A MINOR PROJECT REPORT

ON
MARKETING STRATEGY OF AMAZON

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT FOR THE AWARD OF

THE
DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
2015-2018

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

Ms. SHEWTA RASTOGI AMAN JAIN

Assistant Professor, MAIMS ROLL NO- 61314701715

BBA (GEN.) III -SEM

MAHARAJA AGRASEN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

Affiliated to Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University , Delhi
PSP Area, plot No. 1, Sector-22, Rohini, Delhi 110086
 STUDENT UNDERSTAKING

This is to certify that I have completed this Project titled MARKETING

STRATEGY OF AMAZON under the guidance of Mrs. Shweta Rastogi in
partial fulfillment of the requirement of the award of degree of Bachelor of Business
Administration at Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Management Studies, Delhi. This is
an original piece of work and I have not submitted it earlier elsewhere.

AMAN JAIN

ENROLLMENT NO. 61314701715

(i)
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This project work , which is my first step in professionalism , has been successfully
accomplished only because of timely support of my well wishers. I would like to pay
my sincere regards to those , who directed me at every step in my project work. First of
all, I would like to express my thanks to Mr. M.K.BHATT(Director) for giving me
such a wonderful opportunity to widen the horizons of my knowledge. I extend my
thanks to my project guide Ms. Shweta for her scholarly guidance, constant
supervision and encouragement. It is due to her personal interest and initiative that the
project work is published in the present form. Last but not the least, I would also like
thank all the staff members of MAHARAJA AGRASEN INSTITUTE OF
MANAGEMENT STUDIES , friends and parents who have directly or indirectly
contributed in making this project a success, it is a tribute for their valuation. Despite
all efforts I have no doubt that error and obscurities remain that seen to afflict a
working project for which I am capable.

(AMAN JAIN)

Roll no.- 61314701715

BBA(Gen.)3rdSemseter

(ii)
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project entitled MARKETING STRATEGY OF

AMAZON prepared by Aman jain has been completed under my guidelines and I am
completely satisfied with the work carried out by her. The project was successfully

IIIrd Semester, required for the award of degree of BBA of Maharaja Agrasen
institute of management studies .

Project Guide

Ms Shweta Rastogi

( Assistant Professor, MAIMS )

(iii)
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In the 1st chapter it tell about the Industrial profile of the online shopping Industry, in
which it is introduced by an English Entrepreneur Michael Aldrich in 1979. The main
mode of payment in online industry is through COD(cash on delivery), Debit card,
credit card etc.

In the 2nd chapter it say about the information of Amazon Inc. Its headquarter is in
Seattle, Washington USA. And it is founded by Jeff Bezos in July 5,1994 and its first
named as Cadabra but later on it has changed to Amazon Inc.

In the 3rd chapter we have studied the research methodology of the project in which
we adopted the descriptive type of research and we have taken secondary data for the
study.

In 4th chapter we have studied the marketing strategies and marketing mix of the
company Amazon Inc.

In 5th chapter we have done SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
analysis of Amazon Inc.

(iv)
 TABLE OF CONTENT

S.NO TOPICS PAGE

NO.
Student undertaking (i)

Acknowledgment (ii)

Certificate (iii)

Executive summary (iv)

Chapter -1 Introduction 1-13

Chapter -2 Company Profile 14-31

Chapter-3 Research Methodology 32-35

Chapter-4 Marketing Strategies 36-40

Chapter-5 SWOT Analysis 41-45

Chapter-6 Conclusion & Recommendations 46-48

Bibliography (v)
CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1
 ABOUT THE INDUSTRY:

Online Shopping

Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to

directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser.
Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or
by searching among alternative vendors using a shopping search engine, which
displays the same product's availability and pricing at different e-retailers. As of 2016,
customers can shop online using a range of different computers and devices,
including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones.

An online shop evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a

regular "bricks-and-mortar" retailer or shopping center; the process is called
business-to-consumer (B2C) online shopping. When an online store is set up to enable
businesses to buy from another businesses, the process is called business-to-business
(B2B) online shopping. A typical online store enables the customer to browse the
firm's range of products and services, view photos or images of the products, along
with information about the product specifications, features and prices.

Online stores typically enable shoppers to use "search" features to find specific
models, brands or items. Online customers must have access to the Internet and a
valid method of payment in order to complete a transaction, such as a credit card,
an Interac-enabled debit card, or a service such as PayPal. For physical products (e.g.,
paperback books or clothes), the e-tailer ships the products to the customer; for digital
products, such as digital audio files of songs or software, the e-tailer typically sends
the file to the customer over the Internet. The largest of these online retailing
corporations are Alibaba, Amazon.com, and eBay.

2
HISTORY
English entrepreneur Michael Aldrich was a pioneer of online shopping in 1979. His
system connected a modified domestic TV to a real-time transaction processing
computer via a domestic telephone line. He believed that videotex, the modified
domestic TV technology with a simple menu-driven humancomputer interface, was
a 'new, universally applicable, participative communication medium the first since
the invention of the telephone.' This enabled 'closed' corporate information systems to
be opened to 'outside' correspondents not just for transaction processing but also for
e-messaging and information retrieval and dissemination, later known
as e-business. His definition of the new mass communications medium as
'participative' [interactive, many-to-many] was fundamentally different from the
traditional definitions of mass communication and mass media and a precursor to the
social networking on the Internet 25 years later. In March 1980 he launched Redifon's
Office Revolution, which allowed consumers, customers, agents, distributors,
suppliers and service companies to be connected on-line to the corporate systems and
allow business transactions to be completed electronically in real-time. During the
1980s he designed, manufactured, sold, installed, maintained and supported many
online shopping systems, using videotex technology.These systems which also
provided voice response and handprint processing pre-date the Internet and the World
Wide Web, the IBM PC, and Microsoft MS-DOS, and were installed mainly in the
UK by large corporations.

