Marketing Strategy for Amazon
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Brief Summary of Amazon
Amazon is a multi-national company based in America that focuses on offering e-commerce services ranging from cloud computing to digital streaming (Amazon, 2020). It also offers artificial intelligence solutions and products such as echo smart speakers. Although the company was founded in the early 90s its success recently came to the limelight as a result of its increase in revenue base compared to other tech giants such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft. One of Amazon’s notable innovations in the field of Artificial Intelligence is the development of Alexa in 2014. Amazon’s Alexa is an AI-driven virtual assistant that is embedded into the echo speakers and can carry out a range of commands such as playing music, adjusting volume, switching on or off lights, switching on or off a TV, searching for movies online, checking the weather, creating a shopping list in the Amazon’s online shopping platform, etc (Amazon, 2020). Some of Amazon’s products that contain Alexa features include Echo, Echo Show, Echo Spot, Echo dot, and Sonos One.
As a marketing manager for new products at Amazon, one of the product extension lines I would wish to launch is Amazon’s Echo dot elderly. The Echo smart speakers currently distributed by Amazon are generally designed to serve adults however Echo dot elderly are smart speakers designed specifically to serve the needs of the elderly persons. It has more enhanced voice recognition features that enable the elderly to interact efficiently with it within their living rooms and their cars. Also, unlike the existing Alexa, Echo dot Elderly takes commands without requiring a “wake word” to trigger it. For instance, an elderly person would say “Switch off lights, Alexa,” rather than needing to say the wake word “Alexa” before the command. Additionally, the Echo dot elderly has a robotic body fitted with cameras and sensors that can be able to sense changes in room temperatures, gas leaks, and even fire outbreaks. All the above features are added solely to increase the level of interaction between it and the consumers. The idea behind the development of the product is that most elderly persons have morbidity issues as a result of old age hence they might have difficulties moving from one place to another within their premises. Also, some elderly persons have visual impairment problems hence they need frequent assistance in their daily chores.
Approaches to Incorporating Branding and Co-Branding Opportunities
One aspect that will make the launch of Echo dot Elderly a successful mission is adopting the best branding and co-branding strategies. Partnership with other companies. Lindemann, (1999) defines branding as the process of creating unique features of a particular product or service to differentiate it from other existing products. One of the first approaches I will use to brand the Echo dot Elderly is to design a unique logo and tagline that aligns with the company’s overall vision and mission. For instance, I will use a tagline such as “Echo dot Elderly: An Easy Life for the Elderly”. This kind of tagline will ensure that the consumers have something to remember about the product. I will also apply the same company co-branding approach to minimize cost. The same company co-branding approach is a type of co-branding whereby a new product is incorporated into the existing products (Lindemann, 1999). In this case, the Echo dot Elderly is just the same as other existing echo products only that it has extensive features hence will be marketed together with products such as Echo Show, Echo dot, and Echo spot. Another important approach that will elevate the presents of the product in the market is by use of partnership strategies. I will strike partnerships with automobile industries, home care for the elderly service providers, and housing companies. For instance, I will make deals with automobile manufacturers to have default settings that can accommodate Echo Dot elderly. Likewise to the housing companies and home care service providers. These opportunities will ease the penetration of Echo dot elderly products to the market.
Advertising Strategy
The vision of having Echo dot Elderly products worldwide will remain a pipe dream if proper advertising strategies are not going to be implemented. To ensure success in advertising the product in other countries, first I will collect the relevant consumer demographic, geographic, and psychographic information from the specific countries. This will give us and highlight the kind of consumers existing in those countries and whether or not our new product will be on-demand.
After completing the consumer assessment I will employ marketing strategies such as product publicity, personal selling, direct marketing, and social media marketing. Some of the ways I will create publicity for the new product in the selected countries is by the use of celebrity endorsements as well as running advertisement coverage on popular television networks. The ads will be specifically designed to describe the Echo dot Elderly product and its benefits to the elderly. On the other hand, personal selling will involve having expert sales personnel across the retail outlets that will be selling the product (Parente & Strausbaugh, 2014). The personnel will be tasked to explain the benefits and teach the uninformed consumers how to use the new product as well as its functionality. On direct marketing, we shall utilize the mails of existing active Amazon customers to advertise the launching of the new product by sending them email alerts. Also, we shall maintain a continuous social media presence as well as running sponsored promotions on the new products. Since there is a variation of advertising policies in different countries and factoring in language barriers all our advertisements will be tailored to individual countries.
Targeted Market
China is the targeted market for the new Echo product. Currently, our competitors such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have not established a proper Echo market share in the country. There is an opportunity for easy entry making it the best business destination compared to other countries. China is situated in East Asia and is the most populous country in the entire world with a record of 1.4 billion people as of 2019 (STATISTA, 2020). According to STATISTA (2020) Chinas, the population distribution is as follows; 0-15 years represents 17.8%, 16-59 years stands at 64 %, 60 years and older represent 18 and 65 years and older makes up 12.6 % of the whole population. From the above statistics, it is clear that China’s population is aging a good indication that our products will be in great demand.
Pricing Strategies
Pricing is an important aspect of any business. When making pricing decisions factors such as marketplace conditions, quality of the product, cost of manufacturing the product, and the expected returns of the product (Hinterhuber, 2019). There are many types of pricing strategies including demand pricing, competitive pricing, cost-plus pricing, penetration pricing, psychological pricing, etc. In our case, we shall use penetrating pricing since we are venturing into a new market. One way of implementing penetrating pricing is by setting the price of the product a bit lower. The price will be based on the price of Google Home Assistant. It is the only competitor that Amazon will face hence the price will be set slightly below it to entice customers. However, due to its advance features with time the price will be adjusted slightly upwards when the customer base has been established.
References
Amazon. (2020). Amazon.com: Online shopping for electronics, apparel, computers, books, DVDs & more. https://www.amazon.com/
Hinterhuber, A. (2019). Implementing pricing strategies. Pricing Strategy Implementation, 11-21. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429446849-2
Lindemann, J. (1999). Creating economic value through Co-branding. Co-Branding, 97-112. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599673_7
Parente, D., & Strausbaugh-Hutchinson, K. (2014). Advertising campaign strategy: A guide to marketing communication plans. Cengage Learning.
STATISTA. (2020). China: Total population 1980-2024. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263765/total-population-of-china/