Introduction
Amazon is among the largest Internet-based companies in the world, retailing an enormous variety of products all over the planet. One of its primary attractions lies in the customer service provided by the website, which includes a range of favorable policies, personalized suggestions, a comfortable user interface, and other measures. The success of the company, particularly the positive experience associated with its use, comes from the vast amounts of data on its customers, which it collects and analyzes. This essay investigates the primary data gathering measures employed by Amazon and their influence on the company’s marketing strategies.
Customer Data Collection
A significant amount of information is collected when a person utilizes Amazon’s website, especially when he or she makes a purchase. According to Bhat, Bose, and N (2018), the company collects data such as the shipping address for orders, tracking data, and personal information used in the payment process while also requesting that the user answers some questions. It also frequently introduces innovative approaches, such as the recently opened automated stores, which track customers and can add or remove listings from their electronic checklist as the visitor puts an item into the shopping cart or back on the shelf. Due to the company’s massive user base, it can obtain significant amounts of knowledge in this manner.
Experimentation and Random Trials
In addition to collecting information about every customer, Amazon attempts to learn about the general patterns of various categories of people. Chaffey (2018) describes the company’s use of experiments to gather detailed information and test innovations. Amazon sometimes shows different variants of an innovative measure to random users and evaluates their response when deciding which of the competing solutions to implement.
This approach allows the company to avoid the inaccuracy that can be introduced by the use of focus groups and other traditional marketing tools. Furthermore, Amazon is aware that its target audience is evolving and changing. Therefore, it continuously gathers up-to-date data and simultaneously tests a variety of innovations to stay ahead of its customers and retain the ability to satisfy them.
Big Data Analysis
However, Amazon is not content with basic data analysis, as the amount of data on the Internet can provide highly detailed and accurate guesses on most customers through the use of specialized analysis tools. Amazon uses big data in a variety of services, achieving a variety of goals. According to Wills (2018), those include predicting whether a customer will buy a product and stocking that variety of items in a nearby warehouse, and allowing other retailers to use the toolset and gather more data. It is also possible that the company purchases information from other data aggregation services, although the proposition is difficult to confirm, as Amazon does not describe its marketing approaches insignificant detail.
Conclusion
Amazon is the world’s most successful online retail company, an achievement that is largely based on the excellent customer experience it offers. This ability is enabled by the amount and quality of data that the company gathers from customers at every step. Amazon stores the information that the consumers provide while interacting with the website, whether because it is necessary to finalize the purchase or because the site explicitly asks for it to enhance one’s experience.
It also implicitly gathers information on responses to new features that are randomly shown to consumers, deriving satisfaction from factors such as time spent on the site and the number of purchases made. Lastly, Amazon employs big data analysis tools for the information gathered for the first two sources and possibly for data from other websites to make guesses and predictions about a customer’s tendencies and preferences. The combination of these tools provides the company’s marketers with a wealth of information.
References
Bhat, P., Bose, A., & N, A. (2018). Application of information system in Amazon: Issue and perspectives. International Journal of Advance Research in Computer Science and Management Studies, 6(1), 23-28.
Chaffey, D. (2018). Amazon’s business strategy, revenue model and culture of metrics: A history. Smart Insights. Web.
Wills, J. (2018). 7 ways Amazon uses big data to stalk you (AMZN). Investopedia. Web.