The first World Wide Web server and browser, created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990,
opened for commercial use in 1991.Thereafter, subsequent technological innovations
emerged in 1994: online banking, the opening of an online pizza shop by Pizza
Hut,]Netscape's SSL v2 encryption standard for secure data transfer, and Intershop's
first online shopping system. The first secure retail transaction over the Web was
either by NetMarket or Internet Shopping Network in 1994.Immediately
after, Amazon.com launched its online shopping site in 1995 and eBay was also
introduced in 1995.Alibaba's sites Taobao and Tmall were launched in 2003 and 2008,
respectively. Retailers are increasingly selling goods and services prior to availability
through "pretail" for testing, building, and managing demand.

3
INTERNATIONAL STATISTICS

Statistics show that in 2012, Asia-Pacific increased their international sales over 30%
giving them over $433 billion in revenue. That is a $69 billion difference between the
U.S. revenue of $364.66 billion. It is estimated that Asia-Pacific will increase by
another 30% in the year 2013 putting them ahead by more than one-third of all global
e -commerce sales. The largest online shopping day in the world is Singles Day, with
sales just in Alibaba's sites at US$9.3 billion in 2014.

PAYMENT
Online shoppers commonly use a credit card or a PayPal account in order to make
payments. However, some systems enable users to create accounts and pay by
alternative means, such as:

Billing to mobile phones and landlines

Cash on delivery (C.O.D.)
Cheque/ Check
Debit card
Direct debit in some countries
Electronic money of various types
Gift cards
Postal money order
Wire transfer/delivery on payment
Invoice, especially popular in some markets/countries, such as Switzerland
Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies

4
PRODUCT DELIVERY
Once a payment has been accepted, the goods or services can be delivered in the
following ways. For physical items:

Shipping: The product is shipped to a customer-designated address.

Retail package delivery is typically done by the public postal system or a
retail courier such as FedEx, UPS, DHL, or TNT.
Drop shipping: The order is passed to the manufacturer or third-party distributor,
who then ships the item directly to the consumer, bypassing the retailer's physical
location to save time, money, and space.
In-store pick-up: The customer selects a local store using a locator software and
picks up the delivered product at the selected location. This is the method often
used in the bricks and clicks business model.

MARKET SHARE

E-commerce B2C product sales totaled $142.5 billion, representing about 8% of retail
product sales in the United States. The $26 billion worth of clothes sold online
represented about 13% of the domestic market, and with 72% of women looking
online for apparel, it has become one of the most popular cross-shopping
categories. Forrester Research estimates that the United States online retail industry
will be worth $279 billion in 2015. The popularity of online shopping continues to
erode sales of conventional retailers. For example, Best Buy, the largest retailer of
electronics in the U.S. in August 2014 reported its tenth consecutive quarterly dip in
sales, citing an increasing shift by consumers to online shopping. There were 242
million people shopping online in China in 2012. For developing countries and
low-income households in developed countries, adoption of e-commerce in place of
or in addition to conventional methods is limited by a lack of affordable Internet
access.

5
 ADVANTAGES OF ONLINE SHOPPING

Convenience

Online stores are usually available 24 hours a day, and many consumers in Western
countries have Internet access both at work and at home. Other establishments such as
Internet cafes, community centers and schools provide internet access as well. In
contrast, visiting a conventional retail store requires travel or commuting and costs
such as gas, parking, or bus tickets, and must typically take place during business
hours. In the event of a problem with the item (e.g., the product was not what the
consumer ordered or the product was not satisfactory), consumers are concerned with
the ease of returning an item in exchange for the correct product or a refund.
Consumers may need to contact the retailer, visit the post office and pay return
shipping, and then wait for a replacement or refund. Some online companies have
more generous return policies to compensate for the traditional advantage of physical
stores. For example, the online shoe retailer Zappos.comincludes labels for free return
shipping, and does not charge a restocking fee, even for returns which are not the
result of merchant error. (Note: In the United Kingdom, online shops are prohibited
from charging a restocking fee if the consumer cancels their order in accordance with
the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Act 2000).

Information and reviews

Online stores must describe products for sale with text, photos, and multimedia files,
whereas in a physical retail store, the actual product and the manufacturer's packaging
will be available for direct inspection (which might involve a test drive, fitting, or
other experimentation). Some online stores provide or link to supplemental product
information, such as instructions, safety procedures, demonstrations, or manufacturer
specifications. Some provide background information, advice, or how-to guides
designed to help consumers decide which product to buy. Some stores even allow
customers to comment or rate their items. There are also dedicated review sites that
host user reviews for different products. Reviews and even some blogs give customers
the option of shopping for cheaper purchases from all over the world without having

6
to depend on local retailers. In a conventional retail store, clerks are generally
available to answer questions. Some online stores have real-time chat features, but
most rely on e-mails or phone calls to handle customer questions. Even if an online
store is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the customer service team may only
be available during regular business hours.

Price and selection

One advantage of shopping online is being able to quickly seek out deals for items or
services provided by many different vendors (though some local search engines do
exist to help consumers locate products for sale in nearby stores). Search engines,
online price comparison services and discovery shopping engines can be used to look
up sellers of a particular product or service. Shipping costs (if applicable) reduce the
price advantage of online merchandise, though depending on the jurisdiction, a lack
of sales tax may compensate for this. Shipping a small number of items, especially
from another country, is much more expensive than making the larger shipments
bricks-and-mortar retailers order. Some retailers (especially those selling small,
high-value items like electronics) offer free shipping on sufficiently large orders.
Another major advantage for retailers is the ability to rapidly switch suppliers and
vendors without disrupting users' shopping experience.

