The marketing operations of Amazon in Australia

Marketing is one of the crucial activities for every organization as it helps the organization to reach to its target audience with the help of marketing activities. Marketing is a broad concept and it includes various aspects such as promotion, advertisement, research of the target market, analysing consumer behaviour, demands and wants, market trends, etc. Thus, it is necessary for every organization to maintain its marketing operations in an effective manner through which appropriate and desired goals could easily be attained. In relation with the current scenario, marketing operations of the Amazon in Australia will be discussed in order to determine the marketing analysis and the nature of the marketing strategy of Amazon Australia since when the organization has begun its operations. Although, organization is a giant player in the e-commerce industry but in Australia, organization had faced several challenges due to existence of giant players like Woolworths, Wesfarmers, and other online retailing companies. Amazon entered into Australian market in November, 2013 and since then, organization has made its position as the first choice for its target audience and in relevance to this, organization is required to adopt appropriate and relevant strategies through which acquired position could be maintained along with enhancing its market share and customer base in the target market.

Amazon entered into Australian market in the end of 2013 through their traditional and primary strategy like Glocal. Amazon enters into every country with this strategy only and the motive of this strategy is “think local and go global”. With regards to this strategy, organization has expanded its business operations in various global parts and in Australia; organization tries to attract its target audience by providing them discount, offers and various other attractive options in order to enhance the organizational performance. Apart from this, organization opened their fulfilment centres (warehouses) at the harbour for storing, packing and delivering their products to Aussies without late (Amazon, 2018).

Marketing strategy is a long term and forward looking approach which includes numerous aspects and the fundamental goal of executing this approach is to gain competitive advantage. Marketing analyses comprises of three aspects i.e. analysing current situation, setting goals for future and analysing the strategies or methods which will be used for accomplishing the desired goals. In this manner, organization could easily perform its operations along with gaining the competitive advantage in the target market. Marketing strategy includes various aspects such as analysing target market’s conditions, target audience’s demands and wants, consumer behaviour, competition in the market, etc. With regards to these aspects, organizations need to adopt appropriate and relevant strategies through which desired goals could be accomplished along with the objective of gaining competitive advantage (BBC, 2018).

Amazon’s Glocal strategy for entering the Australian market

Amazon uses the basic marketing strategy while expanding its business in other parts of the globe. The same marketing strategy was used by the organization while entering in the Australian market and with regards to this, organization has set up its effective brand image. Along with this marketing strategy, organization also implemented its Glocal strategy with the objective of attaining sustained growth and overall development in the target market. This strategy is useful for analysing the consumer behaviour and their requirements which could easily be fulfilled as organization deals in millions of products and serves in more than 188 countries (Amazon, 2018).  

In terms of attracting its target audience and for setting up an effective brand image in the Australian market, organization adopted both traditional as well as non-traditional forms of marketing and promotion. Both these platforms are effective enough to spread awareness amongst the target audience along with making separate position amongst the dynamic and competitive business environment of Australia (Tomczak, Reinecke & Kuss, 2018). Promotional activities have the pivotal role in marketing strategy because it helps the organization to promote its products and services in the target market along with gaining competitive edge over other companies in the marketplace (Burns, Bush& Sinha, 2014).

Decision of entering into Australian market for Australia was a risky because Australia is not much into technology and usage of internet. In terms of speed of internet, Australia stands on the 50^th position across the globe. The total online sale in Australia is nearly 8% of the total sales. Aussies are much into offline purchasing and in relation with this; Amazon faced numerous barriers in terms of setting up their presence in Australian market but with the help of talented workforce and appropriate and effective marketing strategies, organization has been able to make its effective position in the Australian market along with building reliable image amongst the target audience (Inside Retail, 2018).

Australia has been a great market for ecommerce companies. In last five years, Australian ecommerce sector has been grown by 10% to $10.5 billion and in the current year, it is expected to increase at the rate of 11.7% with $11.7 billion. The major factor which have played important role in the growth of ecommerce sector of Australia is the entry of new online shopping companies and the availability of multiple payment methods. It has been evaluated that Amazon is far behind the ecommerce companies such as Woolworths, Coles, etc. (Kim, Shin & Min, 2015). In relation with enhancing its position in the target market along with gaining competitive advantage, it is necessary for the organization to expand its product offering along with providing the option of fast delivery options to the Aussies (Fan, Lau & Zhao, 2015). This will help the organization to approach those customers who prefers to shop from offline market as they can get anything from offline market as per their requirement but while shopping on online platforms; consumers are required to wait which is one of the major demerits of shopping online. With the help of fast delivery options, organization would be able to expand its transactions in the Australian market along with expanding its market share in the target market (David, David & David, 2017).

