Amazon is a multinational company whose focus is artificial intelligence, digital streaming, cloud computing, and, most profoundly, e-commerce. It is classified as an online retailer in the technology industry where people have an interface to shop online for a variety of products that are shipped to their place of convenience. Generally, it is one of the largest and most popular online marketplaces; users can buy items directly from Amazon or third-party sellers, where orders are delivered using common courier services worldwide. Furthermore, it sells its own technology products, including Kindle Scribe and wireless chargers. Amazon has been doing well over the years and is still competitive in the global interface. It has experienced a high growth rate resulting from a larger market share, with the revenues increasing yearly. It has dominated online shopping, selling, and technological products, which it mostly sells through the social media marketing strategy.
E-commerce has helped many companies, including Amazon, as it provides channels to better promote and distribute their products. Sellers can effectively transfer relevant product information to potential buyers, thus reducing the searching costs and providing a wide variety of products in a single online marketplace. “The consumers can shop from anywhere, anytime” such that they do not waste time waiting for stores to open to make their purchases. Amazon helps save time and makes the process of selecting and making payments when shopping online quite fast. There are no brokers as middlemen who would make the consumers pay more, thus lower prices (cost reduction) at Amazon.com while saving travel time. Other advantages of social media advertising include a broad customer base, no reach limitations, quick responses, product and price comparison, customer flexibility, and affordable advertising and marketing (Husain, Ghufran, and Chaubey, 2016). Amazon is using the social media strategy to increase its brand awareness, seek customers’ preferences and reviews to ensure customer satisfaction, increase brand loyalty, in-depth analytics and gain market insights, and ensure cost efficiency.
Amazon does business with other businesses which have become its subsidiaries. These companies include Twitch, Whole Foods Market, IMDB, Amazon Robotics, Zappos, and Audible. Other clients include Netflix, Airbnb, and Yelp, which are charged for the features they subscribe to, the volume of usage, and the services they use under Amazon Web Services. Surprisingly, although it does its marketing through advertising through social media, it is also becoming a huge advertising play as well since it is the center of commerce for many businesses (Kandi, et al., 2022). Outside companies pay Amazon to sell their goods using its platform. Its headquarters are in Seattle, Washington; The Amazon Tower II.
The cost to sell on Amazon depends on an individual’s selling plan, product category, fulfillment strategy, and other variables. A seller can find the combo that suits them best and their goals since the options are flexible. The professional plan costs $39.99 per month, no matter the units sold, whereas an individual plan would cost $0.99 per unit sold. There are referral fees for each item sold depending on the product category, with most fees ranging between 8 and 15%. The fulfillment fees are the costs of shipping the orders depending on whether the one fulfills their orders or uses the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). Other costs a seller may incur include long-term storage fees, premium account services, and advertising. Statistics indicate that in 2020, Amazon had over 9.1 million sellers worldwide, with 2.3 million active sellers.
For consumers and businesses buying from Amazon, including wholesalers, the prices differ depending on the products ordered; Amazon sells over 12 million products and ships approximately 1.6 million packages daily. The direct Amazon-to-buyer sales approach is similar to other large online retailers, although it wins given its range of products. Customers can access garden supplies, toys, furniture, computers, DVDs, CDs, books, pet supplies, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, clothing, beauty supplies, and almost everything else they want to purchase. The company has millions of customers in the USA alone, with 112 million prime members.
The social media strategy has been the driver of Amazon’s success over the decade in marketing and incorporating the use of the internet for efficiency. Most profoundly is the use of Amazon’s reviews system, which drives customer engagement at every level and more sales than any other online merchants (Robischon, 2017). They had an online presence on the Facebook platform with over 29,623,292 people following and close to 30 million people liking their page. Going through the posts and comments, Amazon replies to many comments left on its posts as quickly as possible. The replies are also polite, with useful information and links. The approach adds the human touch as they address the individuals who comment on the posts, particularly by their first name. The company is quick to answer whenever a person asks something, and it also creates and contributes to conversations that are imperative for brand success in the platform (Venkatesan, 2017). Surprisingly a person may know their friends’ Amazon Wish lists and buy these products as gifts from Facebook connections, particularly for customers with Facebook-connected accounts. Amazon also highlights its products, discounts, and dare-related coupons as part of the information shared in the platform for customers to utilize, including festivals where one may purchase a gift online.