KEY TACTICS & BASIC MARKETING STRATEGIES

OF ONLINE RETAIL COMPANIES

1. Try and get a web address that makes sense

It's worth spending some time thinking about your ecommerce website address (URL).
Ideally it will be easy to remember, stand out from the crowd and communicate your
message. It should be the same as your company name, or include it. Finding one that
is suitable will probably take both time and a lot of investigation. Pretty much all
obvious, good URLs have been taken.

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2. Start with your existing marketing

Put your ecommerce website address on your existing brochures, advertising, business
cards and company letterhead. Wherever you promote your company name, promote
your web address as well.

3. Major on search engines

Search engines are the number one source of new website visitors, so it's worth
investing some time in learning about search engine optimisation. Your ecommerce
website developer may also be able to advise you.

4. Consider pay-per-click (PPC) marketing

Search engines allow advertising against results (on Google these appear at the top
and right hand side of the page) and while there is enormous potential for spending
large amounts of money, it can also be a way of super-charging your progress. It is
well worth the effort of learning how to use this effectively.

5. Use forums, blogs and social media

There are lots of places where people hold discussions online such as forums, blogs
and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Some of these sites will be talking
about your specialty. For instance, if you sell yachting gear, there are plenty of
discussions taking place about boating. Provided that you participate responsibly and
provide genuinely helpful advice, you can get the chance to talk about your company,
products and offerings. In fact, done skillfully, people will end up asking you for
information about what you sell, and that can be really powerful. Just make sure you
know the terms and conditions of each site and abide by them, to avoid tarnishing
your reputation.

6. Spend carefully

There are lots of opportunities to advertise online, but many can be a waste of time.
Before parting with your cash, you should use the same judgment that you would use
when deciding whether to advertise in conventional media. Who will be looking at
this medium and are they my target market? Getting your message in front of large

8
numbers isn't the issue. They must be potential customers who are interested in your
products. Unfortunately there are a lot of scammers around. So always conduct a
search in Google on the company name of any supplier you are considering before
making any commitment. This particularly applies if you receive an unsolicited
approach.

7. Ask the question, what's working?

It's a sad fact that when it comes to marketing, the anoraks are in the driving seat.
Although being creative is crucial, the way to success is to measure the results and put
the next round of money where you got the most results last time. So measure
everything you do, and try to find out where all your leads and customers come from.
When visitors buy from your site, make sure you post a question there asking how
they heard about you, or use technology that tracks this automatically. As a general
rule, you should use a quarter of your capacity for testing new ideas and variations.
Your website developer can help you with this.

8. Find websites that are complementary to yours and offer mutual

links

If you can, find specialist websites that cater for your particular niche, and get them to
either link to you or put you in their search results. In return, put a link back to them.
This can offer added value to your visitors as well as boosting your traffic - it's a
win-win situation. It should give you more online traffic through the link, and also lift
your ranking in the search engines, giving more traffic that way as well. You could
also set up your own referral scheme so that the linking site receives a share of the
sales that they generate. The downside of this is that you need to buy some software
or a service to do this.

9. Use a commercial referral scheme

There are also a number of referral schemes run commercially that you can join for a
fee, and then pay a reward for click-throughs or sales. Some sites report that this is
their most cost-effective method of acquiring sales, but it will depend on what
industry you are in.

9
10. Generate interest

Many of our customers have gained national coverage because they have an
interesting story. Some have been on the TV programme Dragon's Den while another
is selling products for left-handed people. If you can get the press interested, it's worth
a fortune in marketing.

11. Learn from the success of others

Keep an eye on your online competitors, and on successful ecommerce websites in

other market sectors. Don't just copy them, but do learn from what they are doing, and
think about how you can adapt good ideas in appropriate ways. Trawl magazines and
ecommerce suppliers' websites for case studies, and find out what other sites attribute
their success to.

12. Provide some additional value at your site

Can you come up with material for your website that will attract more online visitors?
We provide free advice on ecommerce and the suitability of businesses for trading
online, and other useful content. It's worth trying to do something similar at your site.

13. Remember existing customers

Once you are up and running, remember that existing customers are your best
customers. Make sure that you encourage them to return by making special offers and
letting them know what you are doing at your store.

14. Use email marketing

There are now many responsible companies offering information and services relating
to email marketing. They can supply email lists, advice, and delivery technology.
They will ensure that you comply with the law, for instance by only sending
marketing emails to individuals that have opted in to receive them. With email
marketing it is often useful to reward a response - for example by offering a discount
for people that click through.

10
15. Show your appreciation for recommendations

Ask your customers to recommend you to their friends. You are much more likely to
make a sale if recommended by someone trusted. If you get a sale as a result of a
recommendation and the volumes make it possible, say thank you personally and send
some form of reward - whether it is a small gift or a voucher that can be used at your
store.

16. Get customer feedback

Increasingly, prospects expect to see what other people thought of your products and
service, so gather this information on your site. If this can be gathered by an
independent third party, so much the better. Customers are rightly cynical and will be
much more influenced if they believe you haven't been able to fiddle with the results.

17. Recover the ones that got away

As well as acquiring new customers, you should have a strategy for recovering
potential customers that were lost. Your ecommerce solution should provide you with
the details of customers that filled in their details but failed to complete the order by
making a payment.

