Traditional vs E-Marketing Communication - Essay Example

?E-Marketing Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Introduction 4 E-Marketing vs. Traditional Communication 4 6 E-Marketing Communication tools for Amazon 6 Diffusion and Adoption Process of Amazon Kindle E-Reader 9 Conclusion 14 References 15 Bibliography 16 Executive Summary Marketing has always been a part of business in many different forms. Marketing is the central part of any business activity. Traditionally marketing was considered as the way by which peoples were convinced for taking up the deal. But since then there has been a drastic development in the concept of marketing. The methods of marketing have altered enormously for the betterment. It now offers more effective and efficient ways for communicating the messages of the company to the consumers. The report will highlight on the difference between the traditional marketing communication and the E-marketing communication. The report will also highlight marketing tools which are presently being used in amazon.com. Apart from that the assignment will also try to explain on how amazon.com can utilize the diffusion adoption process in the context with its newly released Amazon kindle reader. And at the end the report will try to put some of the benefits of using viral email, interactive advertisement campaigns and E CRM. The key findings of the project are that amazon.com makes use of different kinds of marketing tools for its promotional purposes and increasing the customer experiences. Introduction Amazon.com Inc. is a global electronic commerce company which facilitates online buying of different kinds of products. The company was founded in the year 1994 and is headquartered at Seattle, Washington, United States of America (Amazon, n.d.). Amazon.com is considered as the biggest online retailer of the planet. The company started its venture as an online book store but later diversified into other business lines. The company serves the customers via its retail websites and mainly focuses on the price and expediency. Apart from being a platform of online buying for the customers it also provides them with the opportunity to sell the product. One of the noticeable aspects is that the company has offered separate retail websites for countries like United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany and Italy among others. This course of action has been mainly undertaken to offer better customer experiences. Recently amazon.com has started developing Kindle e-reader which is gadget used for reading online e-books. The company also offers other services such as various promotional and marketing agreements like co-branded cash cards and different kind of online advertisements (Yahoo finance, n.d.). E-Marketing vs. Traditional Communication Slowly and steadily many companies started to incorporate the use of modern marketing techniques in order to get the best out of it. One of the most significant ways of marketing communication came forward with E-marketing. Buzzwords such as digital marketing, online marketing and internet marketing are considered as synonymous with E-marketing (Pannu & Tomar, 2010, p.118). In simple words E-marketing or electronic marketing is the application of the principles of marketing and techniques of marketing within the electronic media and to be more specific by making use of internet. Internet marketing or E-marketing includes both direct as well as indirect marketing and a set of different technologies for making effective connection and communication to the customers. The growing importance of E marketing is the reason for its high return on investment from the traditional marketing. The benefits of E- marketing includes its reach to the mass customers, scope of offering a range of products and services, interactivity or interaction, provides immediate effect and targeting different group of customers across the national boundaries of the business. Amazon.com is a company which is based only on E- marketing, and makes use of different kinds of marketing tools to promote its product. The company also feels that their most efficient marketing communications are the consequences of their continuous focus on increasing the customer experiences and customer satisfaction. The two ways by which E-marketing communication differs from traditional marketing are as follows:- E-marketing offers to carry out the marketing activities wherever and whenever the marketer wants. There is actually no time frame and location defined to conduct the process. In other words E marketing offers the company to avail 24*7, round the year business. In this context traditional marketing communication lags both in the reach and time. Traditional marketing needs to be carried out in a stipulated time frame and location. To cite an example amazon.com makes its product available to the customers round the clock i.e. it markets for 24*7 hours. (Source: Author’s Creation) The second difference is that traditional marketing is very much costlier than E-marketing. Traditional marketing needs long durations and even heavy budgets to fulfil its objective. While on the other hand E-marketing is even faster and cost-effective. Traditional marketing makes use of radio, newspaper, television which is very much costlier. But internet is itself a medium to endorse the goods and services of the company. Amazon.com has got hugely benefitted by making use of this technique. While undergoing this technique the company even do not need to bear the cost of holding the inventory. To cite an example Waterstones