Assignment No. 2

Assignment No. 2

Introduction

Accountability and development is a part of every organization and every business. Receptionists are accountable for the routing of messages, physicians are responsible for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In a similar way, marketers are responsible and hence, accountable for the marketing strategies that they propose and the way they implement and control those strategies. To estimate and understand the quality of marketing strategies that have been implemented by the organization, a marketing audit is done. A marketing audit helps an organization in discovering the problems with the marketing strategies. To increase the efficiency of a business and a product, it is necessary that a marketing audit be carried out. This report will undertake a Marketing Audit for Amazon. Amazon is a part of the online retail industry. The marketing audit will include the marketing mix, the SWOT analysis, the PESTLE analysis and a competitive analysis of Amazon on the basis of the five competitive forces of Porter.

Discussion

About Amazon

Amazon is the largest online retailer of the world. The company is also into producing electronic goods for the consumers. The major products that the company produce are the kindle fibre tablet computer and the e-book reader. Amazon is one of the major providers of cloud computing services of the United Kingdom. Amazon has made separate websites for the retailing in different countries. These countries include Canada, United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain, China and Japan. The company has also made a system of international shipping of some of its products to different countries. Amazon is working on launching websites in Poland, Netherlands, Brazil and Sweden. The company was incorporated in the year 1994. In 1995, Amazon went online. The company was named after one of the largest rivers of the world, the Amazon River. Amazon initially started its business as an online book store. During the coming years, Amazon expanded and diversified its business and included new products in the selling line like CDs, MP3, DVDs, downloads, video games, toys, software, electronics, furniture, apparel, food, and jewelry (McCausland, 1999, pp.156).

UK Online Industry Overview

According to the new studies carried out by the Boston Consulting Group, the online industry of UK is worth £100 billion. The online industry makes about 7.2% of the GDP of United Kingdom. The online sector of UK is now above the construction and the utilities sectors. This makes the online industry of United Kingdom also more than twice as large as the restaurant and hotel industry of the country. It is also as big as the sector providing financial services in the United Kingdom (Seybold, 1996, pp.56). The customers in United Kingdom are moving towards the trend of online shopping. This is empowering and expanding the online industry of the country. United Kingdom has the biggest market of e-commerce in terms of the amount spent per capita. The popularity of shopping for services and goods online, has also helped in increasing the online advertising by the ...