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ANALYSING THE IMPACT OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES/DIGITAL MARKETING AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR TRENDS ON AMAZON

INTRODUCTIONJust

The paper is set to unveil the impact of digital technologies/digital marketing and consumer behavior trends and Amazon was chosen as the preferred organization. The purpose of selecting the organization is that, Amazon is an e-commerce company with over 300 million active customer accounts globally. Its website, Amazon.com, consistently ranks in the top 15 most visited websites globally. Through its website, the company sells a wide range of physical consumer products including books, DVDs, electronics, clothing, beauty products, and food. These products can be sold directly by Amazon or by third-party sellers on Amazon’s sales platform. The organization also engages in selling of virtual products such as streaming and downloadable video products, e-books, gift cards, cloud storage, and web services. It is in this vein the study intends to analyze the essence of digital technology/digital marketing in Amazon. Does it have any impact in the growth of the organization/ are there any benchmarks towards the use of digital technologies /digital marketing? Are there any challenges faced or facing by Amazon by using digital technologies /digital marketing to control consumer behavior.

ACADEMIC REVIEW

Digital trends have a significant impact on the overall operation of modern businesses, especially in the digital transformation of the company, as well as on marketing as a business philosophy, activity and business function in the company. The digital transformation of the business cannot be imagined without the simultaneous application of digital marketing tools in the company (Andzulis, Panagopoulos, and Rapp 2012). Companies that continuously follow and apply modern digital trends, in relation to their competitors, can "make" the necessary adjustments to their own operations, because they are more flexible than other market players who do not follow or inappropriately "quickly" implement digital trends in their own work (Descotes, and Delassus 2015).

Digital technology has played a great role in our modern society. People have started to use many products with digital technology in daily life, such as smartphones, search engines, online social media, and kinds of applications. At the same time, digital technology is really important for many companies, like Amazon, Google and Facebook, since many of their products are using digital technology (Dwivedi and Yogesh K, 2021). Digital technology has brought a lot of changes to our society. One of these changes is that many companies change their marketing strategy. The use of social media in marketing is one of the changes in marketing strategy. Many people worldwide could access the Internet and use kinds of digital platforms, such as social media. It is a great opportunity for companies to market through social media. By marketing on these social media, companies reached their marketing objective and gained benefits (Dwivedi and Yogesh K, 2021).

In an era of digital technology, marketing through social media is an important step for companies to change their marketing strategy. At the same time, big data plays a great role when companies change their marketing strategy. Big data is a large volume of data collected from kinds of channels, like digital platforms. By using statistical modeling techniques, marketers analyze big data to get useful information for helping companies to make decisions on marketing strategy (Denish, and Murthi, 2021). So, both digital platforms and big data help companies to make a new marketing strategy. In an era of digital technology, companies need to adapt to the new business environment with digital technology. Both digital platforms and big data can help companies to make their decisions when they are deciding their marketing strategy.

Digital technology has brought an influence to the marketing strategy. Many researchers have studied related topics in previous researches. Huang, Carrubi, and Yu, (2021) provided a summary to represent "the key insights of the selected articles on how technologies can assist improvement in various areas of business and management, including innovation, entrepreneurship, marketing, corporate social responsibility, the economy, and organizational behavior" (Huarng et al, 2021). The study from Dwivedi et al. (2021) showed that the effect of digital and social media marketing could bring both positive and negative results for organisms. Rust and Espinoza (2006) examined the effect of technology on firms' ability to collect customer information. Krishen, Yogesh and Bindu, (2021) proposed a model for interactive digital marketing. Gupta, Theo, Shampy, Ajay, Kristofferson (2021) found the effect of big data on improving the marketing performance of companies. These researches found the effect of digital technology on marketing strategy. When companies develop their marketing strategy, they use a marketing mix for help.

However, Amazon.com Company is not left behind in this modern catalyst of engaging the customers and rendering goods and services to the prospective ones. The digital era is a push for Amazon to provide books, DVDs, electronics, clothing, beauty products, food etc to those who make use of the digital service.

Digital Technology

Many things are related to digital technology, like the Internet, social media, games, and mobile phones. In this study, both digital platforms and big data are used as two examples to seek how digital technology will influence the company's decision on marketing strategy through the marketing mix (Zhu, 2021). A digital platform is a place where data are generated. Companies can process data to receive useful information to help them make decisions on marketing strategy (Zhu, 2021).

