Essay: Reflection On Marketing Strategies: Learnings From Amazon.

For completing this Task successfully, you must read carefully the 8 th week’s content as well summarize all the academic knowledge you receive from the module’s content and professional benefits you received while critically analyzed Amazon’s case towards marketing strategies during the completeness of the summative assignment 1 during the 4th week of the module.
The indicators of a good reflection are:
It is personal to you
It is clear how the learning relates to your role or prepares for a future role
It outlines the content and method of the learning activity
It describes how your knowledge, skills and attributes have developed as a
result othe learning activity.

It identifies any further gaps or learning you did not cover and how you might fill these.
It describes how your current practice might change as a result
You can approach your Self Reflective writing as per the four stages below:
1. What did I expect to learn
2. What did I learn
3. What will I do differently going forwards
4. My actions and next steps.

Overview of the Paper

This paper will provide reflection upon various marketing strategies and how it is useful for any organization. This will also reflect my learnings regarding strategy used by Amazon and what are the two main approaches of marketing strategy. I have gathered information regarding the difference between the approaches like Outside-In marketing and Top Down marketing that will be reflected throughout the paper. It will also include the demands of the customers and how marketing strategy is fulfilling it.

What did I expect to learn

I was expecting to gain a deeper understanding of the use of various marketing strategies and for this Amazon was selected as the relevant case study. There are various companies using different types of marketing approaches, and therefore, it was important for me to identify the difference between the various strategies and to select the suitable one for my future career. I was expecting to learn the differences between two of the vital marketing strategies like Top Down marketing approach and the Outside-In marketing approach. And which approach is better to build a relationship in business (Menon et al., 2015).

 Also, it was crucial for me to identify the satisfaction of the customers through the use of Outside-In marketing approach. The identification of the customer’s satisfaction will help in facilitating the effectiveness of the entire marketing approaches used by any of the organization. And what kind of technological advancement and strategies used by online marketing to provide the product to the consumers in sufficient time. Also, it will help me to know about the importance of advertisement that how it is effective for business or any organization.

 It will help me to know the weakness and strength of the strategies. The completion of the assignment was expected to provide proper relevance and a good portion of knowledge in its every aspect, critically making adequate evaluation and analysis (Hansen, McDonald and Mitchell, 2017). Further, I was looking forward to gaining knowledge on the referencing part as a proper reference to suitable literature was considered as to be vital.

What did I learn

My learnings include the use and importance of marketing strategies while executing a particular business as per the concerned market segments.  Marketing strategy is a business plan to reach people and turn them into consumers of the service or product that provide by the business. It determines to be an approach that looks forward to planning long-term goals and achieving competitive advantage (Akter et al., 2016). It also helps in organizational strategic planning by analyzing the situation. From this study, I learned that for starting a new business, there are some essential parts of a marketing plan that can use, that are market research, clear statement about the services and products, value, business goal and planning, pricing strategy (Armstrong, Delia and Giardina, 2016).

Amazon.com, Inc. is American electronic commerce and consumer electronics organization based in Washington, established by Jeff Bezos on 5^th July 1994. There are few of the crucial marketing strategies adopted by Amazon which provided me immense knowledge regarding its utilization and implementation within an organization for achieving the desired goals of the firm. The marketing strategies used by Amazon are divided into four of the crucial sections as strategies used by the CEO, advertising, external marketing, and technological advancement.

What did I expect to learn

I have gathered knowledge regarding why the outside-In approach is considered to be better than the Top Down approach in marketing (Eguchi, 2016). One of the well-known and oldest strategies in the world of business is a top-down marketing approach, by which an organization will able to generate new ideas to target its customers. There are few of the pros and cons of using this approach that needs to be known before implementing this approach. The system is important for verifying large deals in an efficient way. Outside-In marketing approach mainly focuses on the customer, and it identifies any business through the customer’s point of view. It enhances the consumer’s direct link to observe and adapt to the pattern of purchasing. In online marketing, outside in approach is better than the top-down approach strategy (Day, 2014).

