Literature Review
This report will cover various aspects of usage of digital social media. Digital media strategies are trending form of promotional and marketing tools. On the other hand, users of digital social media have been increased rapidly in past few years. Thus, organizations have shifted their interest towards digital platforms of marketing and promotion as these mediums are capable enough to cover large part of the target market at once. This report will focus over the functionalities of Amazon Inc. which is one of the largest online retailers across the globe. Amazon’s digital social media practices will be discussed. Along with this, literature review on digital social media will also be discussed in this report in relevance with the online retailers. Further, report will aim to determine Amazon’s primary competitors and their digital social media practices so that the gap could be identified between Amazon’s and its competitors’ digital social media practices. Next part of the report will include discussion of the organization and their digital social media strategies will also be discussed. This will help to determine the scope of improvement as per the conducted analysis. On the basis of this analysis, appropriate digital social media practices will be implemented in order to enhance organizational performance.
Digital Social Media
In today’s technology driven world, social marketing websites have acquired an effective place where retailers are easily approaching to its target audience. Retailers are also extending their marketing campaigns which are ultimately enhancing organizational effectiveness. According to Lamberton & Stephen (2016), social marketing is a connection between consumers and brands as company could get in touch with the consumers directly. With the emergence of social media, tools for communication between an organization and consumers have been changed greatly; therefore, it is necessary for the business enterprises to determine the effective ways through which available social media tools could be utilised in an optimum manner. Business plan is a blue print of organizational functionalities which includes plans, policies, strategies and a marketing plan for the objective of promoting organizational products and services. Before evaluation of social media marketing channels, organizations were using traditional methods of marketing such as television, radio, newspaper, bill boards, etc. With the effect of social media marketing has generated consistent and positive outcomes for the organization and it has been the major part of marketing as well as business plan. Social media is being used from the introduction of a new business or new product in new or in existing market to its brand promotion, marketing, and to the development of an effective position amongst the target audience (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015).
Effective Use of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has been an effective medium in terms of attainment of competitive advantage; although, it is necessary to set all the marketing channels in appropriate hierarchical manner through which positive outcomes could be attained. Further, it is also necessary to evaluate the marketing conditions of a particular market so that appropriate marketing tool could be implemented. For example, Amazon Inc. is planning to reach to the rural areas and to spread awareness amongst the rural areas regarding the concept of online shopping as well as to educate them with the advantages of online shopping, organization requires to implement their plan with traditional marketing channels such as television, radio, newspaper, etc. because users of social media users are limited in rural areas. Before using social media tool as a marketing strategy, it is must for the retailer to understand every aspect of it. As per Tiago & Veríssimo (2014), social media as “group of internet based applications which are built on the ideological and technological foundations and these platforms allow the creation and exchange of user generated content”. Digital social media is a part of digital marketing strategy and it has been in trend in the last couple of years. These platforms are mainly used by new generation and the famous social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. New generation people have shifted towards online platforms for shopping, communicating as well as for socialising. Thus, social marketing has acquired an effective place in digital marketing plan.
(Source: Reliablesoft.net, 2018)
Above figure shows the number of active users on social media platforms and amongst the all platforms, Facebook has the highest number of active users across the globe. According to a research in approximately 7.6 billion people’s world, every fourth person i.e. approximately 2.25 billion people are using or had ever used Facebook. Amongst the number of online marketing channels, social media marketing is one of the most effective and efficient tool of marketing and promotion (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2016).
Stephen (2016) have researched about the impact of social media platforms and they have found that utilising social media tools for promoting online as well as offline products is useful as it a cheap medium in comparison to the traditional methods of marketing channels and these platforms have huge reachability in comparison to the other modes of marketing and promotional channels. Digital social media is fast way to spread the word, trending method in marketing and promotional campaigns, most appropriate method to interact with customers directly which ultimately helps the organization to analyse their target consumers’ demands and wants through which the desired goals could easily be accomplished (Leeflang, Verhoef, Dahlström & Freundt, 2014).
Digital Social Media and Amazon Inc.