based on UK is one of the largest traditional bookstores. But it found to incur huge expanses due to intense competition and thus took the decision to enter into a partnership with amazon.com to sell their books online rather than selling it physically. (Source: Author’s Creation) E-Marketing Communication tools for Amazon Amazon.com used to have its marketing strategy purely based on customer satisfaction. The customer focus orientation has transformed the company to provide excellence in service. They made use of different technology as well for conveying their messages to the intended consumers. But the recent marketing communication strategy of amazon.com illustrates that they mainly makes us of E-marketing techniques for increasing the web traffic towards its website, to generate awareness about the product, for promoting repeat purchase, to strengthen its brand name and brand identity and also to develop the incremental product and service revenue opportunities. The company also feels that word of mouth promotion plays a pivotal role in its overall promotional strategy. It also aids in acquiring new customers and also endorses for repeat purchasing of the existing customers. The company uses various marketing tools in order to promote its products and services in the market place. The promotional tools are also used for conveying the messages of the company to the intended consumers. The marketing tools used by the company include free shipping, E-mail campaigns, search engine optimization, cooperative advertisements, personalized websites and interactive advertisements on the web portal of the company. The two major marketing tools which are being used by amazon.com are search engine optimization and E-mail campaigning. Search Engine Optimization: - Search Engine optimisation is a process which is mainly used by the companies for making their website more visible in search engines. Being a tool of internet marketing search engine optimization takes into account how a search engine works and based on the searching of peoples it optimizes. Optimization may require an editing in the website. A high ranking within the search engines has become a necessity for a website in order to get its contents displayed. Therefore by making use of optimization rankings can be increased and in turn it offers more traffic towards the website, generates trust among the users and the conversion rate to sales also gets a boost (King, 2008, p.6). Amazon.com gets hugely benefitted by making use of search engine optimization. Due to its high rankings among the search engines the contents of amazon.com gets displayed at the peak position whenever a user searches for related item. Figure 1 (Source: King, 2008, p.7) E-Mail Campaigning: - E mail campaigns are a form of online direct marketing. By making us of this kind of marketing the company conveys its promotional messages directly to a group of customer. It includes E-mail which gets sent to the users by offering them something about the product. In other words E-mail marketing provides the opportunity to the user to communicate directly to the possible customers. There are different kinds of E-mail marketing such as email postcards, email catalogues, email press releases, email newsletters, email surveys, email invitations and coupons (Gomiweb, 2012). Email marketing offers financial benefit to the company as it is considered as one of the most cost effective way of promotion. The other benefits of email marketing are that higher return on investments and it is intended to potential customers therefore the rate of conversion to sales is also higher; it creates awareness among the minds of the people and also enhances the brand identity (Groves, 2009, p.41-42). While undertaking it the company makes the customers direct towards its websites. This also leads to an increase in the sales and enhanced word of mouth promotion. Diffusion and Adoption Process of Amazon Kindle E-Reader Diffusion and adoption theory strictly deals with innovation. The theory of adoption and diffusion theory tries to explain the distinction in the speed of adopting innovation. Adoption can be defined as the individual decision to make use of innovation. Therefore it depicts that only purchasing an innovation is not at all adopting it. While on the other hand diffusion can be defined as the distribution of an innovative improvement in the society (Bartels & Nelissen, 2002 p.344). Figure 2 (Source: Bartels & Nelissen, 2002 p.345). The five stages of adoption-diffusion process as identified by Rogers are awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and adoption (Nisha, 2006, p.95-96). But in the later editions he changed the terminologies to knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and conformation. Figure 3 The stages are illustrated below:- Stage1:- In this stage an individual remains simply aware of the innovation. There is no other information remains available to the user in this stage. In case of the new Amazon kindle of $ 100 the company can aware its customers by undertaking suitable promotional strategies email marketing and notifying about it at the home page of the company’s website. Stage2:- In this stage an individual or a potential buyer requires more information about the product. The buyers also start to wonder how the new innovation may help them out. In this stage the company can create a separate web page for the offering and can describe its features and benefits. But to make this information available the company can make use of hyperlinks in the home page as well as pop ups which