MARKETING

Marketing is about communicating the value of a product, service or brand to customers

or consumers for the purpose of promoting or selling that product, service, or brand. The
oldest and perhaps simplest and most natural form of marketing is 'word of mouth'
(WOM) marketing, in which consumers convey their experiences of a product, service or
brand in their day-to-day communications with others. These communications can of
course be either positive or negative. In recent times, the internet has provided a platform
for mass, electronic WOM marketing (e-WOM), with consumers actively engaged in
review, rating on goods and services.

In for-profit enterprise the main purpose of marketing is to increase product sales and
therefore the profits of the company. In the case of nonprofit marketing, the aim is to
increase the take-up of the organization's services by its consumers or clients.
Governments often employ social marketing to communicate messages with a social
purpose, such as a public health or safety message, to citizens. In for-profit enterprise
marketing often acts as a support for the sales team by propagating the message and
information to the desired target audience.

Marketing techniques include choosing target markets through market analysis and
market segmentation, as well as understanding consumer behavior and advertising a
product's value to the customer.

Marketing satisfies these needs and wants through the development of exchange
processes and the building of long-term relationships. Marketing can be considered a
marriage of art and applied science (such as behavioural sciences) and makes use of
information technology. Marketing is applied in enterprise and organisations via
marketing management techniques.

Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was proposed by professor E. Jerome McCarthy in the 1960s. It
consists of four basic elements called the "four P's". Product is the first P representing the
actual Product. Price represents the process of determining the value of a product. Place
represents the variables of getting the product to the consumer such as distribution
channels, market coverage and movement organization. The last P stands for Promotion
which is the process of reaching the target market and convincing them to buy the
product.

Marketing Strategy

The field of marketing strategy considers the total marketing environment and its impacts
on a company or product or service. The emphasis is on "an in depth understanding of the
market environment, particularly the competitors and customers."

A given firm may offer numerous products or services to a marketplace, spanning

numerous and sometimes wholly unrelated industries. Accordingly, a plan is required in
order to effectively manage such products. Evidently, a company needs to weigh up and
ascertain how to utilize its finite resources. For example, a start-up car manufacturing
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firm would face little success should it attempt to rival Toyota, Ford, Nissan, Chevrolet,
or any other large global car maker. Moreover, a product may be reaching the end of its
life-cycle. Thus, the issue of divest, or a ceasing of production, may be made. Each
scenario requires a unique marketing strategy. Listed below are some prominent
marketing strategy models.

A marketing strategy differs from a marketing tactic in that a strategy looks at the longer
term view of the products, goods, or services being marketed. A tactic refers to a shorter
term view. Therefore, the mailing of a postcard or sales letter would be a tactic, but
changing marketing channels of distribution, changing the pricing, or promotional
elements used would be considered a strategic change.

A marketing strategy considers the resources a firm has, or is required to allocate in effort
to achieve an objective. Marketing Strategies include the process and planning in which a
firm may be expected to achieve their company goals, in which usually involves an effort
to increase revenues or assets, through a series of milestones or benchmarks of business
and promotional activities. Marketing strategy is the fundamental goal of increasing sales
and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing strategy includes all basic,
short-term, and long-term activities in the field of marketing that deal with the analysis of
the strategic initial situation of a company and the formulation, evaluation and selection
of market-oriented strategies and therefore contribute to the goals of the company and its
marketing objectives.

AMAZON.COM

INTRODUCTION

Amazon.com, Inc. is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company

with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the
United States. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling
DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, software,
video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys and jewelry. The company also
produces consumer electronicsnotably, Amazon Kindle e-book readers, Fire tablets,
Fire TV and Fire Phoneand is the world's largest provider of cloud infrastructure
services (IaaS). Amazon also sells certain low-end products like USB cables under its inhouse brand AmazonBasics.

Amazon has separate retail websites for United States, United Kingdom & Ireland,
France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China,
India and Mexico. Amazon also offers international shipping to certain other countries
for some of its products. In 2011, it professed an intention to launch its websites in
Poland and Sweden.

