Introduction
Amazon Company started as an online bookselling company. Founded on July 5th 1994, by Jeff Bezos, the company has transformed over the years to fit the market demands. The company has invested much in internet-based business enterprises, which are forced to provide cloud computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence (AI) services and digital streaming (Turban et al., 2016). Amazon has been one of the most influential cultural and economic forces in global marketing. Due to its organizational structure, the company needs to improve as one of the big five American technological companies after Alphabet (Google), Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft. Over the years, the company has expanded into a retail store that provides manufacturing companies with a marketing service platform (Tarabasz, 2021). The company has launched Amazon web services (Cloud computing), Amazon Lab126, Zoox (autonomous vehicles), and other subsidies such as IMDb, Twitch, Ring and Whole Foods Market, which has enhanced the company’s efficiency. Moreover, its continuous innovation and creativity earned Amazon a reputation as a well-established multi-industry. The company has aggressively protected its reputation in the digital market by embracing technological innovation.
The development of online shopping and marketplace has enabled the company to have a great market share in emergency and development of the internet. In 2021, Amazon surprised Walmart as the largest retailer outside China by attaining the largest number of subscribers in the Amazon Prime plan. Additionally, the company is one of the largest private organizations in the United States. The company provides services to customers and manufacturers (Tarabasz, 2021). For instance, it aids manufacturing companies to reach customers through marketing their products on their platform, which has over 200 million subscribers as of the report issued in 2023. Moreover, the company distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming events through Amazon Music, Audible units and Twitch which are its publications.
Objectives and Structure of the Report
The report is divided into two sections, which evaluate and analyze the performance of Amazon Company in terms of its social media and digital marketing strategies. In part one of the reports, we will discuss and apply theories and frameworks of technological customer engagement as discussed in the module and suggest recommendations for improving the technological customer engagement strategy (Tarabasz, 2021). Moreover, in part two of the report, we will draw attention to critically reviewing the existing online customer journey using six categories of digital communication tools or media channels framework, suggest any recommendation for improving customer experience by utilizing the SOCTAC online marketing planning framework to discuss ways in which as a marketer the interventions strategies suggested would make the process quickly and enhance product sales. To get more insight into this, we will research and understand why Amazon customers may leave the website drawing examples from the SOCTAC framework. Finally, the report will outline things the company needs to improve on and how to get there by utilizing customer segments.
Part 1 Theories and Framework of Technological Customer Engagement Strategies of Amazon Company
The efficacy and productivity of any company depend on the level of customer engagement, which is the key attribute of the success and failures of the company. Customer engagement involves delivering an experience to customers during the transaction, thus creating a connection that aids in winning trust. Moreover, to gain more insight into customer engagement, we will explore the theory of social psychology, social network and social graph. Based on social psychology, the theory seeks to understand how consumers influence a company by buying certain brands. The company seeks to define its customers through the symbolic interaction with the products, the interaction structure and the cognitive approach of each product. However, in symbolic interactions, markets dive deeper into understanding the original ideas concerning social psychology and exploring how meaning is created and maintained within social interaction with the self as the basis for such interaction. Reviewing Amazon’s symbolic interaction strategies, the company has strong integrated marketing communication (Chaffey et al., 2019). For instance, the company allows users to have a personalized homepage with products related to their recent purchases. With the personalized homepage, the company can interact with its customers by sending out emails informing them of an existing products in the market and new items. The company’s big aspect is much featured in its public relations. Moreover, Amazon allows customers to post reviews of their products from their website, which creates a database that gives the company positive reviews and credible ads for the site. When new customers interact with such reviews, they gain more trust and confidence in the company, sometimes leading to referrals.