redirect the user to the intended page. Stage3: - This stage is characterized by the evaluation and assessment from the individuals on whether the innovation will really assist their work. This stage is simply in the hands of the consumers, the company apart from influencing cannot do anything more. Stage 4:- In the fourth stage the consumer actually tests the product physically and measures its effectiveness. Therefore in order to give test facilities the company can offer the customers to make trial in its specific store. Stage 5:- The final stage is where ultimately the potential buyer purchases the innovation wholeheartedly. The entire process consumes some amount time. Therefore the adopters are even classified as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. Characteristics of the adopters Figure 4 (Source: Dangerously irrelevant, 2007) Innovators: - Innovators are the individuals who adopt the innovation at first. The features of innovators are they take risk, belongs to high social class, young in age and also financially strong. Laggards: - This category of individuals is the last adopters. There features include instable financial condition, lower social status and no opinion leadership. E-Marketing Theories at Amazon Viral email mechanism which can be utilised by amazon.com The company can send some updated and valuable information with the mail as people wants to remain updated. This will ensure that the recipients of the mail will forward it to their friends and families. This will justify the cause of viral mail. The second technique which can be used by the company is that they can send some discount coupons or gift vouchers along the mail so that it gets quicker attention of the customer. The third kind of email can be something about excitement and controversial along with the original offerings. This will surely get the maximum number of forwards. As people always likes controversies. Outcomes of interactive advertising campaigns The outcomes of the interactive advertisement campaigns are:- It has helped the company to drive the maximum number of traffics to its websites. The process in turn helps the company to convert the visit into sales. Interactive advertisement also helps to improve the conversion among both the parties. Since the system is interactive both can listen to each other. This also helps in increasing the customer experiences. This also helps in reaching the target audiences more efficiently and in a cost effective manner. Therefore interactive advertisement is considered as the one of the most important tools. Benefits of E-CRM at Amazon E-CRM offers lots of benefits to amazon.com than what CRM would have offered to the company. In E-CRM all the other traditional methods of CRM are used but in addition it makes use of email, wireless and PDA technologies. Moreover E-CRM is one of the cost effective ways of maintain the relationship with customers. In E-CRM there is no necessity of having system overheads. There is no requirement because mostly customers use browsers. Therefore the company can effectively put CRM into action. Even the customers also do not need to install other applications. E-CRM offers personalised views of the interface. The customer holds the option of customized view, which is not possible in CRM. Thereby it allows Amazon to offer more customer experiences. E-CRM is designed by keeping in mind about the need of the customer. Therefore it allows the company to design it accordingly to the customer needs. Conclusion After conducting all the necessary researches it can be stated that amazon.com is strictly based on E marketing which offers them lot of advantages over the traditional form of marketing. It can be also concluded that the use of E-CRM and other marketing tools like viral advertisements and interactive advertisement campaigns are helping in increasing the customer experiences. Products such as Amazon kindle are hugely encouraging the sales of the company. Therefore it is highly recommended that the company must focus on physical distribution of the product. This course of action will surely give the company a competitive advantage in the market place. References Amazon. (No Date). About Amazon. [Online]. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/Careers-Homepage/b?ie=UTF8&node=239364011. [Accessed on 22 May 2012]. Bartels, G. C., & Nelissen, W. (2002). Marketing for Sustainability: Towards Transactional Policy-Making. Amsterdam: IOS Press. Dangerously irrelevant. (2007). Diffusion of innovation. [Online]. Available at: http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2007/06/diffusion_of_in.html. [Accessed on 22 May 2012]. Gomiweb. (2012). what are the different types of email marketing. [Online]. Available at: http://www.gomiweb.org/email-marketing/what-are-the-different-types-of-email-marketing. [Accessed on 22 May 2012]. Groves, E. (2009). The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. King, A. B. (2008). Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets. California: O'Reilly Media, Inc. Nisha, M. (2006). Understanding Extension Education. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House. Pannu, P., & Tomar, Y. A. (2010). Ict4D Information Communication Technology for Development. New Delhi: I. K. International Pvt Ltd. Yahoo finance. (No Date). Amazon.com Inc. [Online]. Available at: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=amzn. [Accessed on 22 May 2012]. Bibliography Byers, A. (2006). Jeff Bezos: The Founder of Amazon.com. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group. Read More