customers to buy goods from various local stores, then delivering them in a one-hour tops time frame for free. In this manner the founder and CEO Hnetinka makes the plea that being able to function without warehouses and also without inventory, makes his company much more proficient than Amazon.

And then we have the big known companies such as Google. They are the ones who have jacked up their embodiment of paid product inventory list. A catalogue of this manner, exhibits products exactly into Google’s search engine. So ultimately, Amazon versus Google turns to be one of the most neglected but extremely significant and crucial active competition when it comes to technology.

Basically, Google makes its money when people do commercial searches for products. As Amazon grows in power and ubiquity, consumers are going straight to Amazon.com to do searches for stuff instead of Google. To fight back, Google has tried to improve its shopping results. As these results improve, Amazon is hurt. – Google

Amazon has an endless amount of systems, more in particular the main focus now comes to the market/ submarket process:

1) select product category/ subcategory,

2) determine brands to consider and then

3) select brand to buy

They claim that nowadays online is a shopping trend including the now trendy “PC’s” AKA the tablets. Carry them anywhere, anytime. The key factors that still maintain Amazon’s immense success include:

1) strength of products variations

2) customer friendly consolidation

3) easily from small to large scales

4) exploits affiliate and distribution

5) capitalization on existing communication systems and finally

6) they pride themselves on using universal shopping behaviours and mentalities to simplify customer experience.

Jeff Bezos has created two simple standards to live by called The simple sauce and the other called The primary drives for growth. Amazon’s simple sauce is identified by the public to be the central reason for where they are today and Bezos created it by focusing on simplicity that renders greatness. The sauce is made out of thre plain steps:

customer obsession

teams that are not large in groups and ultimately

expose customer choices, meaning show the customer what he/she is really buying by relinquishing any type of illusion whatsoever.

The second one abides of the four essential keys to full growth.

1) Being product focus

2) Customer focus

3) Technology focus

4) Distribution focus

Therefore, the promotional strategy that Amazon.com is built on focuses on just a few elements: customer service, innovation, technology and competition.

3.3 Promotion campaigns undertaken by the company

Amazon.com has undertaken promotion campaigns for a wide variety of products and services. Gadgets such as the e-book reader Kindle were promoted internationally and they have become popular in a very short period of time after its launch. Amazon Marketplace and AWS were also extremely valuable products that Amazon has promoted.

Another relevant example is the promotion of Prime, on which Amazon focused intensively for a short period of time, in order to provide customers in the United States with an innovative service that would help them receive their products faster and more efficiently. Prime was promoted using all of the channels that were mentioned above, especially paid advertising.

As stated in the Annual Report of 2015, Amazon’s leader wanted it to be such a good value, you would be irresponsible not to be a member. The company has grown Prime two-day delivery selection from 1 million items to over 30 million, added Sunday Delivery, and introduced Free Same-Day Delivery on hundreds of thousands of products for customers in more than 35 cities around the world. It added music, photo storage, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and streaming films and TV.

Today, Prime Now, a service that will be discussed widely during the fourth chapter, offers members one-hour delivery on an important set of selection, and was launched only 111 days after it was proposed. A small team built a customer-facing app, secured a location for an urban warehouse, determined which 25,000 items to sell, got those items stocked, recruited and on-boarded new staff, tested, iterated, designed new software for internal use – both a warehouse management system and a driver-facing app – and launched in time for the holidays. Just 15 months after that first city launch, Prime Now is serving members in more than 30 cities around the world.

Prime Video offers exclusives from some of the world’s most passionate storytellers. Amazon affirmed that they wanted brilliant creators like Jill Soloway, Jason Schwartzman and Spike Lee to take risks and push boundaries and that their original series have already earned more than 120 nominations and won nearly 60 awards, including Golden Globe and Emmy awards. Many of these are stories that might never have been told in the traditional linear programming model. In the pipeline and coming soon are new series and movies from creators like Jeremy Clarkson, David E.Kelley, Woody Allen and Kenneth Lonergan.

At the end of the statement regarding the Prime Now promotional campaign, Amazon states that Prime has become an all-you-can-eat, physical-digital hybrid that members enjoy.