(Source: reliablesoft.net, 2018)
Although, social media marketing tools does not have much effectiveness in comparison to other digital marketing tools such as search engines like Google, Bing, etc. But still, it is the most trending method through which organization could easily approach to their target audience along with successful marketing and promotion of their products and services.
Amazon Inc. is one of the biggest online retailers across the globe and with millions of products in almost category; organization has acquired an effective brand image in the target audience’s mind-sets. Amazon’s marketing and promotional campaigns also include social media marketing on the top of the list (Kannan, 2017). Amazon uses almost social media marketing tools such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. and all these tools have their own significance along with the unique set of target audience. Concerning to this, organization has been able to accomplish its goals and objectives with regards to the promotion of their products and services in the global market which ultimately results in generating demand amongst the target audience (Sunstein, 2018).
Amazon Inc. is a multinational corporation engaged in various activities such as media, electronics and other merchandise. In all these segments, organization has established its effective place along with acquiring sufficient market share. It is the largest e-commerce company in terms of market capitalisation and revenues and with millions of products and services, organization has developed its effective place in the customer’s mind-sets along with gaining competitive advantage in the target market (Ritala, Golnam & Wegmann, 2014).
Primary competitors of Amazon in terms of online retailing are Alibaba Group and eBay. Both the companies are performing significantly well in the international market. Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a Chinese multinational e-commerce and retailing company founded in 1999. Alibaba is also engaged in various sectors through which their brand value is quite huge in comparison to both the companies; thus, it is names as world’s most admired companies by Fortune. Alibaba operates in more than 200 countries and this has made the company to stand on the peak position as the largest retailer across the globe. Alibaba’s overall online sales and profitability surpassed all US retailers’ sales and profits which include eBay, Amazon, and Walmart (Chang & Allen, 2016).
Apart from Alibaba Group, eBay is another multinational online retailing brand founded in 1995 and serving in both consumer to consumer, and in business consumer market. As of 2011, company was operating in approximately 30 countries. Functionalities of eBay are quite unique and different from both Amazon and Alibaba Group as it provides a platform to both sellers as well as to buyers in terms of buying and selling wide variety of goods and services across the globe. With regards to this, organization does not charge any kind of fee from its buyers but sellers needs to pay for availing the services of eBay (Miguel & Casado, 2016).
Primary Competitors of Amazon Inc.
Alibaba Group offers wholesale platform to small buyers seeking for fast shipment of bulk quantities of goods on global site. Along with this, organization also offers business management software and internet infrastructure services to consumers. In terms of promoting its products and services, Alibaba Group expands its new markets by freebies. They offer freebies in order to attract clients so that they could use Alibaba as an online marketing platform. Apart from this, organization also promotes its products and services through internet promotional strategies such as public relations, discounts on certain items on special occasions like festivals, direct marketing, and sponsoring events and by direct marketing. These strategies are main elements of organizational marketing campaign and these elements helps the organization to promote their products and services along with generating demand amongst them regarding their products and services (Vertical Web Media LLC., 2018).
Alibaba started Taobao mobile application as an independent platform for buyers to buy in bulk quantity. Along with this, organization is also concerned towards attracting young people and for the same, they mainly social features. In order to engage the customers with company, they have used social and entertainment features in their mobile application with the objective of generating demand amongst the customers. This strategy has helped the organization to engage customers on their application which resulted that on an average approximately 7 customer visits application for more than 25 minutes in a day while customers spend 9 minutes on Amazon. Organizational marketing campaign also includes digital social media strategies and these platforms are the primary sources for attracting young people. Company has spent billions of dollars for purchasing video website Youku Tudou, UC Web browser and an effective social media platform like Twitter i.e. Weibo for enhancing customers’ interaction with company. Organization has also invested $200 million in Snapchat promotions and it is helping organization to engage young users with the company (Jia, Kenney, Mattila & Seppala, 2018).
eBay, Amazon and Alibaba mainly operates through internet and with regards to this, it is necessary for them to use platforms for marketing and promotion which are linked with internet in order to gain positive results. Although, these companies integrate both offline and online marketing channels in order to gain higher outcomes but online mediums carry higher weightage in comparison to the offline marketing channels. With regards to this, eBay’s digital social media platforms are quite similar to the Amazon as both the companies are from US and there approximately, 76% people uses social media and 89% of businesses saw increased market exposure due to effective utilisation of social media platforms. Apart from this, 71% of consumers refer social media to make purchase from the online platforms (eBay Inc., 2018).
