Strategic Brand Management Assignment

on

Brand Measurement of “Amazon”

Submitted By

Vishal Mehta
Roll No. 42

Program of Marketing Management

XAVIER INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SERVICE

DR. CAMIL BULCKE PATH, RANCHI

Session: 2020-22

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 INDEX

Sl.
Title Pg. No.
No.

1. Introduction 3

2. Brand Portfolio 3-4

3. Technique Used: Brand Audit 4-10

4. Advantage of Brand Audit 10

5. Limitation of Brand Audit 10

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 AMAZON

1. Introduction
Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1995. It started out as a place
for book lovers to buy books online. Bezos believed that only the internet
could offer customers the convenience of browsing a selection of millions
of books in one single sitting. During the first 30 days, Amazon.com
fulfilled orders for customers in 50 states in the U.S and 45 countries- all
shipped from his Seattle-area garage.

Amazon.com quickly expanded into an online seller of a wide range of

products, not just books. Over time the company acquired more and
larger fulfilment centres, and soon Amazon.com would become one of
the most widely used shopping platforms by consumers in the United
States, let alone worldwide.

BRAND EQUITY MEASURING TECHNIQUE: BRAND AUDIT

2. Brand Portfolio
The businesses and services that compose Amazon.com’s family brands
can be broken down into three major parts: CONSUMER BUSINESS,
SELLER BUSINESS and IT INFRASTRUCTURE BUSINESS.

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  Brands under Consumer Business: The flagship brand “Amazon.com” goes
under this category, and there are several sub brands that qualify under
this categorization as well, such as Amazon Basics, Amazon Fresh, Amazon
Kindle, and Amazon WarehouseDeals, which are highly differentiated in
their offerings.
 Brands under Seller Business: Brands that appear under this category
would include Amazon Services, Amazon Webstore, and Amazon Supply.
These brands target competitor businesses from big brick-and-mortar
retailers to small start-ups that offer similar services.
 Brands under IT Infrastructure Business: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is
the major brand in this category. Targeted at enterprises, Amazon
leverages the sales of this brand through its other service, Amazon
Program Networks (APN).

3. Brand Audit of Amazon

I. Brand Inventory

a. Brand Elements

Name- Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, almost named Amazon.com

“Cadabra” – as in “Abracadabra” – but it was after Bezos’ lawyer
misused the name as “Cadaver” when he changed his mind. Bezos
chose the word Amazon in part because of the Amazon River,
which is one of the largest rivers on earth and, in terms of imagery,
aligned perfectly with Amazon’s original tagline “Earth’s biggest
bookstore.”

Logo- The logo that is known today has a yellow arrow underneath
the word “Amazon.com,” which begins at the letter ‘A’ and points
around to the letter ‘Z’. This image is intended to communicate
that Amazon sells everything from ‘A’ to ‘Z’, and the arrow itself is
shaped to resemble a smile, implying that customers would
experience enjoyment during their time shopping on the web site.

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 Colors- The logo that is known today has a yellow arrow
underneath the word “Amazon.com,” which begins at the letter ‘A’
and points around to the letter ‘Z’. This image is intended to
communicate that Amazon sells everything from ‘A’ to ‘Z’.

b. Product & Services

o Amazon Basic
o Amazon Studios
o Amazon Fresh
o Amazon Kindle
o Amazon Warehouse
o Amazon Prime
o Amazon Student
o Amazon Mom
o One-Click Services
o Amazon Cloud Drive
o Amazon Instant Video
o Amazon App Store
o Amazon MP3
o Amazon Payments
o Amazon Web Services
o Amazon Entrepreneur Store
o Amazon Prime Air
o Amazon Mayday
o Amazon Publisher

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 c. Pricing Strategy

The logo that is known today has a yellow arrow underneath the
word “Amazon.com,” which begins at the letter ‘A’ and points
around to the letter ‘Z’. This image is intended to communicate
that Amazon sells everything from ‘A’ to ‘Z’, and the arrow itself is
shaped to resemble a smile, implying that customers would
experience enjoyment during their time shopping on the web site.

o List Prices
o Price Matching
o Pre-order price guarantee
o Shopping Cart Prices
o Free Shipping

d. Distribution Strategy

Amazon ships customer orders through delivery partners like FedEx

and UPS, and customers have the options of choosing from
standard shipping (3-5 days) and two-day shipping. Both delivery
options are guaranteed to arrive within the given time range.
Amazon also offers digital distribution: delivery a variety of media
like music, e-books, and videos in roughly 60 seconds.
Regarding future endeavours in distribution and shipping strategy,
Amazon has also been planning to implement an initiative referred
to as “Amazon Prime Air.” This initiative would utilize flying drones
to deliver qualifying items to customer’s homes, both serving as a
significant point of differentiation between Amazon and the way
competitors ship their items, and a key component in Amazon’s
aspirational goal to deliver customer orders within 30 minutes.