The structure of social psychology assumes that rational concerns drive social actors centred on maximizing rewards and minimizing punishments. In this theory, the level of interaction of customers aids in creating specific hypotheses for testing in experimental situations. Here, the level of social structure is determined by power, exchange and bargaining studies of the markets (Chaffey et al., 2019). Based on Humans’ argument on exchange studies, interactions can be better understood as exchange whereby actors engaged in interactions that brought specific benefits. In his quest to address the theory, the author finds an equilibrium between idea distribution between the sellers and buyers. As for our case, Amazon Company allows its customers to propose the price value of their selling commodities. During the binding process, the company comes up with the best possible price as suggested by customers and from their database, they can advise producers on the market prices. The action enables the company to create an equilibrium whereby manufacturers and buyers end up closing the deal with each side satisfied. “We direct our customers to our website primarily through several targeted online marketing channels, such as sponsored search, email marketing campaigns, and associated programs and portal advertising” (Chaffey et al., 2019). Based on the statement, the company aims to gain customer loyalty. Here, the company ensures that during the advertising, the target group gets the right message to the right shopper at the right time; this allows the company to enhance its efficiency despite the competitive environment.
The social network theory draws attention to the role of social relationships in transmitting information, channelling media or personal influence and behaviour change. Moreover, this model views the social relationship as nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors, while ties are the relationships of the actors within the network (Chaffey et al., 2019). That said, Amazon Company has, over the years, enhanced its relationship between producers and consumers. The company website allows individuals to join by creating their profiles through creating personal data. For instance, the company uses Spark to enable buyers to share ideas across all other social media platforms. However, the management controls the medial social platforms to ensure that they regulate the comments section. The objective of such a move is to control the bad reviews from customers, which may give new customers a bad attitude. Moreover, the Spark platform enables customers with similar interests to be divided into groups that create customer segments based on the customer’s purchase behaviour. The importance of customer segments in an organization is that markets have an easy time obtaining customer demographic data during advertising. The classification of customer segments aids Amazon in maintaining customer relationships based on the shipping experience and purchase behaviour of customers (Seybold, 2013). Additionally, through the active customer reviews columns founded by the company, the company can control the sales of a product through the behaviour study of customers. According to Willer and Markovsky, the social processes of a company are influenced by how actors are connected. However, the social interaction between manufacturers and customers through Amazon platforms benefits both sides. For instance, manufacturing companies can reduce their marketing expenses while customers get a one-time experience to negotiate products.
Suggested Recommendations for Improving the Technological Customer Engagement Strategies of Amazon Company
A company’s content management is a crucial key element of controlling technology customer engagement strategies. To control the level of interaction between Amazon and its shareholders, the organization will be able to control content management. However, to ensure that the process is successful, the company ensures that the content being released by the company is current, engaging, relevant and understandable (Chaffey et al., 2019). Moreover, to leave a permanent scar while involving the people, then the management must make a first impression the first time while they are advertising. This aids with winning customer trust, thus gaining trusted customers who at one time may end up referring their friends to the company. That said, Amazon Company can improve the speed at which they respond to a customer question on their platform through the use of artificial intelligence systems. With such a system, the company would be able to answer quick and real-time customer responses. For instance, once a customer gets an answer instantly, it enhances time-saving for both the company and customer, as well as reducing the chances of frustrations to customers while they are shopping (Seybold, 2013). With the installation of an artificial intelligence system, customers will deal with the support team and occasionally interact to enhance the shopping experience. During the whole communication process, the company will be able to understand and synthesize the customer’s needs, thus improving the negotiation strategies. Additionally, since AI mostly uses chatbots, its combination with human support would revolutionize the engagement terms, thus leaving the two sides satisfied after the purchase.