What will I do differently going forwards

The learning will help me in enhancing my skills and knowledge regarding the effective and efficient use of marketing strategies, and this will also help me in securing the best job in the future. Moreover, I will apply these learnings to increase my decision-making processes so that my overall performance can be significantly increased. The different thing that I will do going forward is to make better strategies by analyzing the particular situation as well as the business and the customer requirements, as these will help in evaluating the preferred growth of my future organization (Fan, Lau and Zhao, 2015).Before purchasing any product, the customer critically analyses the contents of advertisements and then makes the decision, whether to purchase it or not.  

So, I should give importance to two way communication to improve my work and listen actively to consumer’s wants and needs (Killian and McManus, 2015). For the better growth of any firm, I will do effective advertisement, promotions and will use crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is used to collect information from the public and then use to complete a business-related work. I should use the Outside-In marketing approach to build a direct connection with the consumers and to adapt and observe the pattern of purchasing.

I must outline the challenges and major problems that confront my work. Time management is considered as to be vital as it generates a great amount of impact on the execution of the business processes of any of the concerned firm. Therefore, it becomes vital for me to formulate and execute the concerned strategies within the decided timeframe as it will improve the overall quality of the services delivered to the customers. My ability for continuous learning through reflection will facilitate my knowledge and will improve my overall performance for all of the future works. 

My actions and next steps

My next steps will be to apply my knowledge and skills in my work. I will always collect information and feedback from customers and then use it to grow my knowledge towards better development (Sagiroglu and Sinanc, 2013). I can implement tactics of modern marketing to be sure that the right information’s are reaching to the right customers. I must prepare a schedule where there will be different sections for various activities that will be performed in a schedule time frame. This action plan will help in reducing my weakness and will improve my weakness.

 I will use various marketing theories to enhance my knowledge. I will analyze my actions to improve my professional practice. I will discuss anxieties and analyses my errors and strength for successful my future. I should take participate in campaigns and training to develop my knowledge and to understand better about the strategies and planning’s. I need to communicate with experienced people to learn and to improve my practice. I will start a journal to record my observations and monitor my growths toward various activities. I should organize my time effectively and review my commitments regularly. I will set my daily goals for achievements. I will boost my ability to learn through experience and practice (Wedel and Kannan, 2016).

Conclusion

The paper reflected my learnings including various marketing strategies and the use of marketing strategies for different companies. I have gained knowledge regarding the marketing strategies used by Amazon and their application. Also, I have identified the difference between the two marketing approaches such as Top Down approach and the Outside-In approach. The knowledge gained through this assessment will help in providing the desired shape to future career jobs.

References

Akter, S., Wamba, S.F., Gunasekaran, A., Dubey, R. and Childe, S.J., 2016. How to improve firm performance using big data analytics capability and business strategy alignment?. International Journal of Production Economics, 182, pp.113-131.

Armstrong, C.G., Delia, E.B. and Giardina, M.D., 2016. Embracing the social in social media: An analysis of the social media marketing strategies of the Los Angeles Kings. Communication & Sport, 4(2), pp.145-165.

Day, G.S., 2014. An outside-in approach to resource-based theories. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42(1), pp.27-28.

Eguchi, A., 2016. RoboCupJunior for promoting STEM education, 21st century skills, and technological advancement through robotics competition. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 75, pp.692-699.

Fan, S., Lau, R.Y. and Zhao, J.L., 2015. Demystifying big data analytics for business intelligence through the lens of marketing mix. Big Data Research, 2(1), pp.28-32.

Hansen, J.M., McDonald, R.E. and Mitchell, R.K., 2017. Marketing Benchmarking, Triangulated Isomorphism, and Firm Strategy. In Creating Marketing Magic and Innovative Future Marketing Trends (pp. 533-543). Springer, Cham.

Killian, G. and McManus, K., 2015. A marketing communications approach for the digital era: Managerial guidelines for social media integration. Business Horizons, 58(5), pp.539-549.

Menon, A., Bharadwaj, S.G., Adidam, P.T. and Edison, S.W., 2015. Effective Marketing Strategy-Making: Antecedents and Consequences. In Proceedings of the 1997 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 224-224). Springer, Cham.

Sagiroglu, S. and Sinanc, D., 2013, May. Big data: A review. In Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS), 2013 International Conference on (pp. 42-47). IEEE.

Wedel, M. and Kannan, P.K., 2016. Marketing analytics for data-rich environments. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), pp.97-121.