18. Market offline

It's true that all of your prospects are online (if they are not online, they can't buy from
your ecommerce store!) But it's sometimes forgotten that 100% of these prospects
also have a life offline. You need to ask whether traditional marketing methods such
as direct mail may drive traffic cost-effectively to your site.

11
 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

To Study on the amazon Inc. and marketing strategies of e-commerce

companies with reference to amazon.
To Study on the different statistics about amazon Inc.

12
 CHAPTER 2

COMPANY PROFILE

13
 ABOUT AMAZON

Amazon.com, Inc., often referred to as simply Amazon, is an American electronic

commerce and cloud computing company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It
is the largest Internet-based retailer in the world by total sales and market
capitalization. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, later diversifying to
sell DVDs, Blurays, CDs, video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, au
diobook downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture,
food, toys and jewelry. The company also produces consumer
electronicsnotably, Amazon Kindle-readers, Fire tablets, and Fire TVand is the
world's largest provider of cloud infrastructure services (IaaS). Amazon also sells
certain low-end products like USB cables under its in-house brand AmazonBasics.

Amazon has separate retail websites for the United States, the United Kingdom and
Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan,
China, India and Mexico. Amazon also offers international shipping to certain other
countries for some of its products. In 2016, Dutch and Polish language versions of the
German Amazon website were launched.

In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States
by market capitalization, and is, as of 2016 Q3, the fourth most valuable public
company.

14
 Amazon.com, Inc.

amazon.com homepage

Type of Public
business

15
Type of site E-commerce

Available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese,

Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Polish

Traded as NASDAQ: AMZN

NASDAQ-100 Component
S&P 5000 Component

Founded July 5, 1994; 22 years ago (as Cadabra)

Seattle, Washington, U.S.

Headquarters Seattle, Washington, U.S

Area served Worldwide

Owner Jeff Bezos (17.1%)

Founder(s) Jeff Bezos

Key people Jeff Bezos

(Chairman, President and CEO), Werner Vogels (CTO)

Industry Internet

Products Appstore, AWS, The Book Depository, comiXology, Game

Studios, Video, Instant Video UK, Instant Video
German, Audible, Kindle, Fire, Lab126, Studios, Twitch.tv, Woot, Echo,
MyHabit.com(closed), Shopbop, Askville

Services Online shopping, web hosting, content distribution

Revenue US$107 billion (2015)

16
 Operating US$2.233 billion (2015)
income

Net income US$596 million (2015)

Total assets US$65.444 billion (2015)

Total equity US$13.384 billion (2015)

Employees 268,900 (July 2016)

Subsidiaries A9.com, Amazon Web Services, Alexa

Internet, Audible.com, comiXology, Digital Photography
Review, Goodreads, Internet Movie
Database, Junglee.com, Twitch, Zappos

Slogan(s) Work hard, have fun, make history

Website amazon.com (original U.S. site)

Various national sites

Alexa rank 7 (October 2016)

Advertising Web banners, videos

Launched July 5, 1994

Written in C++ and Java

17
18
 HISTORY

The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos called his "regret minimization framework," which described his efforts to fend
off any regrets for not participating sooner in the Internet business boom during that
time. In 1994, Bezos left his employment as vice-president of D. E. Shaw & Co., a
Wall Street firm, and moved to Seattle. He began to work on a business plan for what
would eventually become Amazon.com.

Jeff Bezos incorporated the company as "Cadabra" on July 5, 1994. Bezos changed
the name to Amazon a year later after a lawyer misheard its original name as
"cadaver". In September 1994, Bezos purchased the URL Relentless.com and briefly
considered naming his online store Relentless, but friends told him the name sounded
a bit sinister. The domain is still owned by Bezos and still redirects to the retailer. The
company went online as Amazon.com in 1995.

Bezos selected the name Amazon by looking through the dictionary, and settled on
"Amazon" because it was a place that was "exotic and different" just as he planned for
his store to be; the Amazon river, he noted was by far the "biggest" river in the world,
and he planned to make his store the biggest in the world. Bezos placed a premium on
his head start in building a brand, telling a reporter, "There's nothing about our model
that can't be copied over time. But you know, McDonald's got copied. And it still built
a huge, multibillion-dollar company. A lot of it comes down to the brand name. Brand
names are more important online than they are in the physical world." Additionally,
a name beginning with "A" was preferential due to the probability it would occur at
the top of any list that was alphabetized.

Since June 19, 2000, Amazon's logotype has featured a curved arrow leading from A
to Z, representing that the company carries every product from A to Z, with the arrow
shaped like a smile.

After reading a report about the future of the Internet that projected annual Web
commerce growth at 2,300%, Bezos created a list of 20 products that could be
marketed online. He narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising
products which included: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software,

19
videos, and books. Bezos finally decided that his new business would sell books
online, due to the large worldwide demand for literature, the low price points for
books, along with the huge number of titles available in print. Amazon was originally
founded in Bezos' garage in Bellevue, Washington.

The company began as an online bookstore, an idea spurred off with discussion
with John Ingram of Ingram Book (now called Ingram Content Group), along with
Keyur Patel who still holds a stake in Amazon. Amazon was able to access books at
wholesale from Ingram. In the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50
states and over 45 countries. Within two months, Amazon's sales were up to
$20,000/week. While the largest brick and mortar bookstores and mail order catalogs
might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could "carry" several times more, since
it would have a practically unlimited virtual (not actual) warehouse: those of the
actual product makers/suppliers.