Amazon Company must adopt a flexible channel of choice regarding customer engagement with brands. This can be achieved if the company adopts multiple channels to its fold, allowing customers to access the business from anywhere and at any time. Amazon must enhance its creativity and innovation techniques with the right digital tools. That means that customers can access the company products from different channels at one point, and they can easily get quick responses. However, to achieve this, the company needs to adopt visual engagement tools such as video chat or co-browsing as one way to enhance engagement (Seybold, 2013). Moreover, Chatbots need to be used to automate common queries based on the customer shopping segments. At the same time, live chat can be leveraged to address support queries and sales which gives the company an upper hand in understanding the needs of the customer. That said, Amazon Company needs to use product personalization to enhance and create a seamless, personalized and unique experience with their customers whenever they shop with them. To ensure that this approach influences the organization’s customer engagement, then there is a need to ensure that the service approach is aligned with the customers’ needs and preferences. How do we achieve this? The company needs to examine customer care needs to understand the reasons for purchasing certain products. Based on the company archives, the company utilized past data to ensure that there will be individual treatment at every stage (O’Connor, 2013). The past data aids the organization in understanding the customer well, thus dividing them into groups based on their test and the quality of the products they are purchasing. To effectively work on this, Amazon must conduct customer surveys to know what customers expect from the business. Here the company will leverage analytics to get a good background of customer behaviour and then adopt a data-driven approach to evaluate the level of personalization.
Amazon Company needs to conduct customer sentiment analysis after launching a bland to collect customer feedback on the product. Since customer sentiments play a crucial role in determining the success and failure of the business, the company needs to ensure that positive reviews cover a large population (Denning, 2019). However, this raises another concern about the technology and proper system usage. The technology is used to evaluate the validity of customers’ emotions while exploring services and products. To analyze this effectively, the company needs to collect customer responses on different channels while also checking their feedback to get more insight into the clarity of their emotions. The company can also collect and gauge sentiments by adopting Applications Programming Interfaces (APIs) in social media and then enhance their engagement. In addition, Amazon needs real-time support to aid in customer engagement (O’Connor, 2013). Although AI voice search and Chabot have a great impact on customer engagement, it becomes important that human involvement enhances the chances of customer engagement in an organization. When it comes to solving complicated issues, it becomes evident that real-time interaction with customers enhances engagement. However, to achieve this, the Amazon support team needs to provide all the product information to customers through physical interaction, which also allows them to demonstrate o how the products are used. Here, the company needs to have multiple points of contact for customers so that it will communicate with them more quickly.
Critically Review the Existing Online Customer Journey and Customer Experience for Customers, Including a Review of the Digital Touchpoints Using the Six Categories of Digital Communications Tools or Media Channels Framework
During the past years of operation, Amazon Company has diversified its digital communication covering all social media platforms, thus enhancing its customer experience in stages of operation. For instance, based on the influence of the search engine marketing strategy that th company uses, customers can gain visibility of the search engine at any time to encourage click-through to a website where they display all their items. Here the techniques adopted are paid placement using pay-per-click and placement in the natural using search optimization where no charges for the click from the search engine. In a report issued by Harris Poll on the customer journey, Amazon was ranked the top brand in the world for its reputation. However, to understand more about how the company achieved this, we dive deeper into understanding measures laid down by the company in digital marketing (Meda, 2021). The company has been able to create a tremendous reputation in the Western markets due to its considerate measures. The company adopts portable measures that allow customers to access any information about the product they are about to perchance and give guidance. Additionally, Amazon has been involved in community participation and brand protection, which enlightens customers more about the health and safety of its products (O’Connor, 2013). Over the decays of operations, the company has been using Online PR to ensure that it creates awareness of the products and services they offer to the public. However, since the company is a retail shop, customer protection has been its key priority through creating and monitoring third-party policies. This has been achieved by maintaining electronic, physical and procedural safeguards in collection with storage, collection and disclosure of customer personal information.
While other retail shops rely on channels such as social media or, at times, organic search to put themselves into consideration, the company shows that a brand that truly commits to building positive sentiments and reputation. Despite the emergence of other retail shops creating stiff competition, Amazon remains the top brand due to its uniqueness in capturing customer experience in its marketing strategies (O’Connor, 2013). Additionally, the company evaluates their main assets, expectations and user experience as one of the ways to dominate customer experience. For instance, the launching of electric toothbrushes aided the company in creating thousands of product results, which are ranked by relevance due to their popularity in the marketing environment (Meda, 2021). To avoid confusion, products have clear descriptions of the features, quality and price. Moreover, the company ensures that there are no hidden charges while shipping that will course the target price of the products to increase more than the description. This has enabled the company to gain more customer trust, thus establishing third-party sellers. A good example of this is the establishment of Amazon Marketplace. In this digital tool, customers can negotiate the price of the products by sending their binds to the seller; thus, agreements are reached.