Fig1 Six different types of digital platforms

Digital Platform

A digital platform is a common place where companies can market. There are kinds of digital platforms, like, social media, digital business platforms. Figure 1 shows six different types of digital platforms (Digital Platform Map; Rangaswamy, 2020). Different digital platforms have different characteristics. Take digital social media, for example. Many companies use different social media platforms for marketing, like Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook (Dwivedi, 2021). Snapchat is regarded as "the most intimate, casual, and dynamic platform providing users with information, socialization, and entertainment"(Dwivedi, 2021). Dwivedi et al. (2021) mention the effectiveness of Twitter for informative appeal, the suitability of Facebook for interactive entertainment posts, and the suitability of Instagram for interactive content combining informative-entertainment appeals (Dwivedi, 2021). These digital social media have different characteristics. Companies will take into account these characteristics when they are making their marketing strategies.

Digital business platforms, like Google and Uber Technologies, "designed expressly to use digital technologies to enable business interactions among authorized users", are another example of digital platforms (Rangaswamy, 2020). For these digital business platforms, one of their advantages is that "the closed-loop nature of the data collection process enables the platform, its users, and its partners to run online experiments continually to improve offerings and rapidly evaluate the efficacy of potential business strategies and actions" (Rangaswamy, 2020). The collected data from digital business platforms can help companies decide their business strategies. These digital platforms are good channels for companies to market. Some models have been developed to understand how digital platforms play a role in digital marketing. As one of the digital platforms, social media has also become a place for customer's voices.. show that "marketing is now required to identify and cater to the needs of all users on all sides of a platform, and its primary role is transitioning toward finding appropriate offerings for platform users and facilitating their various interactions" (Rangaswamy, 2020). Through digital platforms, companies can gain useful information from their customers.

With the above reviews, Amazon.com engage its prospective customers on digital platforms by providing web services, technology, fulfilment, computing, digital storage, and other services, as well as enable sellers to offer products or services through our websites (SEC, 2015). As Hill & Jones (2010) point out that many of low-technology businesses have been transforming to high-tech business by using leverage effect of technology. Despite retail industry used to be deliberated as low-technology business, along with internet and new online retail business models, retail industry has been moved through to the high-tech business which led by first mover companies such as Amazon.com.

Fig2Amazon Web Services

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is based on online channels with the highest frequency of use, they are dynamic, and they can change from year to year and are always influenced by market trends. In short, digital marketing constantly uses review, analysis, explanation, promotion process and helps to establish stronger brand-consumer relationships, helping to effectively identify consumer relationships and attract attention. The impact of this type of unconventional marketing has been great, affecting sales and the number of customers, dictating, at best, commercial tendencies (Shaw, 1916). If most clients interact with social media, firms should also interact with social media. In the past, marketers have used email, direct marketing, telemarketing, information websites, television, radio and other mechanisms to disseminate information related to the firm or its products. The World Wide Web has been used to present marketing messages through page views and advertising to reach large numbers of people in a short period of time. It served as an advertising tool that shaped surfer behavior (Converse and Harvey, 1930). Living in the digital age, when everyone has access to the Internet, it is logical to switch to this type of marketing and intensive use of companies.

Digital marketers are in charge of driving brand awareness and lead generation through all the digital channels both free and paid at company’s disposal. These channels include social media, the company’s own website, search engine rankings, email, display advertising, and the company’s blog. The digital marketer focuses on different key performance indicator (KPI) for each channel so they can properly measure the company’s performance across each one.

Digital marketing is carried out across many marketing roles today. In small companies, one generalist might own many of the digital marketing tactics described above at the same time. In larger companies, these tactics have multiple specialists that each focus on just one or two of the brand’s digital channels. Here are some examples of these specialists (Howard, 1957; Kelley and William, 1958). The best digital marketers have clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports their overarching goals. And depending on goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can support larger campaign through free and paid channels at their disposal. A content marketer, for ex ample, can create series of blog posts that serve to generate leads from a new eBook the business recently created (Zhu, 2021). The company’s social media marketer might then help promote these blog posts through paid and organic posts on the business’s social media accounts. Perhaps the email marketer creates an email campaign to send those who download the eBook more information on company. Following are some of most common digital marketing tactics and the channels involved (Zhu, 2021).