Amazon was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington. In July 1995, the
company began service and sold its first book on Amazon.com: Douglas
Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the
Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. In October 1995, the company announced
itself to the public. In 1996, it was reincorporated in Delaware. Amazon issued
its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, trading under the NASDAQ stock
exchange symbol AMZN, at a price of US$18.00 per share ($1.50 after three stock
splits in the late 1990s).

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual; it did not expect to make a profit for four
to five years. This "slow" growth caused stockholders to complain about the company
not reaching profitability fast enough to justify investing in, or to even survive in the
long-term. When the dot-com bubble burst at the start of the 21st century, destroying
many e-companies in the process, Amazon survived and grew on past the bubble burst
to become a huge player in online sales. It finally turned its first profit in the fourth
quarter of 2001: $5 million (i.e., 1 per share), on revenues of more than $1 billion.
This profit margin, though extremely modest, proved to skeptics that Bezos'
unconventional business model could succeed. In 1999, Time magazine named Bezos

20
the Person of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizing online
shopping.

Barnes & Noble sued Amazon on May 12, 1997, alleging that Amazon's claim to be
"the world's largest bookstore" was false. Barnes and Noble asserted, "[It] isn't a
bookstore at all. It's a book broker." The suit was later settled out of court, and
Amazon continued to make the same claim. Walmart sued Amazon on October 16,
1998, alleging that Amazon had stolen Walmart's trade secrets by hiring former
Walmart executives. Although this suit was also settled out of court, it caused
Amazon to implement internal restrictions and the reassignment of the former
Walmart executives.

Amazon.com announced on October 11, 2016 that they are planning to build
convenience stores and develop curbside pickup locations for food.

INVESTMENT

2008: Engine Yard, a Ruby-on-Rails platform as a service (PaaS) company.

2010: LivingSocial, a local deal site.
2014: Acquired the '.buy' domain in an auction for $4,588,888
2014: Amazon Announces Additional US $2 Billion Investment in India in June
2014
2016: Amazon Announces Additional US $3 Billion Investment in India in June
2016

SUBSIDIARIES

2003: A9.com, a company focused on researching and building

innovative technology.
2004: Lab126, developers of integrated consumer electronics such as the Kindle.
2007: Endless.com, an e-commerce brand focusing on shoes.
2007: Brilliance Audio, the largest independent audiobook producer in the US.

Amazon owns over 40 subsidiaries, including Zappos, Shopbop, Diapers.com, Kiva

Systems, Goodreads, Teachstreet, and IMDb.

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 AMAZON STUDIOS

Amazon Studios is Amazon.com's division that develops television shows, movies

and comics from online submissions and crowd-sourced feedback. It was started in
late 2010. Content would be distributed through Amazon Video, Amazons digital
video streaming service, and a competitor to services like Netflix and Hulu. For film,
Warner Bros. is a partner.

AMAZON STREAMING

In 2016, it released a streaming service called "Amazon Music Unlimited."

SUBSIDIARIES

Audible.com

Audible headquarters

Audible.com is a seller and producer of spoken audio entertainment, information, and

educational programming on the Internet. Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio, and
TV programs, and audio versions of magazines and newspapers. Through its

22
production arm, Audible Studios, Audible has also become the world's largest
producer of downloadable audiobooks. On January 31, 2008, Amazon announced it
would buy Audible for about $300 million. The deal closed in March 2008, and
Audible became a subsidiary of Amazon.

Brilliance Audio
Brilliance Audio is an audiobook publisher founded in 1984 by Michael Snodgrass
in Grand Haven, Michigan. The company produced its first 8 audio titles in 1985. The
company was purchased by Amazon in 2007 for an undisclosed amount. At the time
of the acquisition Brilliance was producing 12-15 new titles a month. It operates as an
independent company within Amazon.

In 1984, Brilliance Audio invented a technique for recording twice as much on the
same cassette. The technique involved recording on each of the two channels of each
stereo track. It has been credited with revolutionizing the burgeoning audiobook
market in the mid-1980s since it made unabridged books affordable.

ComiXology
ComiXology is a cloud-based digital comics platform with over 200 million comic
downloads as of September 2013. It offers a selection of more than 40,000 comic
books and graphic novels across Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, and Windows 8 devices,
and over the Internet. Amazon bought the company in April 2014.

Goodreads

Goodreads is a "social cataloging" website founded in December 2006 and launched

in January 2007 by Otis Chandler, a software engineer and entrepreneur, and
Elizabeth Chandler. The website allows individuals to freely search Goodreads'
extensive user-populated database of books, annotations, and reviews. Users can sign
up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also
create their own groups of book suggestions and discussions. In December 2007, the

23
site had over 650,000 members and over 10,000,000 books had been added. Amazon
bought the company in March 2013.

Shelfari

Shelfari is a social cataloging website for books. Shelfari users build virtual
bookshelves of the titles which they own or have read, and they can rate, review, tag,
and discuss their books. Users can also create groups that other members may join,
create discussions, and talk about books, or other topics. Recommendations can be
sent to friends on the site for what books to read. Amazon bought the company in
August 2008. Shelfari continued to function as an independent book social network
within the Amazon.com family of sites until 2016, when that January, Amazon
announced on Shelfari.com that it would be merging Shelfari with Goodreads and
closing down Shelfari.

Beijing Century Joyo Courier Services

Amazon 40' container turnpike double, a Long Combination Vehicle

Beijing Century Joyo Courier Services is a subsidiary of Amazon and it applied for
a Freight forwarding license with the US Maritime Commission. Amazon is also
building out its logistics in trucking and air freight to potentially compete
with UPS and FedEx.

24
 WEBSITE
The domain amazon.com attracted at least 615 million visitors annually by
2008. Amazon attracts over 130 million customers to its US website per month by the
start of 2016. The company has also invested heavily on a massive amount of server
capacity for its website, especially to handle the excessive traffic during the
December Christmas holiday season.

