History of Amazon and its advantages

Amazon is one of the largest online retail sectors. This helps in making the lives of the Australians easy by providing them with all the products that they would need for their day to purposes. It provides them with a large and wide variety of products like dresses, electronic gadgets, utensils and many other such items (Amazon.com.au 2018). There is a growing demand because they have been able to provide the customers with a wide range of products online. This indeed is one of the greatest advantages that the customers have received. They got a wide range of goods without taking up the pains of traveling to any brick and mortar stores. Just as there are two sides of the same coin, there are also some ups and downs that keep on coming in the path of this company. As they flourished in their business they made their business expansions in different parts of the country (Blut et al. 2015). One such is of their expansion is Australia (Amazon.com.au 2018). They have also faced many issues while expanding their business in Australia. So, they have to analyze the business and the problems so that they can find out the solution.

Amazon is originally an American based Commerce Company. This company is the largest retailer of the online products (Liu, Au and Choi 2014). So, it is understandable that in this modern scientific scenario this company is likely to become the first choice of the customers. This will save the customers from the wastage of time, energy and money that they need to spend while going to any physical store for making their purchases (Verma, Sharma and Sheth 2016). The other advantage that they give their customers is the availability of a wide variety of products like books, DVDs, electronics, apparels, furniture and other such things of daily use. They have a good distribution strategy as well.

They help in spreading happiness among the customers by developing themselves from time to time. They follow the innovative technology and make sure that they are able to satisfy their customers (Saeidi et al. 2015). They are not only an e-book provider but also they have developed themselves into the largest e-commerce site as well. So, it is understandable that they have been using the innovation strategy for developing themselves

Product- Amazon online site specializes in a large number of products. They make sure that the customers are getting all that they want. As a result of this, the chances of switching over to other alternative are much less. The electronic device is one of the products that they offer in large amounts. Some of the electronic products are TV, echo products within built Alexa, mobile phones and other such devices. They have also excelled in selling the cloud-based products which can be used for the production of content. Amazon Web Services also grabbed a good market share in the field of e-commerce sites.  

Challenges faced while expanding in Australia

Place- Initially Amazon had only the online stores. They did not concentrate on opening any brick and mortar stores. However, later on, they also started opening some physical stores as well. It has launched many physical bookstores and that proved to be a good success (Fisher, Gallino and Li 2017). They are also starting the centralized pickup system so that the students find it easier to pick up their orders from the desired location. This will also help in checking the shipping costs. They are in the process of testing and opening some online grocery store in Seattle.

Price-The price is seasonal in nature. The pricing strategy can be called cost leadership in nature. They try to beat their competitors by altering their prices from time to time (Chuang and Lin 2017). They try to give discounts on their products or offer their products at the low price as well. The pricing strategy also includes aspects like psychological pricing strategy, promotional pricing, and others. They also use the premium pricing strategy. They give 70 percent offer to the Kindle Direct Publishing companies and make their products available on the Kindle store.

Amazon Australia has been following the amalgamation or the hybrid product of cost leadership and business diversification. In other words, they have always been following the strategy of innovation so that they can keep their customers satisfied. They have a hierarchical organizational structure and they try to implement and make their employees follow the same for the successful business operation. They have been following the strategy of innovation as they want to offer a wide range of products to their customers and develop a customer loyalty and a brand loyalty. They also try to use the customer-centric approach so that they can take the feedback from their customers and improve themselves accordingly. They also try to improve their communication system both internally and externally. They try to communicate with their customers in order to take their feedback.

They also make sure that they are concentrating both on the online and offline stores as well. However, they are facing some challenges in Australia. They are not able to grand the attention of the potential customers as there are many other alternatives available to the customers. A good example is Walmart (Walmart.com 2018). Walmart can be considered as the biggest threat to Amazon. Walmart is trying to grab the largest market share in the retail market by providing with exclusive facilities to the customers (Han and Hyun 2015). They are about to launch their same-day delivery system which will satisfy the customers (Ulmer, Thomas and Mattfeld 2016). They are also to launch a locker system where the customers can order and also make payment online. They can collect the goods later from their desired location. Some of the other competitors are Snapdeal, Flipkart.