Amazon’s Effects on customer expectations
Based on the above figure, we get more insight into the effect of the organization’s sentiments based on the urge to enhance the customer experience journey. Amazon has created numerous online partnerships through sponsorships, co-branding, affiliation marketing and building links with other organizations to improve the customer journey; however, even though the collaborations aid with the procurement journey, Amazon has taken this to another level whereby company picks its partnership from different demographic locations to ensure that they get the cultural idea in that region, thus advice producers to embed such cultural values on their products to target such customers (Meda, 2021). Moreover, the company collaborates with other credible and innovative industries as one of the ways to share their visions.
Amazon Company uses display advertising, such as ad banners, to create brand awareness. The company uses Demand-Side-Platform (DSP) to create audio and videos. However, the company also uses Sponsored Display Ads as its unique marketing strategy that, despite aiming at improving the volume of sales, leave a scar on the brand. In addition, over the years, the company has been employing opt-in email marketing to increase its advertising outreach by sending spam mail to all its customers who have shopped retail (Kwarteng, 2020). The company uses house list emails and co-branded to request reviews of the product and the shopping experience. In this strategy, Amazon makes review update and use the comments to gain the trust of new customers (Gatti et al., 2020). When customers’ comments are revised and amendments made, then customers feel more attached to the company. That said, Amazon uses social media marketing strategies to gain popularity by monitoring and facilitating customer-to-customer interactions. This motivates customers to participate in all company factions through the web to encourage positive engagement between the company and the brands.
The company uses viral campaigns, audience participation and customer feedback to revolutionize the digital customer experience. For instance, the company’s Twitter feeds has been used in the past years to promote the company’s blog content (Kwarteng, 2020). Here, the company is able to collect advice aids from different individuals (Customers), thus creating a pool of ideas which they implement during their marketing strategy re-engineering.
Recommendations for Improving the Customer Experience
The methodology adopted in analyzing Amazon company is its SOSTAC methodology framework. The framework aids with coming up with concrete hypotheses for Amazon’s customer engagement journey and making necessary suggestions.
The company can enhance and impact customers more based on the above analyses of Amazon’s customer experience. Since the company has diversified its customer market experience in several channels, negligence on some websites may lead to greater negative impacts on the customer experience. For instance, when the company neglects actions on the third party from accessing customer’s personal data, then customers may end up leaving the website (Desai & Vidyapeeth, 2019). To solve this, Amazon needs to whop of website traffic, thus blocking customers from accessing the data privacy of customers.
Since Amazon uses AI and other digital media tools to enhance customer experience, then there must be a clear call to action. This means that the company must enhance its free consultation platforms either through emails or calls to allow customers to reach them at any time for queries. A clear call for action allows customers to feel appreciated, thus enhancing their shopping experience (Desai & Vidyapeeth, 2019). Moreover, the design of the web adopted must have feast features that attract the eyes. When a web is designed unprofessionally with poor quality images and dated fonts, customers tend to lose the urge to continue using such web, thus moving to those that are professionally designed. Despite the company’s popularity, the company needs to enhance customer value by promoting customer participation in branding and launching of the products. Here, Amazon markets need to understand the best ways to engage and cover its online audience. How can this be achieved? Amazon needs to adopt a clear call of action that captures customers’ needs and social-cultural values (Wind & Mahajan, 2002). For instance, since Amazon’s digital marketing platforms are loaded with a high customer population (over 579.5M) as of 2020, then the company needs to reduce page loading time (Deiss & Henneberry, 2020). The website traffic volume reduces the speed at which customers access the platform, thus making it less effective. To eradicate this, the company needs to adopt new integrated digital marketing systems that are not affected by the number of users at a given time.