In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by
market capitalization. Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO, dreamed about books.
In 1994, he created Amazon.com, Inc., which he labeled as Earths Biggest Bookstore.
The ecommerce company went online in 1995 and soon expanded into other media,
including DVDs, VHS, CDs, MP3s, and eventually a wide range of other products,

including toys, electronics, furniture and apparel. As such, the tagline soon changed to
Earths Largest Selection. But books were only the beginning of Bezos up-and-coming
enterprise.

Amazon.com went public in 1997. In the first shareholder letter, Bezos penned the
fundamental foundation for Amazon.coms success: Start with customers, and work
backwards Listen to customers, but dont just listen to customers also invent on their
behalf Obsess over customers. This policy was backed by a startling business
philosophy Bezos planned on operating at a loss for 4-5 years. It was not until 2001 that
Amazon.com posted a net profit at a minuscule one-cent per share. Yet, despite its bizarre
business strategy, Amazon.com claimed over 1.4 million customers after only two years
of being online.

Now, 45 million satisfied customers shop at Amazon.com for everything from books
(most popular) to fashion apparel to fine jewelry to Christmas toys. It has one of the most
recognized brand names in the world and garners an estimated 50% of its sales from
overseas consumers. Surviving the dot-com bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s,
Amazon weathered the e-storms and now thrives in the retail marketplace, challenging
vending giants like Wal-Mart and Target. Focused on technological innovation and
centered on customer fulfillment, Amazon.com proceeds into the next decade with a
profit firmly in one hand, and the capacity to blow it out of the water in the other hand.

 HISTORY

The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called his "regret
minimization framework," which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for not
participating sooner in the Internet business boom during that time. In 1994, Bezos left
his employment as vice-president of D. E. Shaw & Co., a Wall Street firm, and moved to
Seattle. He began to work on a business plan for what would eventually become
Amazon.com.

Jeff Bezos incorporated the company as "Cadabra" on July 5, 1994.Bezos changed the
name to Amazon a year later after a lawyer misheard its original name as "cadaver".The
company went online as Amazon.com in 1995.

Bezos selected the name Amazon by looking through the dictionary, and settled on
"Amazon" because it was a place that was "exotic and different" just as he planned for his
store to be; the Amazon river, he noted was by far the "biggest" river in the world, and he
planned to make his store the biggest in the world. Bezos placed a premium on his head
start in building a brand, telling a reporter, "There's nothing about our model that can't be
copied over time. But you know, McDonald's got copied. And it still built a huge,
multibillion-dollar company. A lot of it comes down to the brand name. Brand names are
more important online than they are in the physical world. Additionally, a name
beginning with "A" was preferential due to the probability it would occur at the top of
any list that was alphabetized.

After reading a report about the future of the Internet which projected annual Web
commerce growth at 2,300%, Bezos created a list of 20 products which could be
marketed online. He narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising
products which included: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos,
and books. Bezos finally decided that his new business would sell books online, due to
the large world-wide demand for literature, the low price points for books, along with the
huge number of titles available in print. Amazon was originally founded in Bezos' garage
in Bellevue, Washington.

The company began as an online bookstore, an idea spurred off with discussion with John
Ingram of Ingram Book (now called Ingram Content Group), along with Keyur Patel who
still holds a stake in Amazon.In the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50
states and over 45 countries. Within two months, Amazon's sales were up to
$20,000/week.While the largest brick and mortar bookstores and mail order catalogs
might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could "carry" several times more, since it
would have an almost unlimited virtual (not actual) warehouse: those of the actual
product makers/suppliers.

Since June 19, 2000, Amazon's logotype has featured a curved arrow leading from A to
Z, representing that the company carries every product from A to Z, with the arrow
shaped like a smile.

Amazon was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington. In July 1995, the company
began service and sold its first book on Amazon.com: Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid
Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of
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Thought. In October 1995, the company announced itself to the public. In 1996, it was
reincorporated in Delaware. Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15,
1997, trading under the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN, at a price of
US$18.00 per share ($1.50 after three stock splits in the late 1990s).