The company also uses other social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. It has over 4.8 million followers on Twitter, where it does its promotions and other additional services such as Amazon Music and Prime Video. It also promotes the company’s blog content and information on the innovations it undertakes and promotes its sellers, with the focus being content marketing. Although it does not make direct sales from the platform, it advertises and encourages customers to take up Prime membership. On the Pinterest platform, the company promotes bespoke lines, including Amazon style for women, Amazon Home Services, and Handmade at Amazon. The company places a pin that a customer clicks on and is directed to the Amazon page to purchase the product directly. Amazon uses Instagram to promote high-quality video and image content. It uses the Stories feature to attach swipe-up links and bespoke graphics. Amazon aims to tailor each platform’s content to ensure everything is interesting and diverse.
Amazon has improved its social media strategy after it launched Amazon Spark, which is its own Instagram or Pinterest-like platform which is a social network for shopping. It is within the Amazon app and allows for social engagement that has led to direct purchases of products. Upon signing in, a user is asked to identify their topics of interest from the extensive menu. The menu includes lifestyle areas such as fitness, art and design, travel, and the product categories where they receive images of these products and provide recommendations and comments while purchasing (Nagdive and Tugnayat, 2021). It makes direct sales, allows customer tracking and targeting, and generates data used in marketing and production as the company learns about customers’ aspirations and interests, which can be used for targeted ad campaigns.
Social media has helped Amazon as a customer service tool, given that there can be an instantaneous and open dialogue between the consumer and producer. Whenever questions, issues, and complaints are raised but their customers, the company resolves them and responds directly to them through social networking channels (Alshmrani, 2021). The company also faces backlash and controversy being a global corporation, as seen on the page “Criticism of Amazon.” These controversies include union disputes, environmental matters, and working conditions; thus, the company uses social media to deal with such controversies. It provides directives and stands on the social media network, including apologies whenever it admits a wrong.
Amazon Influencer Program is used as unofficial marketers of its online store within the influencer marketing industry. It is one of its most significant sources of revenue with joining the program indicated by the number of followers one has and their level of influence in the online interface as tastemakers and brand endorsement. The influencers are often part of the Amazon Associates program to help in successful sales. They create their own “storefront” on the Amazon platform with their recommended and favorite products and are given commissions when customers convert from the page. Recently Forbes indicated that “Amazon is looking more like a social media platform” in the bid to keep pace with apps like TikTok for views and marketing (Masters, 2022).
Amazon has not ignored social media but embraced it and ensured it reaps from the social media marketing strategy it continues to pursue when taking its e-commerce activities. A significant volume of sales is drawn from the social media presence, particularly during the holiday shopping season. The company’s net income stands at $33,364 million in 2021 compared to $21,331 million in 2020, indicating continued growth throughout the five years. However, Amazon can improve its social media strategy through market research and understanding who its audience is in a very specific manner without generalities, including their demographics and hobbies. It should also create content in different pillars, such as entertainment, promotion, and inspiration. There is also the need to look at what its competitors’ use, particularly Alibaba, which is using Twitter to promote its products and services, whereas Amazon does not have a massive presence on the platform. Amazon should use the platform to build relations with its customers and provide information on deals, special offers, and new products.
The business world has indicated that in this day and age, social media is a powerful tool in exploding any business, including the Amazon business, for the company and third parties. Companies need to harness the advantages of social media and e-commerce presence and use them to grow; Amazon using its e-commerce presence and social media strategy to grow the Amazon listing along with the brand image and engage with the target market. The social media strategy will help Amazon to leverage the advantages of being the best e-commerce business worldwide and improve its marketing strategies.
References
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Kandi, V., Balakrishnan, S., Sivakumar, G., & Vijayalakshmi, N. S. (2022). Impact of Social Media Marketing on Organizational Performance: A Case Study of Amazon India. ECS Transactions, 107(1), 12749.
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