In the same report, Jeff Bezos informs that it wants to be a large company that’s also an invention machine and to combine the extraordinary customer-serving capabilities that are enabled by size with the speed of movement, nimbleness, and risk acceptance mentality normally associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.

4. Online marketing campaign of Amazon Prime formulation

4.1 Campaign objectives

Amazon Prime is a service that was launched in February 2005. Its main objective was to transform the way Amazon buyers and sellers received and shipped their products. The company called it an all-you-can-eat express shipping membership program.

The program was not available for all the products on the website, but on approximately one million of them. Three main objectives were identified for this marketing campaign:

To speed things up offering two-day shipping instead of 4 to 6 business days

To make the two-day shipping predictable and guaranteed

To make it unlimited with an annual membership

4.2 Identifying and describing the target audience

The target audience of this marketing campaign included individuals that belonged to the 25-34 and 35-44 group age, who ordered constantly from Amazon.com or had business accounts on the e-commerce platforms. Also, it targeted small and large shop owners that had an ongoing partnership with Amazon, as they would have wanted to deliver their merchandise faster to their customers and build powerful bonds with them.

4.3 Description of the campaign

The marketing campaign of Amazon Prime was mainly formed of online paid advertising and on-site banners. The campaign was more aggressive in the beginning, but the company continues to invest in promoting this service, although it had a great success even from the first days. The on-site banner redirected users to a landing page where more information about the service was available.

The campaign includes important elements such as a call-to-action (Look for Prime), promotional plans, such as the ones that can be seen in Image 1 and a 30-day trial that encourages Amazon members to try the new services without having to pay for it.

Image 1 – Example of Amazon Prime Membership

The main advantages that were promoted during the campaign were the following:

The ability to ship products in two days for free

The ability to access video streaming at no additional cost

The ability to access over a million songs and thousands of playlists and stations

Free unlimited photo storage

Early access to select Amazon Lightning Deals

Over 800 000 free eBooks

During the campaign, the target audience was encouraged to look for the Prime symbol, that could be also found in the website’s shopping filters. Therefore, customers could easily select the products that had the Prime logo on them and add them to their carts.

In Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom the service was launched in 2007, while in France was launched in 2008. Also, it was launched in Italy in 2011 and in Canada in 2013. In 2015, it celebrated 10 years of existence and announced the Amazon Prime Day, during which feature deals for Prime members were offered. Jeff Bezos stated that the first ever Prime Day surpassed his expectations, as an impressive number of members tried the service, incomparable to that of any other day in the history of Amazon Prime. The orders increased by %266 worldwide that day.

4.7 Measurement of campaign effectiveness

The data regarding the company’s budget and means of promotion is extremely limited at this time, as Amazon.com did not make such information public. Although the effectiveness of this long-term marketing campaign cannot be measured by me, as analytical tools and access to the website’s panel would be required, the annual report from 2015 shows that the numbers are continuously growing.

Image 2 – Age Distribution of Amazon’s US Customers, 2014

Source: Business Insider

Jeff Bezos declared that Amazon Prime membership fees are allocated between product sales and service sales and amortized over the life of the membership according to the estimated delivery of services.

Image 3 – Amazon Prime Member Expenditure

Source: Statista

A report that was built by the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners showed that Amazon Prime grew by about 10 million households in 2015, reaching a total of 41 million households. Prime members pay $99 per year for benefits that include free two-day shipping, along with access to Amazon’s streaming video and music services, plus other content and services.

CIRP estimates that Amazon had about 54 million Prime members as of the end of 2015, a 35% gain from the 40 million estimated members at the end of 2014. The company says about half of those new members signed up for Prime in the 2015 holiday period. CIRP bases its estimates on surveys of 500 US-based Amazon customers who bought from Amazon.com between October and December of 2015.

The online publication, Fortune, has published a story titled Inside Amazon Prime, accompanied by a video interview with Greg Greely, during which the main insights in the Amazon Prime campaign were discussed. As expected, it had a great success and Fortune reporter JP Mangalindan managed to gather important data regarding the results of Amazon Prime’s marketing campaign. He stated that Prime has turned out to be a crucial tool for acquiring customers for Amazon, helping it become the dominant e-commerce company it is now and a threat to all retailers. If Amazon’s cutthroat pricing reels in shoppers initially, Prime keeps them hooked.