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 e. Communication Strategy

Amazon’s marketing and communication strategies strives to

create an innovative, customer-centric brand image. Through
targeted online marketing channels including its Associates
program, sponsored search, portal advertising, email marketing
campaigns, and other marketing initiatives, Amazon has been able
to direct customers to their websites and effectively drive sales.
Amazon associates itself with brick-and mortar stores by hosting
and managing retail web sites and high-tech companies to
reinforce its reputation of being focused on the customer’s
experience.

f. Advertising

When Amazon first started, it put lots of effort into offline

advertising, including on TV and on billboards. Amazon spent
roughly $80 million in offline advertising campaigns in 1999; 10
years later it only spent $9.4 million. Drastic cuts have been in
place in terms of offline advertising. Instead, Amazon has been
mainly focusing on online advertising. With Amazon Web Services
(AWS) XML service, associates, and third-party sellers, Amazon has
been able to drive a large amount of traffic to its websites.

g. Customer Tracking & E-Mail Marketing Campaigns

Amazon understands the power of email marketing in terms of

driving revenue. According to research conducted by the IAB,
Amazon is the most popular email marketer with consumers in the
UK. By tracking customers’ online activities, Amazon can
personalize customers’ shopping experiences. They have sections
including “recommendations for you”, “related to items you have
viewed” etc., and then they do personalize email marketing
campaigns with recommendations relevant to you afterwards.

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 h. Customer Services

Amazon, known as the most customer-centric company on earth,

has put a great deal of efforts in developing its website interface,
optimizing its search engine, enhancing its relationships with
customers to offer customers delightful shopping experiences. Its
recent “Mayday” live support and promise of “delivery within half
an hour” promise is both consistent with its core values. All its
marketing strategies appear in some respect to be designed to
build its relationship with customers.

II. Brand Exploratory

Consumer Knowledge Structure

Amazon has successfully leveraged its core values with technological

innovation to become known as the most customer-centric online retailer
in the world. When thinking about Amazon, consumers tend to come up
with positive associations including “reliable, secure, cheap, trustworthy,
customer-centric, fast, convenient, variety” (these results obtained from
our own surveys and experiments). However, some consumers may also
think of Amazon as a big, multinational corporation, not friendly in many
ways. They also might think of Amazon’s customer services as not
consistent sometimes. The figure below shows a hypothetical mental
map for the Amazon brand.
Other research conducted by Forrester in 2012 shows that 30% of all
online shoppers start their product research from Amazon, and this
figure surpass Google’s 13%. 86% of Americans who have had online
shopping experiences purchased from Amazon before. More recent
research conducted by Nielson shows that Amazon is the No.1 mobile
destination among mass merchants. And 53% of mobile web/app users
in October last year shopped on Amazon.com, and this number far
surpasses Walmart Stores’ 13%.

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 Brand Resonance Pyramid

When analysing the degree of brand resonance occurring in association

with the Amazon brand and comparing the results to the brand
resonance pyramid model, it would appear at first glance that Amazon’s
pyramid is well balanced, and that there is a great level of correlation
between the rational side and the emotional side. What Amazon is trying
to offer – delightful customer experiences – is perceived by its customers
and transferred to their imagery and feelings about brand Amazon.
Amazon has been trying to build trust with its customers through having
product reviews, personalizing shopping experiences via customer
tracking and email campaigns and various partnership programs.

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 Competitive Analysis

Amazon faces a staggering amount of competition both directly and

indirectly, given its market share across multiple industries. Amazon’s
direct competitors - as posited by company data reporting companies
like Hoovers Inc. and Yahoo! - mainly consist of Walmart, Barnes &
Noble, and Apple Inc. Indirectly, there are many more competitors in
various product and service categories, but two prominent companies
are Google and Netflix. Internationally, Amazon could face future
competition from other e-commerce companies like Tmall.com, located
in China.

4. Advantage of Brand Audit

o Discover real brand issues and inconsistencies and how it can be

improved upon.
o Receive an honest, unbiased, third-party perception of your brand.
o Gain understanding of employee and customer perceptions of the
brand.
o Get clarity on which areas of your business need more TLC.

5. Limitation of Brand Audit

o Complex. The brand identity building process is complex.

o Expensive to Design. Designing and creating a brand identity is
expensive and time consuming.
o Difficult to Maintain.
o Difficult and Expensive to Change.

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