Digital Social Media Strategies of Amazon’s Competitors
(Source: eBay Inc., 2018).
With regards to this, eBay mainly use Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and YouTube to approach to the target customer segments. Along with social media strategies, organization also uses integrated marketing communication to stay connected with their target markets. This coordinates promotional elements, personnel selling, publicity, public relations, direct marketing, and sales promotion. In order to promote organizational products and services, organization uses digital marketing, online marketing and web marketing as the main elements for their promotional and marketing campaign. Their campaign also includes email marketing and wireless marketing channels.
Digital social media marketing is the main component of internet market and this helps the organization to spread awareness amongst the target audience effectively along with gaining positive outcomes. Every new update or information is quickly shared through social media channels related to the new offers, discounts on special occasions like festivals, introduction of new products and services, etc. amongst the target audience. This also helps the organization to develop an effective relationship with the customers which ultimately helps in developing reliability amongst the customers for the organization. Apart from this, main advantage of using digital social media channels for the objective of marketing and promotion is that these platforms are cost effective and higher result oriented. In a very low cost, organization could easily transact with large number of customers at one time which generates positive outcomes for the organization such as generating demand amongst customers, spreading awareness amongst the customers, etc. (Matthews, 2017).
Amazon Inc. is an online retailer; although, organization has also started opening certain brick-and-mortar stores. It was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and its headquarters is situated in Seattle, Washington. Company has acquired leading position in the global market in terms of revenues and market capitalisation. Company stands after Alibaba Group in terms of total sales. Initially, organization was started as an online bookstore and later on company diversified its product offerings by selling MP3, audiobooks, software, video games, electronics, furniture, apparel, toys, jewellery, etc. Now company has its production of certain electronic items such as Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Echo and Fire TV. Amazon is now one of the largest providers of cloud infrastructure services across the globe. Few years back, Amazon has also started selling low-end-products as “AmazonBasics” (Amazon Inc., 2018).
It operates in more than 188 countries across the globe and it has 12 registered offices in different countries. Along with this, company also operates with separate websites in different countries like for United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Canada, Japan, Spain, Italy, Australia, China, India, etc. In 2016, organization launched several other version of their German website in Dutch, Polish, and Turkish languages. Apart from this, organization also supports international shopping for some of its products in some countries where company is not yet present. Company became the most valuable retailer in the United States in terms of market capitalisation in 2015 after surpassing Walmart. Amazon is now the fourth most valuable public company across the globe after Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft. Along with this, organization becomes the largest internet retailer in the globe in terms of revenues after Walmart and the second largest employer in the United States. Recently in 2017, organization acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.4 billion and this has increased the organizational presence as brick-and-mortar retailer (Etail, 2018).
Conclusion
Amazon has 310 million active Amazon customer accounts across the globe and amongst these users, 90 million are Amazon Prime Users and their spending are on an average $1300 per year and rest 220 million users spend approximately $700 per year. Amazon has adopted unique and trending measures of digital social media in terms of promoting its products and services along with approaching to its customers in an effective manner. Along with this, it is essential for the organization to enhance its sales, revenues and the profitability. With regards to this, organization promotes its products and services through various social networks to mainly target young users as they prefer online shopping and they mostly refer social media for purchasing on internet platforms. With the help of social media marketing, organization is able to driver more sales than other online retailers (Järvinen & Karjaluoto, 2015). Some of the majorly used social media platforms by Amazon are:
- Facebook: Currently, Amazon has nearly 28.7 million likes on their Facebook page. Although, this figure looks incredible and the major reason behind their popularity is the approach adopted by them. Amazon is one of the largest customer centric company across the globe and they replies to every customer which are posted on their page. The replies from organization are clear, polite and with useful information through which customer’s queries could be resolved. Ultimately, it helps the organization to develop an effective and reliable image amongst the users (Mediakix, 2018).