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual; it did not expect to make a profit for four to
five years. This "slow" growth caused stockholders to complain about the company not
reaching profitability fast enough to justify investing in, or to even survive in the longterm. When the dot-com bubble burst at the start of the 21st century, destroying many ecompanies in the process, Amazon survived, and grew on past the bubble burst to become
a huge player in online sales. It finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001:
$5 million (i.e., 1 per share), on revenues of more than $1 billion. This profit margin,
though extremely modest, proved to skeptics that Bezos' unconventional business model
could succeed. In 1999, Time magazine named Bezos the Person of the Year, recognizing
the company's success in popularizing online shopping.

Barnes & Noble sued Amazon on May 12, 1997, alleging that Amazon's claim to be "the
world's largest bookstore" was false. Barnes and Noble asserted, "[It] isn't a bookstore at
all. It's a book broker." The suit was later settled out of court, and Amazon continued to
make the same claim." Walmart sued Amazon on October 16, 1998, alleging that
Amazon had stolen Walmart's trade secrets by hiring former Walmart executives.
Although this suit was also settled out of court, it caused Amazon to implement internal
restrictions and the reassignment of the former Walmart executives.

Products of Amazon

Acquisition by Amazon

BCG MATRIX

Marketing Strategies of Amazon

Amazon.com bases its marketing stratagem on six pillars.

1. It freely proffers products and services.

2. It uses a customer-friendly interface.
3. It scales easily from small to large.
4. It exploits its affiliates products and resources.
5. It uses existing communication systems.
6. It utilizes universal behaviors and mentalities.

Apart from this 6 pillars company also focuses and execute various other
strategies.Amazon.com relies on wily online ploys, strong partner relations and a constant
declaration of quality to market itself to the masses.
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Pay Per Click Advertising

Independent Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising has been the black sheep of Amazon.coms
marketing campaign. Their first PPC campaign attempt, spawned by their subsidiary
company A9, was the mediocre Clickriver, a middling PPC program that kept its head
above water but certainly swam no great channels. ProductAds replaced Clickriver in
August, 2008. It allows any web merchant to purchase PPC ads on Amazon.coms
website, leading some pundits to sardonically comment about Amazon.coms possible
pursuit of Googles web browsing crown.
Despite its potential interest in Googles regime, Amazon.com continues to purchase PPC
advertisements on Google to direct browsing customers to their websites. It buys space
on the left side of Googles search listing results, and pays a fee for each visitor to
Amazon.com who clicks on their sponsored link. This is typical of Amazon.coms
marketing strategy. No big banners, loud colors, or pristine men casually conversing
about Amazon.com on Americas tube just a demure advertisement on a web page
which, incidentally, may wordlessly lead thousands to Amazon.com

Continual Website Improvement

In todays stop-and-go internet traffic, an engaging, simple and easy-to-use website is a

necessity. Amazon.com expends millions of dollars and hundreds of man-hours to
identify problems, develop solutions, and further enhance the customers online
experience. Rob Enderle, head analyst at Enderle Group, states that Amazon.com has
always been very aggressive about analyzing its websites traffic to a high degree and

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making modifications based on what they see. This constant pursuit of perfection lead to
Jakob Nielsons prestigious ranking of Amazon.coms website usability. In a 2001 study
of 20 ecommerce sites, Amazon.com scored 65% higher than the average of the other
nineteen sites usability. It has a class-leading 99.9% mobile device availability, and
uploads several seconds faster than some of its competition. In one test, Amazon.com
uploaded in 2.4 seconds, while Target took nearly seven to finish. A navigable website
has consistently topped the priority charts of Amazon.com

Occasionally, management skirts customer relations and engages in under-the-table

investigations. Following several lawsuits from aggrieved loyal customers, who were
charged several dollars more for the same item than newcomers, Amazon.com
apologized for their underhanded differential pricing and discontinued the project.
However, Amazon.com continues to noiselessly experiment on their website, garnering
new information and augmenting their already popular website.