After the purchase has been made, Amazon needs to customize the thank note page with more helpful content, such as the alternative products that are associated with that which the customer has perchance. This action would give customers more insight into the product they would try the next time they purchase, as well as allow the customer to know that the company offer other products besides that. The action would enhance customer engagement with the organization as they seek to know more about other products, thus reducing the chances of exiting the website (Turban et al., 2016). Moreover, to ensure that the ads generated by the support team are more effective, then the team must create more scannable contents that allow the customer to pick important phrases, thus reducing time wastage and feeling fatigued. This is achieved by ensuring readability of content which have credible craft images. Moreover, Amazon needs to add a call-to-action at the end of all its post to ensure and cultivate the validity of the response. Since the best time to ask customers to take action is after they have gone through the description content, then the company stands a high chance of adopting this method. Such actions give the customer more reasons to stay on the Amazon site as they constantly receive daily newsletters of the new products on the website and the improvement of other products. However, customers are able to know products that have discount offers before they go shopping, thus allowing them to enjoy the process. The company needs to adopt animated slide-in grabs, which Couse less disturbance to customers. For instance, this can be done using an opt-in builder, which allows the support team to scroll down the ads hence making it more flexible (Deiss & Henneberry, 2020). Additionally, the company needs to create engaging videos which demonstrate how the products are used. Product demonstration enhances chances of customer satisfaction because videos capture all the physical features of the products and services, which are hard to be captured in the world, thus giving a permanent impression. That said, the company needs to repurpose the text-based content into presentation videos, thus changing blogs to posts. However, through the use of an exit intent popup, the organization is able to remind the existing customers of the new products on the website, thus reducing chances of boredom (Deiss & Henneberry, 2020). Exit intent popups are more effective in attention-grabbing without disturbing the existence of new customers. The aim of this action for Amazon Company is to invite visitors to chat with the support team, offering an irresistible lead magnet in exchange for joining customer email and giving advice on the popular blogs post and how to take action.
Conclusion
Based on the above illustrations and analyses of Amazon’s digital customer engagement strategies, it is clear that digital tool has a great influence on digital marketing. Over the decays, the company has been able to adopt and reform its objective based on the needs of the customer as well as those of the company. However, the objective over time has led to the high reputation of the company. Amazon has invested much of its resources in creativity and innovation by adopting digital tools to enhance customer experience. For instance, the establishment of personalized blogs has enabled customers to capture the needs of such products in the market. Additionally, being a retail shop, the company has integrated health and safety measures by enlightening customers about their rights on their websites. This has forced suppliers to ensure that the products they make are healthy for human consumption. Through customer participation Amazon has invited customers to understand how the company operates, thus gaining more trust. Moreover, customer participation enhances teamwork between the company support team and the organization. That said, the company has chosen its digital social media platforms wisely that target different customers (Wind & Mahajan, 2002). For instance, with Instagram and Twitter with the majority of its customer popularity, the company had an influenced online shopping experience. However, over the years, the competition between these marketing platforms has changed with time, with Twitter emerging as the reading platform. The company’s exposure on the internet has enabled the company to synthesize more critically and make marketing predictions. Based on Amazon’s budgeting strategies, there has been a great change in social media’s influence on customer engagement. For instance, in 2022, the company used over 42.2 billion on digital marketing. This proves that since the company is an online shopping organization, then it strengthens its backbone more to ensure it reaches as many customers as possible. The funds are mostly used in social promotions, management tools, and online campaigns (Wind & Mahajan, 2002). However, the company resources are guaranteed by developing social media strategies which reinforce the enterprise’s objectives and visions. In addition, the company has invested much in research programs which enhance creativity and innovation. The online campaigns adopted share native content and others, thus capturing the social-cultural practices of communities. When it comes to content production, the company capture emotional and visual elements, which enhances customer engagement. In all this, it is true to say that Amazon Company. It’s a multi-store retail shop that uses social media and digital marketing to engage customer experience.
References
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