Product line, Place, and Price Strategy

In order to stay in the competition and move forward, Amazon has to follow many strategies. They have to provide customers’ with facilities that the customers would not find in other e-commerce sites. So, in order to attract the attention of the customers, they have to upgrade their quality. They need to adopt all the new technologies and the modern scientific approach. They have to check the cyber securities as well. As it mainly operates online there is a big threat. Customers often prefer shopping from physical stores in order to avoid the cyber frauds or the delay that they often have to face in case of online shopping (Benson, McAlaney and Frumkin 2018). Though they have tried to open the physical store for groceries they get only 3 percent buyers. So, they have to focus on quality and customer satisfaction (Ryan 2016). They need to make sure that they are not losing these 3 percent buyers. They have to increase the number of discounts and offers that they provide. Many shoe and electronics barns have their own site and offer better discounts. So, customers might switch over to these alternatives. In order to prevent this, Amazon has to pay due attention to their quality and customer service. They also have to work over their delivery system. The customers will never encourage delays in their products. So, they must try to increase the speed of their delivery system.

Conclusion

So, it can be concluded that Amazon is likely o face many problems in this competitive market. In order to stay in the competition, they have to work over their quality and their after sales services as well. They have to satisfy the customers by providing them premium quality products. They will also have to launch many discounts and offers that would attract the attention of the customers.

References

Amazon.com.au. (2018). Amazon.com.au: Shop online for Electronics, Apparel, Toys, Books, DVDs & more. [online] Available at: https://www.amazon.com.au/ [Accessed 21 Sep. 2018].

Benson, V., McAlaney, J. and Frumkin, L.A., 2018. Emerging Threats for the Human Element and Countermeasures in Current Cyber Security Landscape. In Psychological and Behavioral Examinations in Cyber Security (pp. 266-271). IGI Global.

Blut, M., Frennea, C.M., Mittal, V. and Mothersbaugh, D.L., 2015. How procedural, financial and relational switching costs affect customer satisfaction, repurchase intentions, and repurchase behavior: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 32(2), pp.226-229.

Chuang, S.H. and Lin, H.N., 2017. Performance implications of information-value offering in e-service systems: Examining the resource-based perspective and innovation strategy. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 26(1), pp.22-38.

Fisher, M., Gallino, S. and Li, J., 2017. Competition-based dynamic pricing in online retailing: A methodology validated with field experiments. Management Science, 64(6), pp.2496-2514.

Han, H. and Hyun, S.S., 2015. Customer retention in the medical tourism industry: Impact of quality, satisfaction, trust, and price reasonableness. Tourism Management, 46, pp.20-29.

Liu, C.Z., Au, Y.A. and Choi, H.S., 2014. Effects of freemium strategy in the mobile app market: An empirical study of google play. Journal of Management Information Systems, 31(3), pp.326-354.

Ryan, D., 2016. Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. Kogan Page Publishers.

Saeidi, S.P., Sofian, S., Saeidi, P., Saeidi, S.P. and Saaeidi, S.A., 2015. How does corporate social responsibility contribute to firm financial performance? The mediating role of competitive advantage, reputation, and customer satisfaction. Journal of business research, 68(2), pp.341-350.

Ulmer, M.W., Thomas, B.W. and Mattfeld, D.C., 2016. Preemptive depot returns for a dynamic same-day delivery problem. Technical Report, Technische UniversitÃ; t Braunschweig, pp.1-39.

Verma, V., Sharma, D. and Sheth, J., 2016. Does relationship marketing matter in online retailing? A meta-analytic approach. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(2), pp.206-217..

Walmart.com. (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.walmart.com/ [Accessed 21 Sep. 2018].