Offline Advertising

Martin McClanan, CEO of upscale gift cataloger Red Envelope, notes that TV and
billboard ads are roughly 10 times less effective when compared to direct or online
marketing when concerning customer acquisition costs. Amazon.com has observed
McClanans advice by reducing their offline marketing, especially during the holidays. In
1999, Amazon.com spent a gargantuan $80 million in offline advertisements during the
fourth quarter. A year later, during the same time span, the company splurged only fifty
million. Later years brought even more drastic cuts. According to Competitive Media
Reporting, Amazon.com frittered $36 million in offline advertising in 2008, but through
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August of 2009, the corporation had spent a meager $9.4 million. However, such cuts
have not negated Amazon.coms successes. It boasts the highest sells of any online
retailer during the holidays, especially during Black Friday. Amazon.coms strategy is
simple: since customers shop online, online is where they will be found.

Streamlined Ordering Process

Easy ordering is Amazon.coms Holy Grail. It eagerly develops technology to allow

customers to better navigate and explore their online retail mall. Jacob Lepley, in his
Amazon Marketing Strategy: Report One, notes that, When you visit amazon.com
you can use [it] to find just about any item on the market at an extremely low price.
Amazon.com has made it very simple for customers to purchase items with a simple click
of the mouse When you have everything you need, you make just one payment and
your orders are processed. This simple system is the same whether a customer purchases
directly from amazon.com or from one of the Associates.

Partnerships & Web Services

Amazon.com has shook hands and signed contracts with quite a few partners. Not only
does it operate many of its own websites, including A9 and CDNOW, but it hosts and
manages retail web sites for an array of other retailers, including Target, Sears Canada,
Bebe Stores, Timex Corporation and Marks & Spencer. It previously hosted Borders
bookstores websites, but that relationship ceased in 2008. For several years, Amazon.com
partnered with ToysRUs. Typing ToysRUs toys and similar query terms would also list

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Amazon.coms Toys & Games tab and products. As a result of litigation, however, this
partnership ended in 2006.
The simplicity that pervades Amazon.coms customer checkout extends to its partner
relations and services, of which there is no shortage. Amazon.com hosts no less than
twelve types of web services, including ecommerce, database, payment and billing, web
traffic, and computing. These web services many of which are free create a reliable,
scalable, and inexpensive computing platform which can revolutionize a small businesss
online presence. For instance, Amazon.coms ecommerce Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA)
program allows merchants to direct inventory to Amazons fulfillment centers, and after
products are purchased, Amazon.com will shoulder of the burden of packing and
shipping the merchants product. This frees the merchant from a complex ordering
process while allowing them control over their inventory.
Amazon.coms Fulfillment Web Service (FWS) adds to FBAs program. FWS lets
retailers embed FBA capabilities straight into their own sites, vastly enhancing their
business capabilities. With such services, why wouldnt an independent merchant want to
partner with Amazon.com?

Affiliate Marketing

Keeping in line with their fourth marketing pillar, Amazon.com sponsors a wildly
successful program called Affiliate Marketing. Using Amazon Web Services (AWS)
XML service, Associates (independent retailers) and third-party sellers agree to place
links on their websites to Amazon.com or to specific Amazon.com products. If the third-

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party Associates list their own products on Amazon.com, they may create links to those
products as well. Associates receive a fee for each visitor to Amazon.com that is directed
through their links, and receive extra commissions if the visitor buys a product. However,
at the beginning of 2009, Amazon.com decided to terminate PPC referral commissions to
its North American Associates for paid search traffic. In an email sent to all Associates,
Amazon.com said, After careful review of how we are investing our advertising
resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees that send users .
through keyword bidding and paid search. Time will tell how the North America
Associates program reacts to this change, but with AWS, it is unlikely that Amazon.com
will lose many of its Associates. To offset this change, ion August 19, 2006,
Amazon.com released aStore, which enables Associates to embed a subset of Amazon
products within, or linked from, another site.

How successful is this program? Nearly one million Associates have joined with
Amazon.com, and approximately 40% of its sales result from its Affiliate Marketing
program. At the conclusion of 2007, Amazon.com reported over 1.3 million sellers
through Amazon.coms World Wide Web sites. It continues to expand its Affiliate
program.

