Wednesday 30 January 2013
CASE STUDY
"Work hard, have fun, make history."
-Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos who conceived the idea of Amazon.com noticed the growing trend of internet usage and was
well aware of unlimited number of possibilities open to the business world. While reviewing the
availability of catalogue of books available for shopping on the internet he observed that the catalogue of
books could not be mailed to the customers because the mail size was too large to be adequately mailed.
In order to solve this problem he came up with the brilliant idea of selling books online where anybody or
everybody could search the available stock and place orders directly online and get delivery by mail or
courier. He literally made a database of books and made it available on the net. In order to test his ideas
he asked three hundred acquaintances to test it. Due to shortage of cash he asked the same testers who had
tested the website to spread the word. With this initial referral strategy Amazon.com was able to sell the
books to over 35 countries worldwide. In order to build traffic to the website the power of CRM and web
technology was combined. During the early days of Amazon.com the organization provided 5% of the
sales that occurred due to referral. Thus one promising referral created six webpages per week by
providing interesting web based interaction interfaces and describing books of interest. By and by extra
features were added to the website like customer feedback and reviews, one-click shopping, email order
verification, customer complaint and redress systems, promotional deals like today’s deals and year end
deals, customer profile and customer recommendation section. Today Amazon has become multinational
electronic commerce company and has become world’s largest online retailer. Amazon.com started as
an online bookstore, but soon diversified into selling DVDs, CDs, MP3, cameras downloads,
software, video games, electronics, apparel, home décor furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. It also
provides its own consumer electronic items like Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire tablet
computer. Separate retail websites have now been opened for separate counties like USA, UK, China,
Japan, and other European countries.
DISCUSSION QUESTION
Identify ten CRM strategies that Amazon.com has incorporated to initiate a business, acquire customers,
and retain them in a successful manner.
"Work hard, have fun, make history."
-Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos who conceived the idea of Amazon.com noticed the growing trend of internet usage and was
well aware of unlimited number of possibilities open to the business world. While reviewing the
availability of catalogue of books available for shopping on the internet he observed that the catalogue of
books could not be mailed to the customers because the mail size was too large to be adequately mailed.
In order to solve this problem he came up with the brilliant idea of selling books online where anybody or
everybody could search the available stock and place orders directly online and get delivery by mail or
courier. He literally made a database of books and made it available on the net. In order to test his ideas
he asked three hundred acquaintances to test it. Due to shortage of cash he asked the same testers who had
tested the website to spread the word. With this initial referral strategy Amazon.com was able to sell the
books to over 35 countries worldwide. In order to build traffic to the website the power of CRM and web
technology was combined. During the early days of Amazon.com the organization provided 5% of the
sales that occurred due to referral. Thus one promising referral created six webpages per week by
providing interesting web based interaction interfaces and describing books of interest. By and by extra
features were added to the website like customer feedback and reviews, one-click shopping, email order
verification, customer complaint and redress systems, promotional deals like today’s deals and year end
deals, customer profile and customer recommendation section. Today Amazon has become multinational
electronic commerce company and has become world’s largest online retailer. Amazon.com started as
an online bookstore, but soon diversified into selling DVDs, CDs, MP3, cameras downloads,
software, video games, electronics, apparel, home décor furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. It also
provides its own consumer electronic items like Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire tablet
computer. Separate retail websites have now been opened for separate counties like USA, UK, China,
Japan, and other European countries.
DISCUSSION QUESTION
Identify ten CRM strategies that Amazon.com has incorporated to initiate a business, acquire customers,
and retain them in a successful manner.
