Outside In Marketing Strategies Through the Lens of Amazon

Since marketing has also adapted to changes in the business platforms, the aspects of outside in marketing is gaining track. In this paper, we examine why the concept of outside in marketing strategy gives a business a better advantage compared to others using Amazon retail business as a supportive case study. The Framework of Organizations The argument of which strategy is better for marketing in today's dynamic environment starts with understanding the key differences. All business exists to serves the shareholders. They are the main reasons for the existent of the business, and conflicting consideration may lead to the demise of a business. The strategies for marketing follow inside directives which dictate production and financing. Other variants of the same exist which try to project customer needs very adaptive to changes in the market.

However, an inside-out marketing strategy incorporates information from the market, but the decisions for initiating the three functions start from the inside and then translated to the outside (Durie and Andualem, 2018, p. This is to mean that customer get what the business believes are selling points of value at that time. Outside-In Strategies However, the opposite is the fabric of this paper. However, the concepts of outside in marketing transcend all that through transformative profiling of customer needs and individual attention to their purchasing practices. The first aspect of reengineering is the customer concept. This concept lies in the definition of what an outside-in approach is. It calls for a business to move away from the segmenting of customer purchase practices to mass customization of consumer needs in the market (Mukerjee, 2013, p.

If the customers are to dictate the other two factors of business processes, they have to be in a position to register their needs and purchasing patterns to the business. Therefore good communication is needed for this marketing strategy. As discussed shortly, this interaction transcends heavy communication technology or clear direct lines. It is about a transformative concept in which customers are made subliminally aware of their role in the initiation of production in the business. Customer Empowerment Achieving this subliminal awareness calls for customer empowerment. The customer is king is a cliché that underscores many marketing strategies. However, continuous production calls for evaluating what customer needs in the said innovation. This is the basic reasoning that guides outside in marketing strategy.

Customer Value Management The last bastion of this marketing strategy is customer value management. All marketing strategies inform and persuade. However, their appeal is the value they create for the customer and in this sense how better they do it compared to the competitor (Mukerjee, 2013, p. However, the online library that was Amazon bedrock started the revolution that now accounts for one of the highest revenues generators in the retail sector. In its outside, in strategies, it is crucial to indicate how Amazon fares with the hallmarks of customer engagement outlined in the previous section and how customer inform these strategies (Day, 2014, p. Amazon has shifted from the provision of popular products to the customers who were the trend in its early years of formation.

By having a new model that carried he retails stores off the streets and into the virtual environment, the business stocked like any other retailers. However, Amazon leveraged on this model to shift to the outside-in model of marketing which is the premise of our discussion. The latter, however, is merely a prediction of a given segment. Therefore, customers interact with Amazon through their purchases. Amazon in this approach has changed most of its production techniques to extend the JIT systems to customer initiated production. This calls for the order from a customer which thus gets pulled out the production system with unique preferences. The wider concept here is to use the online business format to engage the consumer concept in a new way.

However, most of the segments that were rumored to adopt e-commerce technology have changed with the growth of the internet. Therefore, not only does Amazon benefit from individual targeting, it is able to have a platform where customers register their needs (Cui et al. , 2018, p. The Amazon website is their main platform from which costumers interact with the business. The creation of individual accounts thus allows the customer to manage their purchases and thus initiate production for needed products or services (Bao and Chang, 2014, p. Customer Empowerment Amazon also engages in customer empowerment. This ability to engage in customer empowerment answers the nagging question on the role of the customer in outside in marketing. As stated before, empowerment gives the subliminal signal that the customer is in charge of the production at Amazon and thus makes him or her more active.

It also buys loyalty since the customer views the platform as the site where he or she can translate needs into results. Amazon foray in India puts this perspective in good attention. Most of the products that are demanded are thus added in the portfolio from recurrent demands and dropped with changing trends (Martinsons, 2016, p. Without customer ordering their goods, the outside in strategy would just falter and disintegrate in its wake. India has deep roots in its tradition and practices that dictate the goods and services they require. However, their adoption of internet platform has taken hold of the Amazon business. Since they are empowered to create their portfolio of order subliminally through the accounts they create, they thus create demand, inform on trends and changes in the market.

Amazon Glocal Strategy Amazon also creates value through its glocal strategy. Most of the local initiatives which attempt online sales suffer from lack of robust systems as well as resources to stock immense variety for tailored deliveries. However, Amazon is able to create value by responding to customer needs at the local scale. Thus, they adapt their global expertise to local goods and services. Since the strategy is initiated by customers, they do not have to worry about what to stock as long as the customers demand it. , 2018, p. Vendor manages systems are ineffective when inside-out strategy is the guide. This is given by the complicated adaptability of products with customer needs. However, when the orders dictate production, the location of the customer can thus be pinpointed and the rate of delivery synchronized, and costs lowered.

This makes Amazon productivity and delivery a competitive aspect that creates value for many customers. This means that production is anticipatory and does not happen in advance. Outside-In Strategy and Top-Down Strategy This takes back to our thesis which states that outside in strategies are the best as opposed to top down. These benefits flow from the strategy itself. In the top-down strategies, the strategies are based on the director's experiences as well as their interpretation of market data. This creates a lag where production results in surplus or unwanted goods when the trends in the market changes (Erevelles et al. Top-down approaches are not entirely devoid of information. However, real-time assessment of data is difficult since it takes a cue from management decisions.

Amazon in a top-down approach would be selling to yesterday customers as opposed to tomorrow's customers. Research even from the customer purchases allows the top-down approach to anticipating demand which may result in catastrophic decisions at times (Zheng and Miller, 2017, p. However, when the production is initiated by the customers, the sale is already guaranteed. Therefore, they are able to feel at ease when they have a say of what fulfill their need (Kim, K. and Ahn, 2017, p. This puts them on a pedestal where they do not compromise on their needs but are able to dictate terms, quality, price among others. Amazon gains loyalists which equates a heavily dependent on their services due to this. Consumer empowerment allows a symbiotic relationship with the business.

The value has to pay homage to managerial decisions and investments returns from these ventures. Therefore top-down strategies yield more ground for competition as opposed to outside in approaches. They are unable to leverage consumer adapted information in their production and delivery. They are also at a loss when it comes to fulfilling customer value. Amazon relying on such a hierarchy would have a complication in managing individual customer needs. It transforms every customer into a tool for its future engagement. This is a feat that the top-down approach has been unable to achieve. Sadly, the outside in strategy has shortcoming which is visible through Amazon operations. The first one is product flops. Although the strategy is taunted as customer initiated production, the interactive interface relies on the innovativeness of the business.

Mostly these include the knowledge of exploring their interface, access to the internet as well as the variety that they can find in the site. Conclusion In conclusion, outside in marketing strategy relies heavily on the consumer to initiate the production or delivery of goods. It reverses the key functions of a business which are operations, financing, and marketing by using the customer as the initiator of these functions. It relies on aspects of customer concept, interaction capacity of the customers, customer empowerment and customer value creation. Amazon utilizes these practices in its strategy, and this has enabled it to survive in a model that is radical as it is becoming popular. However, the approach will continue to win many shareholders support due to the ability to act on real-time information and customer trends.

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