Marketing strategy for competitive advantage

Along with expanding its product offering, it is required for the organization to analyse the target audience’s demands and wants so that appropriate products and services could be introduced. This will ultimately boost up the organizational performance along with enhancing customer satisfaction (Wiederhold, et. al., 2014). Following are the strategies suggested to the Amazon Australia for enhancing its performance in the Australia in future:

Non-traditional promotional and marketing strategies

• Social Media: It is recommended to Amazon to adopt digital media marketing strategies as the only part of their marketing and promotional activity. Approximately 80% of Aussies are active users of social media platforms, thus, it will be easy for organization to approach to its target audience along with spreading awareness and maintaining consumers’ interest in the organization (Ramanathan, Subramanian & Parrott, 2017).
• Email marketing:This is another useful and effective platform for promotion and advertisement. As internet users in Australian market are huge, thus, utilisation of digital marketing strategies will be a great option for the organization to generate demand amongst the target audience along with expanding its customer base in the target market (Zakaria, et. al., 2014).
• Third party website promotion:This is another crucial element of spreading awareness amongst the target audience along with enhancing the customer base. This platform is also useful for enhancing sales, revenues and profitability in the target market (Price, 2016).
• Search engine:This platform works in the manner when a user searches something over search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc., the results will take the user towards the organizational website which will ultimately enhance revenues and sales of the organization (West, Ford & Ibrahim, 2015).

Apart from the digital media mix, organization should also focus over non-traditional media strategies for the objective of targeting remaining 20% audience who are not active internet or other digital mediums’ target audience. Along with this, organization is known for delivering millions of products with best quality and that too at reasonable prices. Recently, organization has also introduced Amazon Prime in the Australian market with the objective of providing fast delivery options to its target audience as well as to gain competitive edge over others (Proctor, 2014). In relation with this, it is required for the organization to maintain the quality of their products along with the customer centric approach so that organization would be able to maintain its effective brand image in the target market along with gaining sustainable growth and overall development in the dynamic and competitive business environment of the Australian market. Amazon has acquired Whole Foods of Australian at $13.7 billion which has enhanced organizational brick-and-mortar presence. With the effect of this, organization is become the direct competitor of giant Australian retailers i.e. Wesfarmers, Woolworths, etc. In order to maintain the acquired position, it is required for the organization to introduce new products rapidly on the basis of consumers’ demands and wants (Chernev, 2018).

Conclusion

From the aforesaid information, it can be concluded that Amazon is one of the giant players of ecommerce retailing companies. Currently, organization is present in more than 188 countries and it also provides international shopping at some locations where it is not yet present. Along with this, organization has set up 12 registered offices in different parts of the globe and more than 100 fulfilment centres through which products are delivered to their consumers. Amazon has brought drastic changes in the ecommerce industry by launching various options like Prime Services under which consumers could avail fast delivery options. Along with this, Prime services are also linked with the digital entertainment industry. In this report, organizational marketing strategies in Australia has been discussed with the objective of analysing the effectiveness of strategies adopted by organization in the initial period when organization entered into Australian market so that relevant changes could be made in the organizational strategies for the objective of enhancing organizational performance in the target market along with enhancing organization market share, customer base, customer satisfaction in the target market with the objective of gaining competitive advantage. 

References

Amazon. 2018. Amazon in Australia [online]. Available at: https://blog.aboutamazon.com.au/amazon-in-australia. [12/09/2018].

BBC. 2018. Amazon’s arrival set to shake up Australia’s retail sector [online]. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-42233752. [12/09/2018].

Burns, A.C., Bush, R.F. and Sinha, N., 2014. Marketing research (Vol. 7). Harlow: Pearson.

Chernev, A., 2018. Strategic marketing management. Cerebellum Press.

David, M.E., David, F.R. and David, F.R., 2017. The quantitative strategic planning matrix: a new marketing tool. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 25(4), pp.342-352.

Fan, S., Lau, R.Y. and Zhao, J.L., 2015. Demystifying big data analytics for business intelligence through the lens of marketing mix. Big Data Research, 2(1), pp.28-32.

Inside Retail. 2018. Amazon expand offering in Australia [online]. Available at: https://www.insideretail.com.au/news/amazon-expands-offering-in-australia-201809. [12/09/2018].

Kim, N., Shin, S. and Min, S., 2016. Strategic marketing capability: Mobilizing technological resources for new product advantage. Journal of Business Research, 69(12), pp.5644-5652.

Price, R., 2016. Controlling routine front line service workers: an Australian retail supermarket case. Work, employment and society, 30(6), pp.915-931.

Proctor, T., 2014. Strategic marketing: an introduction. Routledge.

Ramanathan, U., Subramanian, N. and Parrott, G., 2017. Role of social media in retail network operations and marketing to enhance customer satisfaction. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 37(1), pp.105-123.

Tomczak, T., Reinecke, S. and Kuss, A., 2018. Marketing Implementation and Management Control. In Strategic Marketing (pp. 223-244). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.

West, D.C., Ford, J. and Ibrahim, E., 2015. Strategic marketing: creating competitive advantage. Oxford University Press, USA.

Wiederhold, B.K., Boyd, C., Sulea, C., Gaggioli, A. and Riva, G., 2014. Marketing analysis of a positive technology app for the self-management of psychological stress. Stud Health Technol Inform, 199, pp.83-87.

Zakaria, I., Rahman, B.A., Othman, A.K., Yunus, N.A.M., Dzulkipli, M.R. and Osman, M.A.F., 2014. The relationship between loyalty program, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in retail industry: A case study. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 129, pp.23-30.