A Success Story - Amazon.com

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1) One reason Amazon.com has succeeded where other online companies have failed is due to its customer-centric focus. According to founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, his goal has been, and continues to be, "make customer service the cornerstone of Amazon.com" (Jenkinson and Sain, 2005, p. 4).

This customer-centric focus entails practicing direct marketing by recognizing a customer that comes back to shop at Amazon.com. When the customer signs into the website, a cookie previously added on their first trip, recognizes them and tailors the pages they see based on their last shopping experience. It is almost like getting a personal shopper, only you get everything laid out in front of you with a full review to see if you like it. "It is an interactive, direct marketing tool that facilitates a stream of dialogue between the customer and the brand. As the customer buys or does not buy products, knowledge about the customer increases, as does the ability to serve their interests and needs" (Jenkinson and Sain, 2005, p. 5).

In addition, customers are profiled so that system remembers their birthdays, provides them with a newsletter and gives them an option to develop a space where others can read about them. This option gives customers an opportunity to "talk" with each other and review products before they buy them. The online ordering process is streamlined, making it as fast as possible. Amazon has a one-click ordering process that takes 15 seconds to complete; this process also includes paying for the items. Amazon employs a CRM strategy that puts the customer at the very top by "investing according to customer value" (Jenkinson and Sain, 2005, p. 5). Amazon.com instituted a process of improving how it handled "managing the merchandise it would carry, from delivering packages presorted by geography to postal hubs to developing complex algorithms that analyze relationships between items that people buy so they could be grouped in the same warehouse" (Frey and Cook, 2004). Furthermore, Amazon.com presorts the packages for its carriers, like FedEx, so that they will not be delayed getting to its customers. (Anders, 2012). Setting itself up as an online retailer, in the frame of eBay, Amazon.com ...