Results generated by Amazon's search engine are partly determined by promotional

fees.

Amazon's localized storefronts, which differ in selection and prices, are differentiated
by top-level domain and country code:

Region Sovereignty Domain name

China amazon.cn

Asia India amazon.in

Japan amazon.co.jp

France amazon.fr

Europe Germany amazon.de

Italy amazon.it

25
 Netherlands amazon.nl

Spain amazon.es

United Kingdom amazon.co.uk

Canada amazon.ca

North America Mexico amazon.com.mx

United States amazon.com

Oceania Australia amazon.com.au

South America Brazil amazon.com.br

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Mission:

To be Earths most customer-centric company, where customers can find and

discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavours to offer its
customers the lowest possible prices,

Vision:

To leverage technology and the expertise of our invaluable employees to provide our
customers with the best shopping experience on the internet

Tagline:

#Aur Dikhao in India. From A to Z globally.

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MAJOR GLOBAL AND INDIAN COMPETITORS OF
AMAZON

1. Alibaba:

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Chinese: ) is

a Chinese e-commerce company that

provides consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-busine
ss sales services via web portals. It also provides electronic payment services,
a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services. The
group began in 1999 when Jack Ma founded the website Alibaba.com, a
business-to-business portal to connect Chinese manufacturers with overseas
buyers. In 2012, two of Alibaba's portals handled
1.1 trillion yuan ($170 billion) in sales. Suppliers from other countries are
supported (with more stringent checks than for Chinese companies), but the
company primarily operates in the People's Republic of China (PRC).

28
2. Ebay:

eBay Inc. is an American multinational corporation and e-commerce company,

providing consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales services via
the Internet. It is headquartered in San Jose, California. eBay was founded
by Pierre Omidyar in 1995, and became a notable success story of the dot-com
bubble. Today it is a multibillion-dollar business with operations localized in
over 30 countries.

The company manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in

which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and
services worldwide.

3. Flipkart:

Flipkart is an e-commerce marketplace unicorn company founded in 2007

by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. The company is registered in Singapore,
but has its headquarters in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Flipkart has launched
its own product range under the name "DigiFlip" with products including
tablets, USBs, and laptop bags.

Flipkart's last fundraising round in May 2015 had pegged its valuation at $15
billion. In May 2016, Morgan Stanley lowered Flipkart's valuation to $9.39
billion.

29
4. Snapdeal:

Snapdeal is an B2C marketplace, based in New Delhi, India. The company

was started by Kunal Bahl, a Wharton graduate as part of the dual
degree M&T Engineering and Business program at Penn, and Rohit Bansal, an
alumnus of IIT Delhi in February 2010. Snapdeal currently has 275,000 sellers,
over 30 million products and a reach of 6,000 towns and cities across the
country Investors in the company include SoftBank Corp, Ru-Net Holdings,
Tybourne Capital, PremjiInvest, Alibaba Group, Temasek Holdings, Bessemer
Venture Partners, IndoUS Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Saama Capital, Foxconn
Technology Group, Blackrock, eBay, Nexus Ventures, Intel Capital, Ontario
Teachers' Pension Plan, Singapore-based investment entity Brother Fortune
Apparel and Ratan Tata. When Snapdeal acquired FreeCharge in an equity
deal, investors Sequoia Capital India, Valiant Capital, Sofina, Ru-Net
Holdings, and Tybourne Capital also became shareholders in Snapdeal.

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 CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

31
 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A research methodology is the plan of a research study. The design of a study

defines the study type (descriptive, correlational, semi-experimental, experimental,
review, meta-analytic) and sub-type (e.g., descriptive-longitudinal case
study), research question, hypotheses, independent and dependent
variables, experimental design, and, if applicable, data collection methods and a
statistical analysis plan. Research is the framework that has been created to seek
answers to research questions.

DATA COLLECTION

Data collection is the process of gathering and measuring information on targeted

variables in an established systematic fashion, which then enables one to answer
relevant questions and evaluate outcomes. The data collection component of research
is common to all fields of study including physical and social
sciences, humanities and business. It helps us to collect the main points as gathered
information.

Regardless of the field of study or preference for defining data

(quantitative or qualitative), accurate data collection is essential to maintaining the
integrity of research. Both the selection of appropriate data collection instruments
(existing, modified, or newly developed) and clearly delineated instructions for their
correct use reduce the likelihood of errors occurring.

A formal data collection process is necessary as it ensures that data gathered are both
defined and accurate and that subsequent decisions based on arguments embodied in
the findings are valid. The process provides both a baseline from which to measure
and in certain cases a target on what to improve.

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SECONDARY DATA:

Secondary data refers to data that was collected by someone other than the
user. Common sources of secondary data for social science include censuses,
information collected by government departments, organisational records and data
that was originally collected for other research purposes.

Secondary data analysis can save time that would otherwise be spent collecting data
and, particularly in the case of quantitative data, can provide larger and
higher-quality databases that would be unfeasible for any individual researcher to
collect on their own. In addition, analysts of social and economic change consider
secondary data essential, since it is impossible to conduct a new survey that can
adequately capture past change and/or developments. However, secondary data
analysis can be less useful in marketing research, as data may be outdated or
inaccurate.