The Customers Opinions

Amazon.com does more than pay sycophantic lip service to its customers. Each product
is available for consumer reviews, and customers may rate products on a hierarchical
scale of 1-5 stars. Amazon.com members may also comment on other members reviews.
Some bemoan Amazon.coms consolidation of different versions of a product (e.g. DVD,
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VHS, BlueRay of a video) into a single product available for commentary. However, this
simplifies commentary and use accessibility, a preeminent concern for Amazon.com.

Email Marketing

For such a money-conscious company as Amazon.com, the lure of free and accessible email is one delectable temptation that is too potent to resist. Amazon.com engages in
permission marketing, where customers give the company permission to send them emails detailing product promotions. Seth Godin, Online Marketers, writes that By
talking to only volunteers, Permission Marketing guarantees that consumers pay more
attention to the marketing message. This strategy has acquired Amazon.com an
obsequious following. Melvin Ram, a satisfied Amazon.com customer, writes on
webdesigncompany.net that Looking at the e-mails Ive received from Amazon over the
last two years, I did not find a single e-mail that was irrelevant to me. Every single one
seemed like it was hand-picked for me based on my previous purchases.

Customer Service

Jeff Bezos would argue that customer service is not an addition to a corporate goal it is
the corporate goal. He calls Amazon.com, The most consumer-centric company. In a
lecture to Massachusetts Institute of Technology students, Bezos Tells of technological
advances that have not only enabled customers to find products, (and now at 28 million
items), enabled products to find customers [italics original]. Amazon.com focuses on the
customer experience. It wants customers to quickly access their hearts desire and obtain it
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without hassle. It has spent billions enhancing and developing its website interface and
customer relations.

There are numerous methods that Amazon.com uses to assist the customer. All customers
may send e-mails to Amazon.com requesting clarification about purchasing or other
information. Nor are all responses automated. Amazon.com engages many employees
simply to respond to customer issues by phone and e-mail.

Marketing Mix of Amazon

Product in the marketing mix of Amazon

Amazon is an international ecommerce company, using connections to the internet from

various gadgets such as phones and tablets, to allow its customers to browse and purchase
products immediately. These products are then delivered to the customer, using delivery
service companies. Amazon has built up a huge product base, and sells almost
everything, including:

Kindle

Books

DVDs

Mobile phones/tablets

Gaming consoles and games

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Clothes for men/women and children

Jewelry

Gardening equipment

Amazon initially started only with books and it is till date known as the highest book
seller in the world. This is why, Amazon also introduced Kindle. Kindly is an Ebook
reader from Amazon and it is the reason that the publishing market is having such a big
revolution of converting hard paper to digital ebooks because of he ease of reading by
Kindle. Due to success of Kindle, Amazon also introduced Kindly fire its own tablet pc.

Type in a search entry into a search engine for a specific product, and the chances are that
Amazon will stock what you need, and will be on the search list. As they continue to
grow, more and more products are added to their inventory. Once established into books,
Amazon quickly expanded to other products to maintain its presence in the market.
Where Ebay is know for techie products, Amazon is known for knowledgeable products.

Amazon continues to expand its product base, and in July 2014 it entered the smart phone
market, releasing its very own Fire Phone. The phone followed the release a month
earlier of Amazons very own set top box system Amazon Fire TV- which allows
streaming from various channels, as well as supporting speech commands when
searching.

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Place in the marketing mix of Amazon

In the recent past, sites such as indiaplaza and allshcoolstuff were forced to close due to
the lack of trust when buying goods online. However, the brand image of Amazon
enables it to have a far and wide presence and the bottom line of the company is enough
to enable massive R&D efforts to secure the website. Amazon has customer service bases
in many of the countries where it has an online presence, with most bases being located
in the different states of the USA. Amazon employees are friendly and relaxed.

Promotion in the marketing mix of Amazon

While Amazon has broadcast television commercials, these are mostly in the American
market. Amazon uses mainly web based advertising, and they make some use of
billboard and smaller methods of advertising. Amazon also uses advertising networks
online so that whenever you check something on amazon, you will see an ad for the same
thing somewhere else on some other website. Search engine marketing and getting the
companys name high up the search engines results is also a smart promotional strategy
by Amazon. The founder of Amazon had this in mind when creating the company,
deciding that it should start with an a.
In India, Amazon can be seen to rely on the best source of promotion there is word of
mouth. People telling others about the site, or mentioning it in a positive way is a sure
way to have a new future customer. However, there are several print media ads to make
their presence felt to the people. However, much more is needed in the promotions

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department from Amazon in India because the traffic of Amazon is being taken over fast
by Flipkart.