Fig3 Types of digital marketing

Types of digital marketing

- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This is process of optimizing website to “rank” higher in search engine results pages, thereby increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic your website receives. The channels that benefit from SEO include Websites, Blogs, and Info graphics.

- Social Media Marketing: This practice promotes your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business. The channels you can use in social media marketing include Face book, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snap chat, Pinterest, and Google+ (Kannan, and Hongshuang, 2017).

- Content Marketing: It denotes the creation and promotion of content assets for the purpose of generating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customers. The channels that can play a part in your content marketing strategy include Blog posts, eBooks and whitepapers, Info graphics, online brochures and look books (Digital Platform Map; Rangaswamy, 2020).

- Affiliate Marketing: This is a type of performance-based advertising where you receive commission for promoting someone else’s products, services on your website. Affiliate marketing channels include Hosting video ads through the YouTube Partner Program and Posting affiliate links from your social media accounts (Thompson and Bolen, 2020).

- Native Advertising: Native advertising refers to advertisements that are primarily content-led and featured on a platform alongside other, non-paid content. Buzz Feed-sponsored posts are a good example, but many people also consider social media advertising to be “native” – Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising.

- Marketing Automation: Marketing automation refers to the software that serves to automate your basic marketing operations. Many marketing departments can automate repetitive tasks they would otherwise do manually, such as Email newsletters, Social media post scheduling, Contact list updating, Lead-nurturing workflows, Campaign tracking and reporting.

-Pay-Per-Click (PPC): PPC is a method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked. One of the most common types of PPC is Google Ad Words, which allows you to pay for top slots on Google’s search engine results pages at a price “per click” of the links you place. Other channels where you can use PPC mainly include Paid ads on Facebook, Promoted Tweets on Twitter, and Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn.

-Email Marketing: Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audiences. Email is often used to promote content, discounts and events, as well as to direct people toward the business’s website. The types of emails you might send in an email marketing campaign include Blog subscription newsletters, Follow-up emails to website visitors who downloaded something, Customer welcome emails, Holiday promotions to loyalty program members, Tips or similar series emails for customer nurturing.

-Inbound Marketing: Inbound marketing refers to the “full-funnel” approach to attracting, engaging, and delighting customers using online content. You can use every digital marketing tactic listed above throughout an inbound marketing strategy.

-Online PR: Online PR is practice of securing earned online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites. It’s much like traditional PR, but in the online space. The channels you can use to maximize your PR efforts include: Reporter outreach via social media Engaging online reviews of your company, Engaging comments on your personal website or blog.

For Kotler, (2010) in a conference at a World Forum, he detailed how what used to be called Marketing has changed, moving from the product to the customer and consequently to the person, where there is a direct connection. However, communication with the consumer has changed, clearly differentiating the three stages of marketing as shown in the following table.

Table 1. Comparison of Marketing 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.

Source: Fuentes Vera, S. L., Huacón, V., & Arisendy, A. (2015). Analysis of the evolution of marketing 1.0, to marketing 3.0 and proposed application in the Miller brand of the company Cervecería Nacional in the sector of the city of Guayaquil (Bachelor's thesis).

CRITIQUE

Impact of Technology in Marketing

Technology and Communication helps businesses grow and prosper, creates relationships, strengthens the effectiveness of organizations, and allows people to learn about one another. Technologies, such as the Internet, mobile phones, social media, and customer relationship management systems greatly affect the way companies communicate with prospective customers. These new forms of communication are changing the media landscape and the type of messaging strategy organizations use. Many of the consumers and business professionals seek information and connect with other people and businesses from their computers and phones with access to many sources of information and an interest in interactive media, consumers may collect more product information on their own (Esha and Ashank, 2017).

Work environments are also changing, with more people having virtual offices, texting on their cell phones, or communicating through social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. As the media landscape changes, the money that organizations spend on different types of communication and technology will change as well. Once companies have developed products and services, they must communicate the values and benefits of the offerings to current and potential customers. Young population today is part of the millennial generation, and it is consumers from this generation who are driving the change toward new communication technologies (Esha and Ashank, 2017).