TYPE OF RESEARCH
1. Descriptive

SOURCES OF DATA COLLECTION

1. Secondary data

SECONDARY DATA

The data which has been already collected by someone is known as secondary data:

1. Books

2. Websites

3. Brochure

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 LIMITATIONS

1. It is not free from bias. The research conclusions cannot be verified.

2. Its is not a complete solution to any marketing issue as there are many
dominant variables between conclusion and market response

3. It consider only secondary data .

34
 CHAPTER 4
MARKETING STRATEGY

35
 AMAZON MARKETING STRATEGY

Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning:

E-commerce giants like Amazon uses demographic & psychographics segmentation to

segment the markets. Amazons segmentation is based on actual purchase behavior: not
what people might have expressed interest in, but what they actually did. Amazons
micro-level segmentation targets each customer individually, allowing the company to
convert visitors into long-term, high-value customers.
Customer segmentation often involves creating personas who will buy in a certain way
& certain products. Similarly, Amazon targets the middle class & upper class people
who have got hands on experience in the basic technology but dont have time or prefer
convenience over shopping from the physical outlets. Amazon has successfully
positioned itself as a Glocal (Go global Act local) e-commerce giant where one can buy
anything & get it delivered at any remote locations. Using the catchphrase #AurDikhao
in its most recent campaign in India, it has further helped them carve a distinct space in
the consumers mind.

MARKETING MIX OF AMAZON

Amazon is one of the worlds biggest online retailers, selling a vast array of goods
such as books, music, games, clothes and movies. As of 2013, Amazon employs 117,
300 members of staff, and has a global net revenue of 74.45 billion US dollars. Since
its conception in 1995, Amazon has outgrown several competitors in its field, and has
gone on to become a market leader, and has around 240 million customer accounts
worldwide. Amazon has used careful investment and acquisition of other smaller
companies to enable itself to stay ahead in its field, and continues to expand its
product range, whilst offering competitive prices to customers, and faster deliveries to
those who choose to sign up for its various account packages.

36
In July 2013, Amazon launched its services in India, choosing not to employ an
advertising campaign. The site is ranked as the 27th most popular in India, with
around 4.2% of all Amazon customers coming from this country. The company is
doing well here, and this Indian venture is part of a bigger effort to offer its services to
a wider range of people in Asia.

Product in marketing mix of amazon:

Amazon is an international ecommerce company, using connections to the internet

from various gadgets such as phones and tablets, to allow its customers to browse and
purchase products immediately. These products are then delivered to the customer,
using delivery service companies. Amazon has built up a huge product base, and sells
almost everything, including:
Kindle

Books
DVD s
Mobile phones/tablets
Gaming consoles and games
Clothes for men/women and children
Jewellery
Gardening equipment

Amazon initially started only with books and it is till date known as the highest book
seller in the world. This is why, Amazon also introduced Kindle. Kindle is an Ebook
reader from Amazon and it is the reason that the publishing market is having such a big
revolution of converting hard paper to digital ebooks because of the ease of reading by
Kindle. Due to success of Kindle, Amazon also introduced Kindly fire its own tablet
pc.
Type in a search entry into a search engine for a specific product, and the chances are
that Amazon will stock what you need, and will be on the search list. As they continue
to grow, more and more products are added to their inventory. Once established into
books, Amazon quickly expanded to other products to maintain its presence in the

37
market. Where Ebay is known for techie products, Amazon is known for
knowledgeable products.
Amazon continues to expand its product base, and in July 2014 it entered the smart
phone market, releasing its very own Fire Phone. The phone followed the release a
month earlier of Amazons very own set top box system Amazon Fire TV- which
allows streaming from various channels, as well as supporting speech commands
when searching.

Place in the marketing mix of Amazon:

In the recent past, sites such as indiaplaza and allshcoolstuff were forced to close due
to the lack of trust when buying goods online. However, the brand image of Amazon
enables it to have a far and wide presence and the bottom line of the company is
enough to enable massive R&D efforts to secure the website. Amazon has customer
service bases in many of the countries where it has an online presence, with most
bases being located in the different states of the USA. Amazon employees are friendly
and relaxed.

Promotion in the marketing mix of Amazon:

While Amazon has broadcast television commercials, these are mostly in the
American market. Amazon uses mainly web based advertising, and they make some
use of billboard and smaller methods of advertising. Amazon also uses advertising
networks online so that whenever you check something on amazon, you will see an ad
for the same thing somewhere else on some other website. Search engine marketing
and getting the companys name high up the search engines results is also a smart
promotional strategy by Amazon. The founder of Amazon had this in mind when
creating the company, deciding that it should start with an a.
In India, Amazon can be seen to rely on the best source of promotion there is word
of mouth. People telling others about the site, or mentioning it in a positive way is a
sure way to have a new future customer. However, there are several print media ads to
make their presence felt to the people. However, much more is needed in the

38
promotions department from Amazon in India because the traffic of Amazon is being
taken over fast by Flipkart.

Price in the marketing mix of Amazon:

Amazon is competitive with its prices, and has little ways of staying ahead of its
market contemporaries. For example, if you are looking to buy a book, Amazon offers
you a new copy, or a used copy as well, complete with pricing and condition. Another
initiative is to pay to have a premium account, ensuring faster deliveries. Amazon can
also keep their prices competitive due to their use of staff. Minimum numbers but
well trained ensure that consumers benefit from the lack of overheads, and the result
is shown in the prices online.
As more and more people can access broadband connections in India and get online,
the competition for the likes of Amazon.com will toughen. Amazons quiet entry into
India has seen some growth so far due to its brand image, and it will be looking to
keep its prices as low as possible to capture a slice of the growing market place. It
faces tough competition from the likes of eBay, flipkart and snapdeal.