Price in the marketing mix of Amazon

Amazon is competitive with its prices, and has little ways of staying ahead of its market
contemporaries. For example, if you are looking to buy a book, Amazon offers you a new
copy, or a used copy as well, complete with pricing and condition. Another initiative is to
pay to have a premium account, ensuring faster deliveries. Amazon can also keep their
prices competitive due to their use of staff. Minimum numbers but well trained ensure
that consumers benefit from the lack of overheads, and the result is shown in the prices
online.

As more and more people can access broadband connections in India and get online, the
competition for the likes of Amazon.com will toughen. Amazons quiet entry into India
has seen some growth so far due to its brand image, and it will be looking to keep its
prices as low as possible to capture a slice of the growing market place. It faces tough
competition from the likes of eBay, flipkart and snapdeal.

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CRM OF AMAZON

Invest in customers first

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that.
Word of mouth is very powerful. Jeff Bezos
Amazon created a trusted, informative and loyal relationship with its customers.

Customer focus

We start with the customer and work backward.

Following a bottom-up approach, every decision at Amazon
is driven by the customers needs.

Frugality

Amazon is spending money on things that matter to

customers.
Frugality is part of the companys DNA: Amazon is
continually looking for ways to do things cost-effectively

Innovation

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other

constraints do.
Amazon is always looking for simple solutionsin order to
provide lower prices to its customer.

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VALUE CHAIN

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths

Weaknes
ses

Threats

Opportu
nities

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Strength global brand, focus on research and development, customer-centric vision

(Amazon.com has sufficient product and service differentiation to keep customers loyal)
, diverse products, diversification variety of products
Weaknesses - no physical presence, increasing variety of product could make many
problems, free delivery expensive strategy and make customer wait with days
Opportunities growth in movie download, social networking, growing in e-commerce
sales, growing in digital media, to increase pre-ordering of products, amazon could
innovate its platform, expanding to international markets
Threats - competitors can offer lower prices, Apple's iPad Mini is close to Kindle tablet.
e-commerce field has developed rapidly and it is highly competitive, companies such as
EBay, Wal-Mart and Google are a constant danger to the company.(both)

PESTEL ANALYSIS

Political - faster, better and more reliable internet access for the national users,
rapid expansion into new markets, Boston low taxes

Economical - Amazon may consider entering into India and China markets, more potential customers, Currency fluctuations , Economical tendencies.

Social - Increasing in online social networking, opportunities to increase market

share ethical and religious factors: In some cultures Internet use is not allowed
due to the fact that at some point contents may damage their cultural, ethical and
social believes. customer-centric, one store per customer

Technological - Innovation, Cloud, Kindle

Environmental - eco-packaging; warehouse near airports,

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Legal - Increases use of e-commerce for customers and businesses; copyright

management issues(external, environmental)

PORTERS FIVE FORCES MODEL

Bargaining power of Customers -is considered to be relatively high, since customers

are able to choose from different e-commerce services, which they can use even from
their mobile devices. Amazon does not have physical store and hence offers low prices
coupled with good customer service, it manages to use power of buyers to its own
advantage; switching from amazon.com products and services to those of the competence

Bargaining power of Suppliers - Suppliers have a higher power given that

Amazon.com cannot compete with suppliers. Suppliers are important and committed to
the company.

Competitive Rivalry - in e-commerce is very strong and intensive, since this field is
developing very rapidly. These might be - physical-world retailers, publishers, vendors,
distributors, manufacturers; other online e-commerce and mobile e-commerce site;
companies that provide e-commerce services, Amazon has many competitors. Amazon
offers such an extensive selection there are more companies competing with its products
and services. Amazon.coms direct competitors include Barnes and Noble.com and eBay.
Amazons Marketplace directly competes with auction web sites like eBay and Yahoo!