A young consumer might opt to get promotions via mobile marketing for example say, from stores on your cell phone as you walk by them or via a mobile gaming device that allows you to connect to the Web. Likewise, advertisements on Facebook are popular as businesses continue to utilize more social media (Kates, 2013). Traditional media such as magazines, newspapers, television compete with media such as the Internet, texting, mobile phones, social media, user-generated content such as blogs, and YouTube as well as out-of-home advertising such as billboards and movable promotions (Clark, 2012). Therefore, all forms of marketing media have been forced to come up with new innovations to remain relevant. With high consumer expectations and an explosion in engagement devices and channels, marketers today are faced with a sprawling matrix of disconnected figures to make sense of them. Some tools today provide a more consolidated view of figures, but still around 71% of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) feel unprepared for the data explosion they face. Collecting metrics today means going beyond tracking the transaction and business objectives. In order to leverage metrics strategically to create loyal and engaged clients, businesses need to look at creating consolidated, personal views of their customers that span channels. They need metrics that can come together to help paint a picture of the end-to-end client relationship and show how to better target messaging to drive engagement. Marketers need to find a way to break down the silos and connect the data sources. Only then can they get a complete view of client interaction and transactions and leverage this data to build strong relationships (Clark, 2012).

With the aid of digital marketing, Amazon.com distinguished itself as an internet-based book retailer amongst the other conventional book stores. Amazon.com’s online platform assisted customers with its easy search and review features to search books easily and to read book reviews by clicking a few buttons instead of traditional methods. In a short-term, Amazon.com transformed its business-model to a marketplace by diversifying its vendors and product portfolio by creating a network effect which encourages the customers to use platform and services which also creates boundaries for the rivals (Halaburda & Oberholzer-Gee, 2014).

A company can follow one or more of three generic strategies: cost leadership, differentiation or focus (Porter, 1985). Similarly, Amazon.com has a vision to provide wide variety of products and fulfilment services along with the affordable prices that requires achieving economy of scope and economy of scale along with customer happiness. Moreover, Jeff Bezos’s famous sketch illustrates Amazon’s main business strategy as the growth strategy in Figure 4 based on Amazon.com’s virtuous cycle as well as data is the king approach in Figure 5 by building network-effect.

Fig 4 Amazon’s Business-Strategy (CBInsights, 2018)

Fig5 The Virtuous Cycle (CBInsights,2018)

More so, as a part of Amazon.com’s customer centric strategies, its value creation & proposition starts with Amazon.com’s symbol that represents a smile from A-to-Z for the customers and continues with product availability and variety along with lower prices to create and deliver value (Zenger, 2013). Figure 5 is created to show that Amazon.com’s value chain drives to provide low prices and extraordinary customer experience which differentiates Amazon.com by creating loyalty and unique competitive edge amongst the competitors (Porter, 1980; 1985). Amazon also boosts customer’s experiences along with its Amazon Prime retention program that also enables personalised services which are extensively valued by all ‘the Amazonians’ (Chaffey, 2018).

Fig6 Amazon.com Value Chain Analysis

Tools of modern Marketing

Modern marketing uses Digital marketing. It could be explained as a marketing that makes use of electronic devices such as personal computers, smartphones, and cellphones, tablets Television sets TV and game consoles to engage with stakeholders. A component of Digital marketing is Digital Brand Engagement. Digital marketing applies technologies or platforms such as websites, e-mail, apps and social networks (Kates, 2013). Digital Marketing can be through Non-internet channels also like TV, Radio, SMS, or through Internet channels like Social Media, E-mails ads, Banner ads. Social Media Marketing is a component of digital marketing. Many organizations use a combination of traditional and digital marketing channels though however, digital marketing is becoming more popular with marketers as it allows them to target and track many aspects including their Return on Investment (ROI) more accurately compared to other traditional marketing channels. Digital Marketing is the use of digital channels to promote or market products and services to consumers and businesses (Esha and Ashank, 2017).

