Amazon Bookstore (amazon.com) is the world's largest bookstore by sales. It can provide a catalog of 3.1 million books, which is more than 15 times more than any bookstore in the world. To achieve all this, neither a huge building nor a large number of staff is required. The 1,600 employees of Amazon Bookstore have an average sales volume of 375,000 US dollars, which is 3 times higher than the world's largest Bames & Noble book company with 27,000 employees. More than times. For the realization of all this, e-commerce plays a very critical role.
The commercial activities of Amazon Bookstore mainly include marketing activities and service activities. The center of its work is to attract customers to buy its products and at the same time establish a good image of the company. The business strategy of Amazon Bookstore is briefly introduced as follows:
1 Operation and sales
Amazon’s bookstore marketing is nowhere more evident than on its web pages. Amazon’s bookstore investment in marketing is also noteworthy. Now, Amazon bookstore spends 24 cents for every dollar of revenue on marketing and attracting customers, while traditional retail stores only spend 4 dollars.
The marketing strategies of Amazon Bookstore mainly include:
(1) Product strategy
Amazon's bookstore is divided into three major categories according to the types of products sold: books (BOOK), music (MUSIC) and film and television products (VIDEO). Each category has a dedicated page. At the same time, it is easy to see the content and messages of several other pages in each page. It classifies different products in the bookstore and implements different marketing strategies and promotion methods for different electronic products.
(2)Pricing strategy
Amazon Bookstore adopts a discount price strategy. The so-called discount strategy means that in order to stimulate consumers to increase purchases, companies give certain rebates on the original price of goods. It makes up for discount expenses and increases profits by expanding sales. The Amazon Bookstore gives a considerable amount of rebates on most items. For example, in the music category, the bookstore promises: "You'll enjoy everyday savings of up to 40% on CDs, including up to 30% off Amazon.com's 100 best-sellong CDs (40% off on CDs, including up to 30% off). 30% rebate on best-selling CDs).”
(3) Promotional strategy
There are four main types of common promotion methods, that is, tools for companies to communicate with customers and the public. They are advertising, personal selling, public relations and business promotion. In addition to personal selling, the rest of the Amazon bookstore web page is reflected.
The enjoyment of visiting a bookstore does not necessarily lie in whether you have enough money to buy the books you want, but in the process of selecting books. Holding the book in your hand, looking at the beautiful cover, and reading the introduction is often a great pleasure of buying a book. On the Amazon bookstore homepage, apart from not being able to hold the book directly, the fun does not diminish. Exquisite multimedia pictures, clear content introduction and authoritative book reviews can make people feel immersed in the book.
The placement of advertisements on the homepage is also very reasonable, with the best books of the day first, then the introduction of recent bestsellers, book club recommendations, recent books by famous authors, etc. Not only are there a large number of multimedia advertisements on the Amazon bookstore webpage, but its advertisements can also often be seen on other related network sites. For example, when you search for book sites on Yahoo!, you can see ads for Amazon bookstores.
Another major feature of the bookstore's advertising is its dynamic and real-time nature. Advertising pages that change daily enable customers to learn about the latest publications and the most authoritative reviews. Not only do the ads change every day, but you can also read news that changes every hour from "Chech out the Amazon.com Hot 100. Updated hourly."
Amazon Bookstore is doing everything possible to promote its outlets and constantly looking for partners. Since there are many partners and intermediaries, the convenience for customers to enter its outlets and shopping opportunities have been greatly increased. It even generously made the following commitment: As long as you become a partner of Amazon Bookstore, then your outlet will sell Regardless of whether the book you publish reaches a certain quota, Amazon Bookstore will pay you a 15% introduction fee.
This is rarely seen in other collaborative partnerships. At present, Amazon Bookstore already has many partners, from the following sentence on its web page: "In fact, five of the six most visited Web sites are already Amazon.com Associates. Yahoo! And Excite are marketing products from their Web sites . So are AOL com, Geocities, Netscape, and tens of thousands of other sites both large and small.", we can learn that the five most frequently visited sites, including Yahoo! and Excie, have become Amazon bookstores partners.
The Amazon Bookstore has a dedicated gift page, which prepares a variety of gifts for adults and children. This is actually the business promotion activity of the promotion strategy in value activities. It attracts customers to purchase the store's products for a long time by providing shopping coupons or exquisite small gifts to customers of all ages. In addition, Amazon Bookstore also provides discounts to customers who purchase its products for a long time, which is also a business promotion measure.
Amazon’s bookstore has a dedicated gift page that provides small gifts to online shopping customers (including adults and children). This is both a business promotion activity and a public relations activity; in addition, it is a good relationship between the company and the public. Information communication, it listens humbly, collects the reflections of various publics and relevant intermediaries on the company and its products and services, provides them and the company's internal employees with the company's situation, and communicates information frequently; the company also specializes in the bookstore for the first time Provide a page for customers of the website to provide customers with instructions on various online usage methods to help customers become familiar with it as soon as possible. This is also a way to improve public relations.
2 Pre-sales and after-sales services
(1)Search engine
For a bookstore to list all its books and audio-visual products one by one, it is unnecessary and very inconvenient for users. Therefore, setting up search engines and navigators to facilitate users' purchases has become an essential technical measure for bookstores. At this point, the homepage of the Amazon Bookstore is very good. It provides a variety of comprehensive search methods, including search for book titles, searches for topics, searches for keywords and searches for authors. Search, and also provides a series of navigators such as best-selling books, award-winning music, top-grossing films, etc., and such a search device is provided on any page of the bookstore to facilitate users to search and guide users Make a purchase. This is actually a technical service, which boils down to one of the pre-sales services.
(2) Answers to customers’ technical questions
In addition to search services, the bookstore also provides answers to customers' frequently asked technical questions. For example, the company provides a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page to answer some questions frequently asked by users. For example, how to make electronic payments online, how much customers need to pay for shipping costs, how to order out-of-stock books, etc. Moreover, if you have special personal questions, the company will also answer them specifically for you.
(3)User feedback
Amazon's bookstore outlets provide emails, questionnaires, etc. to obtain user feedback on its business site. User feedback is not only the basis for after-sales service, but also the basis for market analysis and forecasting in business sales. E-mails often contain customers’ opinions and suggestions on products. On the one hand, the bookstore handles users' opinions, which is actually an after-sales service activity; on the other hand, it can also obtain a large amount of useful market information from emails, which can often be used as the basis for guiding the company's various business strategies in the future. This is actually It is a market analysis and forecasting activity. In addition, it often invites users to fill in some questionnaires online, and uses some free software, gifts or certain services to encourage users to send feedback emails.
(4) Readers Forum
Amazon's bookstore outlets also provide a reader forum similar to BBS. This service is very useful. The main purpose of setting up reader forums in corporate business sites is to attract customers to understand market dynamics and guide the consumer market. Discussions on hot topics can be held in the readers' forum. Use some hot topics, even extreme topics, to arouse public interest and guide and stimulate the consumer market. At the same time, you can open an online club to stabilize the original customer base and attract new customer groups through the club. By analyzing public topics and interests, we grasp market demand trends and distribute books and audio-visual products that users are interested in.
Author: Huichuang Network www.hainanweb.net