39
 CHAPTER-5

SWOT ANALYSIS

40
 SWOT ANALYSIS OF AMAZON

Amazon was one of the top online bookstores, which soon converted to the top online
retailer across the world, and currently, even though it has a lot of competition,
Amazon has a strong base of loyal customers who repeatedly buy from the online
retailer. Here is the SWOT analysis of Amazon.

Strengths in the SWOT analysis of Amazon:

1. Strong background and deep pockets Built on its early successes with books,
Amazon now has product categories that include electronics, toys, games, home
and kitchen, white goods, brown goods and much more. Amazon has evolved as a
global E-commerce giant in the last 2 decades.

2. Customer centric: Companys robust CRM has created customer centric

processes in order to carefully record data on customers buying behavior. This
enables them to offer individual items, related items or bundle them as an offer,
based upon preferences demonstrated through purchases or items visited. Also,
the company claims that 55% of their customers are repeat buyers resulting in low
cost of acquisition of new buyers.

3. Cost leadership: In order to differentiate itself, company has created several

strategic alliances with other companies to offer superior customer service. The
most important strategic tie ups are with logistics provides who control costs.
Because of playing on economies of scale, Amazon is able to lower the inventory
replenishment time.

4. Efficient delivery network: With its strategic partners & due to its Amazon
fulfilment centers, Amazon has created a deep & structured network in order to
make the product available even at remote locations. It also has free of cost
delivery charges in certain geographies.

41
5. GLOCAL strategy: By using the strategy of Go global & act local, Amazon is
able to fight with domestic E-commerce companies through absorbing & by
forming / partnering with supply chain companies. The branding too is done as
per local taste. For example- In India, Amazon is currently using the Aur
Dikhao campaign to encourage users to browse more of their products.

6. Acquisitions: Acquiring companies like Zappos.com, Junglee.com, IMBD.com,

woot.com etc. has proven to be a successful and revenue generating step for the E
commerce giant.

Weaknesses in the SWOT analysis of Amazon:

1. Shrinking margins: Due to extensive delivery network & price wars Amazons
margins are shrinking, which is resulting in even losses. In India, Amazon had a
loss of $359 crs in the year 2013-14.

2. Tax Avoidance issue: Amazon has attracted negative publicity on account of Tax
Avoidance in countries like U.S & UK. Most of its revenue is generated from these
well-established markets.

3. High Debt: In many developing nations Amazon is still struggling to make the
business profitable thereby affecting the overall profitability of the group resulting
into High debt.

4. Product flops Amazon launched the fire phone in the US which was a big flop.
At the same time, Kindle fire did not pick up as strongly as Kindle did. Thus, there
were several product flops which caused a dent in Amazons deep pockets.

42
Opportunities in the SWOT analysis of Amazon:

1. Backward Integration: Amazon can come up with its In-house brands in

different product categories. They can also differentiate their offering. This will
help them make profits in highly competitive E-commerce market.

2. Global Expansion: Expansion mainly in Asian & developing economies will

help Amazon because those are the markets with low competition in E-commerce
industries & are not saturated like developed economies.

3. Acquisitions: By acquiring E-commerce companies it can decrease the

competition level & also can use the specialized capacity of the other company.

4. Opening physical stores outside U.S: By doing this Amazon can help the
customers to engage with the brand, resulting in increase in repeat purchases &
increase in loyal customer base.

43
Threats in the SWOT analysis of Amazon:

1. Low entry barriers of the industry: Low entry barriers affect the current players
business as more & more company means tough competition, price wars, shrinking
margins & losses resulting into questioning the sustainability of the players.

2. Government regulations: Not having clarity on the issues related to FDI in multi
brand retail, has been a big hurdle in the success of the E-commerce players in
many developing nations.

3. Local competition India has snapdeal and Flipkart who are local E commerce
retailers and are taking away majority of the market. Similarly, there are many local
players who take bites from the market share thereby making it hard for a big player
like Amazon to make profits.

44
 CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION
&
RCOMMENNDATIONS

45
 CONCLUSION

we can say that Amazon is one of the biggest and most trusted online retailing
brand globally, Amazon is a multinational company conquering the global market.
Amazon is doing well and having strong marketing strategies and image. It grown
at a very fast pace successfully since its establishment.
Although, Amazon faced a tough and parallel competition while spreading its
market in India because of already well established Flipkart and Snapdeal but in
spite of this Amazon grown successfully in India, improving day by day and giving
hard competition to others like a market player.

Amazon gives only prime trial period of 30 days only which is not sufficient
because in developing country like India where most of people are not aware
about trial period .

The smart phone application of Amazon need to improvement because it takes a

lots of memory space in the smart phone which creates problems while using the
phone .

46
 RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Amazon should expand to more different industries as it is doing progressively

by acquiring different companies and by starting new.

2. Amazon India has smart-phone application and doing well but the application
needs improvement in user interface, it has space for improvement in user
interface and speed.

3. Amazon is an international company and it operates in many countries, in recent

years it expanded its market in India with .in domain, amazon should expand it
in more countries to increase its business and its global market share.

4. Amazon should increases the prime trial period of 30 days to 60 days so that
customers can experience it fully and effectively .

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS:

1. Velavan M., Suriyamurthi S., A STUDY ON MARKETING STRATEGY

with reference to E-commerce Edition 2012, Lambert Academic
Publishing

2. Kotler Philip, Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning

Implementation & Control 9th Edition 1998, Prentice Hall of India Ltd.

WEBSITES:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shopping

2. https://www.statista.com/topics/846/amazon/

3. http://www.marketing91.com/marketing-strategy-of-amazon/

4. http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/online-marketing/ecommerce/ho
w-to-attract-customers-to-your-ecommerce-store

(v)

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