A transformation of marketing is underway as we spend more time on our mobiles, tablets and laptops. The challenge for brands is to connect with customers through all these devices in real time and create campaigns that work across social media, display advertising and e-commerce. The real-time conversations brands have with people as they interact with websites and mobile apps have changed the nature of marketing. The modern-day marketing department needs to combine the creative side of the discipline by using powerful narratives to tap into people’s wishes and aspirations with the technical side of data, digital engineering and analytics. The two areas do not always sit easily together (Esha and Ashank, 2017). Getting creative marketers to work alongside technical staff can be a huge challenge. Three areas of marketing which have been transformed by digital are the speed, relevance and reach of campaigns. Digital marketing has also greatly increased relevancy. Messages can be targeted with a laser focus to very specific groups offering them relevant content. The reach of campaigns has also increased greatly. With so many different ways that customers access media, whether through Facebook, YouTube, news websites, via mobile or tablet apps, a strong idea can quickly gain huge scale (Kates, 2013).

Marketers need to update their skills in order to make the most of these fast-moving and highly relevant campaigns through digital. They need to work closely with data specialists, web developers and social media professionals. The marketer of the future needs to combine marketing and creative skills with an understanding of real-time technology. Just as marketers need to become savvier about technology, data and analytics, so the technically minded staff on the digital side have to get more creative and they are rising to this challenge. A vital quality for marketers in the fast-changing digital environment is curiosity, rather than any specific technical knowledge. For brands to work effectively together in the digital world, chief marketing officers and chief information officers work in unison. But this is hard to achieve for many organizations and the two sides can end up in conflict (Kates, 2013). Pure digital players such as Net-a-Porter that have always been digital are structured for the digital age. Looking for a career in marketing must be prepared to bring together the magic of marketing and the science of technology to create powerful and relevant marketing campaigns. Today’s connected consumers are using smartphones, iPads, laptops and even glasses and watches to access content. As a result, marketing departments need to provide compelling campaigns across these different devices and become proficient in using technology. Marketers work closely with IT departments and technologists. They understand the processes behind developing websites, handling data and running social media campaigns. The panel discussed how marketers could develop the skills to enable them to work hand in hand with technologists while retaining their creativity, flair and intuition (Esha and Ashank, 2017).

Marketing Technology: Past and Future

Technology has given way to the rise of the conscious consumer. Marketing had been labeled as one of the four key functional areas of a business. However with marketing’s role changing in the late 1990’s to building customer relationships, there has been a subsequent change in the way the overall function is regarded internally within corporations. Today, marketing is recognized as the glue that binds organizations together (Brinkley, 2012). It is marketing’s sales projections that assist operations in determining production levels and finance in planning budgets. It is the very same marketing, whose predictive analytics of customer trends and needs that helps research and development determine new projects for product development. Integral to this cross-functional view is the belief that marketing has become everyone’s business. With increased access to information encouraged by the use of mobile digital technologies, consumers are no longer waiting for marketers to reach out to them (Brinkley, 2012)

With the increasing use of Customer Relationship Management systems within companies that help to integrate and transform the information from these touch points, it to dynamic strategies, it has become even more important for marketing to be diffused throughout every aspect of a business. Companies, such as Starbucks and Zappos that have embraced this new marketing concept have lived to experience tremendous success in this highly transparent world. Understanding that the power of the message no longer laid in the medium, but rather in the ways in which the medium is used, most marketers began rebranding their business, focusing their resources on building interactive relationships with consumers in online communities rather than pushing media campaigns. Well for starters, marketers are no longer guided by the adage, “a superior product will sell itself.” Understanding how the internet has facilitated globalization, and the ease at which customers can source and purchase products from anywhere in the world, marketers have become more robust, strategically positioning themselves wherever their customers are located in the digital sphere (Brinkley, 2012)

At these new touch points, the astute marketer listens to his customer, gathers enriched, personalized data, which he manipulates to provide valuable solutions, not push his product unto the customer. Today’s marketer understands that content is king and that to survive, marketers must become multi-channel publishers as well. As users continuously search for fresh information, marketers are now faced with the challenge of continuously feeding that need and doing so using the right format, scope and tone. Developing open-source content is critical to this strategy, as is finding ways to ensure that the messages are syndicated and integrated with other sites through links. Websites are now filled with blogs, through which marketers offer insights not necessarily about their products or services but more so about their customers most pressing concerns – all in the hopes of nurturing the buyer seller relationship and building brand loyalty. Understanding the perceived value that customers ascribe to personalized messages, the practice of mass marketing has taken a back seat, to diversified advertising that is rooted in the notion that quality customer relationships translate to greater returns than just mere relationship. Because of the ease and frequency of distribution of user and marketer generated content, marketers are also “brand vigilantes,” forced to keep a watchful eye for brand defamation online. Just as one good review written by a customer, which is shared with connections in an online community can boost a brand’s reputation and customer base, so too can negative feedback offered by users (Esha and Ashank, 2017).