At the end of 2015, in the annual report, the CEO discussed the company’s revenue, saying that the Sales of Amazon Prime memberships are also considered arrangements with multiple deliverables, including shipping benefits, Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Photos, and access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. The revenue related to the deliverables is amortized over the life of the membership based on the estimated delivery of services. Amazon Prime membership fees are allocated between product sales and service sales. Costs to deliver Amazon Prime benefits are recognized as cost of sales as incurred. As we add more benefits to the Prime membership, we will update the method of determining the estimated selling prices of each element as well as the allocation of Prime membership fees.

An IPSOS national study showed significant statistical data about the market penetration of Amazon Prime. The study included 1005 Americans, from July 17th until July 20th 2015. The results showed that 74% of the Americans were aware of Amazon Prime Day, 81% of them were aware of Amazon Prime ads, 1 out of 5 Americans purchased during the event because of the advertising and 3 out of 5 subscribers purchased during the event because they were exposed to ads.

According to IPSOS, 53% of the millennials made a purchase, while only 40% of people aged 18-34, 35% of people with kids, 26% of full-time employed and 18% of all Americans bought something during Amazon Prime Day.

The radio and the Internet were the two main channels used for promoting this event that brought the best results. The smallest results were brought by magazines, newspapers and television.

With regards to the costs, the television advertising costed Amazon $177,000 per awareness point, while the radio advertising costed it $100,000 per awareness point.

The study’s conclusions are the following:

Advertising drove awareness for Amazon Prime Day

Radio has the highest concentration of advertising awareness among 18- to 34-year-olds — the engine of Prime Day purchases

The greatest purchases occurred among Millennials, households with children, and those with a full-time job – the profile of the American radio listener

Conclusions

Amazon.com is the best example of e-commerce platform in the past 20 years and one of the best models to follow by any business whose goal is to target an international audience. Although it started small and did not generate profit during the first years, Amazon grew into a huge company with over 240 000 employees across the world. This was possible due to its founder’s visions and desire to expand the market into a different dimension: online.

Its mission, values and philosophy from which the company started remained the same. Its leaders focused on bringing to the market a different perspective over the customer focus, obsessing about providing the best customer services and the lowest prices in this field of activity.

Amazon.com’s evolution and the fact that it became an inspirational model for all small and large companies that wanted to take their businesses online, showed that every business needs to be present in the online environment. The retail colossus has set enormous standards for its staff and customers, as well as for its partners and suppliers, that any other e-commerce platform that promotes less is meant to fail in today’s market.

The innovation and environmental science played an important role during this company’s evolution and it will continue to be an essential element in the decision-making process of investors and shareholders.

In my opinion, Amazon.com is a path finder that always strives to find the best solutions for its customers. Its great support department and its prompt customer service department make it difficult to equal in the online retail market.

From my perspective, the hypothesis that I started from in the Introduction of this thesis has been demonstrated, as no trustworthy, reputable retailer or any business whatsoever can survive today’s competition without being present in the online environment, either by presenting its products in an online catalog, by building an online store or simply providing information about the company’s core values and mission.

Without online advertising and a vision that would facilitate the shopping process, bringing together sellers and buyers from different parts of the world, Amazon.com would have been just another bookshop with almost no chance of ever obtaining real profit.

In today’s technological and digital context, the online presence is a crucial element for any business that wishes to connect with its public. The conclusions of this thesis resume to the fact that the consumer is king in today’s commercial process and its demands must not only be satisfied, but they must be exceeded. When the consumer is positively surprised, their reaction is usually surprising for the marketer, as seen in the studies that I presented in this paper. Also, the marketing campaign of any business must be undertaken using online channels such as Social Media, paid advertising or referral marketing.

My recommendation for future expansion of Amazon.com is the penetration of Eastern European markets, where the economic potential is increasingly growing and the work force is flexible and highly adaptable.