- Twitter:Amazon is less concentrating on promotions through Twitter and now company use this platform to drive their 2.7 million followers on Twitter towards their other services such as Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Music. Along with this, company also use their Twitter handle for promoting company’s blog content and for spreading awareness amongst the users in relevance with innovations of the company and regarding other updates (Vugec, Spremi? & Bach, 2018).
- Pinterest: It is essentially extension for their primary online store. This social media site is used by significant number of users who browse for gathering sufficient information for purchasing ideas. In this site, when users find pin from Amazon, they could simply click on it and this will take the users towards Amazon’s website from which users could easily purchase their required products directly.
- Spark:Amazon has gone so far for promoting its products and services as well as to approach to larger segment of their target audience. With relevance to this, Amazon has recently launched its own Instagram/Pinterest-like Amazon Spark and it could be described as a unique social networking especially built for shopping. The primary purpose of this application is to create social engagement of consumers with the consumers which will directly lead them towards the product purchases (Chaffey, 2015).
- Final word:Amazon has always believed in engaging community even before the advent of social media platforms. But after extensive use of social media and with increasing users of social media, organization uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and now its own Amazon Spark to promote their products and services in the market along with facilitating communication, engagement and discovery amongst its millions of followers.
As Amazon is already promoting its products and services through various social media channels; thus, there are not much options left which could also be adopted for enhancing organizational social media practices. From the available options and from the analysis of company’s competitors’ social media practices, organization could adopt Tumblr and Snapchat in order to make expand their social media practices.
- Tumblr: It is a microblogging and social networking website introduced in 2007 by David Karp and it is now owned by Oath Inc. This platform allows its users to post multimedia and other content in short form as blog. Users could follow other user’s blog which is same alike Twitter. This site also provides option to bloggers to mark their account as private and after the second quarter of 2018, Tumblr hosts over 417.1 million blogs while in January 2016; website of Tumblr had only 555 million visitors (Karjaluoto, Mustonen & Ulkuniemi, 2015). With the help of this platform, Amazon could promote its products and services in the target market along with enhancing their approachability in the target market. The more options will company have, the more chances will be originated for organization in terms of enhancing their customer base. This social network website is not much popular as other social networking platforms and in June 2012; it featured its first major brand advertising campaign for Adidas and this helped Tumblr to gain more number of users and with regards to this, organization moved towards paid advertising on their site. With the help of this social networking site, Amazon would be able to target more consumers along with enhancing the customer engagement (Fuchs, 2018).
- Snapchat: It is another multimedia messaging application introduced in 2011 and now it is also one of great measures of social media platforms. Primary reason for which this social media marketing tool could be adopted is that company’s primary competitor i.e. Alibaba Group has recently invested $200 million on Snapchat’s promotions. This will help Amazon to compete with Alibaba Group in an effective manner along with enhancing customer engagement with the company. This application is bit unique from other social media platforms. Snapchat’s core principal concept is that messages and pictures are available only for short time before they become unapproachable. It has become a new and mobile-first direction for social media which significantly emphasis on user’s interaction with virtual stickers and augmented reality objects. As of February 2018; Snapchat had 187 million daily active users worldwide. Thus, Amazon could also adopt this social media practice for making their social media practices more effective (Ryan, 2016).
Conclusion
From the aforesaid discussion, it can be concluded that digital social media is an effective channel for company. It is utilised by an organisation to improve its performance and pull the attention of large number of customers. It can be summarised that there are different digital media practices used by Alibaba group such as Youku Tudou, UC Web browser and Snapchat and the social emdia practices used by eBay are quite similar to the Amazon’s digital social media practices. With regards to this, it could be said that online retailing mainly focuses on social media promotion in order to attract customer interaction so that they could be able to enhance their customer base, revenues and profitability. All these three companies are established in same era when internet was just introduced. Amazon has attained huge success from the utilisation of these platforms. Apart from this, Amazon’s customer centric approach has also helped the organization to develop their positive image in the international retailing industry. This report has evaluated various aspects and platforms of social media practises along with their utilisation for acquiring desired goals and objectives. The last part of the report has concluded additional digital social media practices for enhancing effectiveness of Amazon’s marketing and promotional campaigns.
References
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