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Threat of substitute - The threat of substitutes for Amazon is high. With the exception
of its patented technology like 1-Click Ordering, there are quite a lot of alternatives to
Amazons products and services. Most companies have an online store in addition to
physical presence stores .These are book, music CDs from shops, or people could listen
radio and record a song. DVDs could be borrowed from library, or from IKEA. There
are a lot of substitutes for purchasing apparel from Amazon.com, as there are many high
street retailer location

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Threat of new entrants low. It will be impossible for the new company to reach the
magnitude of inventory and status that Amazon.com maintains. Amazon offers huge
amount of different product, its been on the market for many years; start-up company
cant compete and reach the level of Amazon, need lots of money for investments and
equipment. Amazon.com demonstrated very strong ability in detecting potential rivals,
which might pose threat to its business.; corporate level, int.

Post Marketing Effects

Amazon delivered more of the same in yesterdays earnings presentation as the company
continues to favor growth over profits. For years now, Amazons founder and CEO Jeff
Bezos has made a point of sacrificing short-term profits in favor of investments aimed at
long-term success, as our chart nicely illustrates.

One of these long-term investments is now bearing fruit, as the company revealed in
yesterdays earnings report: Amazon Web Services, the companys quickly growing
cloud storage division, generated $1.57 billion in revenue between January and March
and is on track to generate $1 billion in profits this year. On a revenue run rate of $6+
billion per year, Amazons cloud business is on par, if not bigger than those of industry
heavyweights such as IBM and Microsoft.

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Many investors and casual observers feel as if Amazon, like the river it was named for, is
a massive force, taking out everything in its path.
Recent history has shown us Amazons power. Its sales grew from $15 to $74 billion
from 20072013, a compound annual growth rate of 31%, and are projected to more than
double by 2018to $158 billion.

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This growth is a result of several factors, including services like Prime, new partnerships
with manufacturers and, perhaps most importantly, Amazons continued encroachment
on a far larger number of product categories like home improvement and grocery.
But according to 2014 research, Amazon will not be able to co-opt every category;
retailers in high-service categories are most likely to continue to thrive and could make
compelling investments. These include luxury and lifestyle retailers, furniture, specialty
sports equipmentespecially service-oriented products like bikes and skisand
automotive parts. On average, only 16% of 1,000 consumers surveyed said they
purchased anything in any one of these four categories on Amazon over the past six
months

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But even though this number is bigger than, say, current grocery penetration, we believe
Amazon will have trouble significantly growing share in these categories. Thats because
an average of 52% of consumers value service in these categories versus 29% in
categories that Amazon has won.
Similarly, only 2% of current purchasers said service was not meaningful in making
purchase decisionsregardless of channel in these Amazon-resistant categories,
compared to 12% for categories Amazon has already conquered.

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 Face Off
In the 90s we saw the dot com boom; do we perceive the e-commerce sector growth in
India with the same hype? Well, its booming for sure but what happens next is yet to be
seen. The intense competition in this space, especially among the top 3 players is good
for the consumers. Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, all of them have raised investments
or have commitments of $1 Billion or more. All 3 work on a marketplace model but have
some areas where they excel or differ from one another as to be able to grow rapidly in a
short span of time is the real aim. Flipkart follows an invite-only model to sign on sellers
which is more time-consuming. Note that Amazon doesn't sell, but it is a glorified
marketplace, for now; competing with Ebay in that space; whilst Flipkart has also
launched a similar service. Not to forget other promising entities like Yebhi, Quickr
which are also making a shout-in in other categories. In the classifieds sector the Indian
based Quickr is facing stiff competition from the OLX.

Initially, before Amazon entered the Indian market, the industry had several players
Flipkart, Myntra, Snapdeal, Let's Buy, India Times Shopping, Fashion and You and
others. With huge funding coming from foreign investors like Softbank to huge VCs
betting on them, the big fish, the piranhas started consolidating and eating up (acquiring)
smaller players like Let's Buy, Urban Touch etc.

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Present scenario in Amazon vs Flipkart vs Snapdeal

Market share of these sharks has increased considerably. The three major Players are
Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal. We cant envisage any new player emerging from the
mirage.