One of the biggest changes in human interaction is the recent spread of social media. The rapid growth of web-based platforms that facilitate social behavior on the Internet has significantly changed the nature of human activity, environment and interaction (Rust and Espinoza, 2006). Real social relationships have been transferred to the virtual world, which has led to the creation of online communities of people from all over the world. This movement into the digital dimension allows people to share knowledge, entertain each other and promote dialogue between different cultures (Tiago and Veríssimo, 2014)

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Consumer-Friendly Features

Amazon has introduced a number of features to facilitate easy purchasing by customers. In September 1997, they introduced one-click purchasing, where users could set up their account, so they could just click Buy for an item; choosing this option meant they didn’t need to go through a checkout process their credit card on file was charged automatically. Amazon Prime was introduced in 2005 with users paying an annual fee to get perks on the site like free shipping and reduced price 1-day shipping (Gordon, 2020). The benefits of Amazon Prime would expand over time. Amazon also increased its product range over the years to include food products and items sold by the third parties. The products sold also came to include virtual items such as e-books and digital video content (Gordon, 2020).

The drive for providing quality customer service has led Amazon to also consider novel ways to get products to consumers, which has included testing with drones, 1-hour or 2-hour delivery in select cities, and even fulfillment systems that predict consumer behavior; by sending products to locations geographically closer to customers, the fulfillment system predicts who will buy those products soon. Amazon divides their website into departments; with each department representing either an Amazon product or a category of where/how an item is used. The Amazon product departments include Kindle e-readers, Fire Tablets, Echo & Alexa, Amazon Music, and Prime Video (Gordon, 2020). The categories of products related to where/how they are used include Movies, Music, & Games, Food & Grocery, Beauty & Health, Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry, and Books & Audible. Site visitors are able to search in any of these categories for particular items. Users of the site set up their own account, which can be used to save payment information, make wish lists of products, and house digital content the user has purchased. Users are also able to write reviews for items on the site. A user can write a review for any item they wish and rate that item on a 1–5 scale. If the user purchased that item through Amazon, their review is tagged to let people know that fact. For every user review, other users are able to indicate whether they found the review helpful or not (Gordon, 2020).

Amazon sells a large number of items directly, but they also allow third-party vendors to sell items on the site. The items can be new or used, with restrictions tied to particular categories. These third-party vendors can be the actual company that produces the item, large retail organizations, or even individual buyers selling an item they no longer want. Third-party vendors can ship items sold or have Amazon take care of all logistics related to shipping. Users are able to rate individual transactions with third-party vendors on a 1-5 scale and can make comments. Amazon tracks these ratings and other transaction data like shipping time and will ban sellers that fall below particular levels (Gordon, 2020).

From the above graph, it is obvious that Amazon is mostly visit by the consumers to make purchase of their preferred goods or services.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

This study examined the impact of digital technologies/digital marketing and consumer behavior trends on Amazon. Amazon is one of the leading e-commerce companies rendering various services like selling of books, DVDs, electronics, clothing, beauty products, and food. It was discovered that digital technologies/digital marketing is a paradigmatic shift that straighten consumer relation with the company. This digital sphere has encourage the company to interact with customers in their conform zones and give them opportunity to buy goods and service from various Amazon platforms. The birth of these duos (digital technologies/digital marketing) encouraged consumer to have easy access to read books on Amazon and also read the review if time doesn’t allow such user to read the whole text book. With the help of internet, consumers have gained access to multitudes of information from Amazon. They can vet products, check for prices, read reviews and even communicate with other users about product quality and buyer satisfaction. Also, Amazon created a feature to facilitate easy purchasing of different products by customers. The one-click purchasing was lunched where users could set up their account, so they could just click buy for an item. Amazon Prime was also introduced to enable users to pay an annual fee to get perks on the site like free shipping and reduced price 1-day shipping.

However, it is recommended that Amazon adopt more digital technologies/digital marketing tool and strategies to enable them meet the consumers’ needs as many e-commerce platforms are coming on board.

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