AMAZON INDIA MARKETING STRATEGY

Mission – “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavours to offer its customers the lowest possible prices,”

Vision- “To leverage technology and the expertise of our invaluable employees to provide our customers with the best shopping experience on the internet”

Tagline – “#Aur Dikhao” in India.

                 “From A to Z” globally.

A decade into the new millennium, India, with its billion-plus people and largely untapped e-commerce market, beckoned. The country posed a classic case of good news, bad news. The good news included a very young populace — more than 65% under age 35 — rising levels of disposable income, and ubiquitous cell phone ownership (80% of the population, by one estimate).

The bad news: 67% of the population lives in rural areas characterized by an underdeveloped infrastructure. Only about 35% of India’s population is connected to the internet. Cash, not credit cards or checking accounts, is still the rule. And, determined to protect its own, India enacted a rigid FDI policy restricting foreign multibrand retailers from selling directly to consumers online. That meant any venture would basically be a third-party seller for Indian-made products.

To respond to these challenges, after launching its Indian website in 2013, Amazon developed a program to recruit an army of suppliers and convince them it was a trustworthy partner that could help them increase the market for their products. Amazon wheeled out a program called Amazon Chai Cart: mobile tea carts that navigated city streets, serving refreshments to small-business owners while teaching them the virtues of e-commerce. The Chai Cart team reportedly traveled more than 9,400 miles across 31 cities and engaged with more than 10,000 sellers. To help these sellers get online quickly and address their objections to e-commerce, last year Amazon created Amazon Tatkal, a self-described “studio on wheels” that provides a suite of launch services, such as registration, imaging, cataloging, and sales training.

The company also localized its fulfillment platform in India by introducing Easy Ship and Seller Flex. With the former, Amazon couriers pick up packaged goods from a seller’s place of business and deliver them to consumers. With the latter, vendors designate a section of their own warehouses for products to be sold on Amazon.in, and Amazon coordinates the delivery logistics. This “neighborhood” approach is convenient for sellers and has benefited Amazon by speeding up delivery of some products.

Amazon has contracts with a number of major delivery services in the country, including India Post and cargo airline Blue Dart. Last year it set up a subsidiary, Amazon Transportation Services Private Limited, to augment delivery. And it utilizes bicycle and motorbike couriers for last-mile deliveries in both urban and rural communities. But rural areas, which often are literally off the beaten path, pose special challenges.

Instead, Amazon has enlisted mom-and-pop store owners as partners in its delivery platform. In small villages and remote areas where few people have internet access, residents can go to their local store and use the owner’s internet connection to browse and select goods from Amazon.in.