The sharks have now become bigger for the ocean as Flipkart acquired Myntra. Money is
being poured in at an alarming rate. As Flipkart announced a $1 billion financing,
Amazon decided to steal Filpkart's thunder by announcing that it would invest $2 billion
in its Indian entity. Tapping the maximum possible market is the key & obviously
demographics are a factor.
The final Scenario Only 2 major players left. Flipkart and Amazon have to survive this.
Snapdeal has an outside shot. Flipkart will go for an IPO in either US or Singapore (*
Flipkart files to become a public company). E-commerce will eventually drive towards

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profitability though, the smaller sharks will be eaten up by the bigger ones, either via
acquisitions - or we'd see plenty of mid-size sharks forming alliances.
The online commerce market in India has a very low penetration. We haven't even begun
to scorch the surface here in terms of potential. India does something around $3 billion a
year in Commerce; whilst China does something around $100+ billion major due to the
Jack Ma led Alibaba which recently got listed on NYSE .
As of today, the biggest player in this market is Flipkart, followed by the rest. Amazon
has covered a good percentage of market in a short time, but the race has just started &
Flipkarts already some paces ahead, for now. Flipkart's investors knew that the real ecommerce battle in India was not Flipkart versus Infibeam or Snapdeal. They knew even
before the launch of Amazon.in that the real contender was Amazon.
Amazon Indias sales are estimated at over $200 million (Rs 1,200 crore). It took flipkart
7 years to achieve the sales numbers, snapdeal expects to reach it this year while amazon
might clock Rs 6,000 crore by the end of March 2016.

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 Amazons Marketing Strategy Goes Against the Current

Fireproof

Amazons customer-first policy isnt always foolproof. The massive and unequivocal
failure of its Fire phone is evidence of that.
But the impact of such a failure on Amazon, perhaps because of the way the company is
set up and because of Bezos business philosophy, is different than it might be on another
company.
Amazons shares have not suffered much, if at all, from the Fires failure, wrote David
Streitfeld in the New York Times. Nor is the phone likely to dominate analysts
questions when Amazon releases its third-quarter earnings Thursday afternoon.
It is no mistake that Amazon.com is one of the longest-living online entities of the new
millennium.
The phone is in the past, and Amazon is above all a story about the future, about the
glorious moment when the e-commerce giant will sell everything, whether electronic or
digital, to everybody. And so the focus in the earnings report will be on Amazons huge
investments in trying to make that moment come true.

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Past failures will not be the last

Amazon.com has a great track record of innovating and reshaping the consumer
experience. While the company has used this success to deliver tremendous revenue
growth, it is unlikely that every venture will be a success. While it is a distant memory,
Pets.com was an Amazon.com-backed company that is often considered one of the
biggest flops of the dot-com bubble.

More recently, Amazon.com invested $175 million in Living Social to enter the daily
deal business. While Living Social still exists today, the outcome for Amazon.com was
not much better than Pets.com given that the company wrote off almost its entire
investment in Living Social in late 2012.

Each time Amazon.com expands its e-commerce empire, there's the risk of failure.
Management has taken years to fine tune the AmazonFresh grocery delivery concept to
avoid a repeat of the fate of Webvan, one of the most notable dot-com failures in history.
However, what does it mean to Amazon.com investors if grocery delivery service simply
cannot be attractive to consumers relative to brick-and-mortar competitors while also
being profitable?

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Competition will not sit still

While Amazon.com has accumulated significant market share thanks to a great customer
experience and disruptive e-commerce business model, it is naive to think that
competitors are not devising plans to combat Amazon.com's ongoing growth. Some of
these strategies will fail, like Best Buy's price-matching guarantee to combat
"showrooming" this holiday season, but others will have success.

With hundreds of retailers fighting for market share, there will be plenty of competition.
Wal-Mart is a great example; the company is testing same-day delivery including grocery
delivery services. If Wal-Mart can effectively match the services offered by
Amazon.com, Wal-Mart may have an advantage as e-commerce continues to evolve
given its existing scale. Target, grocery stores, pharmacies, and other retailers are also
working to find new ways to add the convenience of same-day delivery and in-store
pickup of online orders.

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