AmazonCom Essay Research Paper Marketing OutlineI Current — страница 3

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with a variety of sites is a good way to increase traffic into websites. Branching out is important while always keeping a target audience in mind. (Marye, How Did They Do It?) The second strategy is the use of promotional tools such as media and target advertising. Amazon.com runs very few television commercials compared to its competitors, Borders.com and Barnes & Noble. Amazon.com promotes itself by using radio, one of the oldest means of advertising. Radio, however, is still one of the most effective ways of advertising. The exposure is less than that of television but the quality is higher. Radio advertising is one of the least expensive forms of advertising. On the radio, Amazon advertises with popular syndicated shows like Rush Limbaugh and Larry King. These shows

would most likely have the type of listeners who would go to the Amazon.com website, look around and make a purchase. This practice of targeting certain shows to appeal to their audiences is called target advertising. Amazon also targets audiences that listen to classical and jazz music by advertising on those radio stations. The goal behind this strategy is to target the most intelligent audience; they are most likely regular readers. If they are regular readers then chances are they purchase books on a regular basis. (Marye, How Did They Do It?) Amazon.com has been successful with the strategies discussed above. There is one other form of advertising the company uses. This advertising has probably been its key to growth, exposure, and name branding. This form of advertising is

called affiliate programs and this is Amazon’s third strategy. These programs, sometimes called partner programs, are: “An agreement between a retailer and a sub – retailer whereby the retailer pays the sub a percentage of any sales generated by the traffic driven to the retailer’s site. Amazon has an affiliate program that smaller websites can sign up for. This allows these websites to place an ad or a link on Amazon’s website. The sales are tracked and anything purchased results in a commission for the smaller websites.” ClickQuick.com provided a description about the success of Amazon’s affiliate program: “One of the oldest affiliate referral income partners on the Internet and perhaps the largest with over 200,000 affiliates. It pays 15% on individually linked

books and 5% on all other items. You build a custom bookstore, music store, and video store on your site or simply put up a link to Amazon.com and get paid on all sales. Amazon does the customer service, shipping, and tracking of sales. The program has no hidden sales quotas or performance tiers.” Amazon.com has had so much success with the affiliate programs that it patented the technology. Part of the beauty of this technology is Amazon generates sales, name branding, and traffic through its website. There are so many Amazon banners, links, and logos throughout the Internet and Amazon is not paying any money for the advertising, except when it leads to a sale. (Marye, How Did They Do It?) Current Policies: To ensure customer safety and satisfaction, Amazon has instilled three

company policies throughout the organization. These policies concern privacy, pricing, and product returns. When a customer makes a purchase on Amazon.com, the company will ask for some personal information. This information is used to help personalize and improve further shopping experiences. Some of the gathered information includes name, address, phone number, social security number, credit card information, and driver’s license number. This information is used to improve the company’s communication with the customer. Information is automatically obtained every time customers interact with the company. Examples of this information are e – mail address, purchase history, products viewed by customers, and shops visited. E – mail communication is quickly established

between Amazon.com and the customer. It receives a confirmation when customers open e – mail from Amazon. It is an important part of business to obtain information about customers. Amazon.com does not sell this information to other companies. It is, however, shared with subsidiaries of Amazon.com. All information is protected on the website using various methods. The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encrypts information imputed into the computer so no one outside of Amazon can access information customers provide. When a credit card is used to pay for an order, only the last five digits are revealed in the order confirmation. Amazon does all of these things to protect its customer’s privacy. (Amazon.com Information), (Amazon.com Privacy), (Amazon.com Automatic) Many times what