In 2002, amazon.com spent just under than $50 million on its TV campaign, mainly in big cities right before Christmas. Jeffrey P. Bezos, the company's founder and chief executive, said that the television campaign did increase sales, but not by enough to justify the spending. (Hansell, 2003) Therefore, Amazon.com has canceled almost television or general-purpose print advertising in 2003. Instead, Amazon.com has decided to concentrate on lowering prices, mainly in the form of free shipping for orders over $25. Amazon.com thinks that it gets a better return giving the money to customers instead of television networks. (Hansell, 2003) It is a successful campaign to cut prices and give free shipping, its quarterly net profit soared by 28.9% boasting of this promotion campaign.
“Our decision to put dollars into lower prices and free shipping instead of TV advertising continues to be embraced by customers,� said founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos. “Customer adoption of free shipping hit another record high this quarter,� he said in a statement. (RTÉ Business, 2004)
Apart from above promotion, there are other advertising and promotion to help Amazon.com running its business. Amazon has continued to place circulars featuring products in Sunday newspapers, as these are largely paid for by manufacturers' co-op programs. It has also kept advertising on other Web sites and has maintained its associates program, which has paid a commission to sites that send it customers. Amazon.com's quantitative analysts can tune these programs to make sure these are worth their cost. (Hansell, 2003)
Since Amazon.com is a online retailer, it also rely on online advertising to promote its product and services through internet. In 1997, Yahoo and Amazon.com announced an agreement under which Amazon.com would be the premier bookseller featured on Yahoo. (Santa and Seattle, 1997) This new service offered users the opportunity to review and purchase relevant book titles from Amazon.com. Initially the service would be integrated throughout the Yahoo! main site as well as My Yahoo! and the 11 Yahoo! Metro sites. As the premier Yahoo! bookseller, Amazon.com would also receive extensive promotional exposure throughout Yahoo!, including banner advertising and relevant keyword placement. (Santa and Seattle, 1997)
Besides, Google and Amazon.com have tied the knot in a deal designed to expand Google's advertising presence and give Amazon.com users greater access to products not listed on the e-tailer's site.The multiyear agreement would make Google's search technology and targeted sponsored links available on Amazon.com . In fact, sponsored links are already available on a selection of Amazon.com Web pages. Amazon.com would realize revenue from the sponsored links. For Google advertisers, it means access to a large amount of new traffic in the form of users who browse the Amazon site. (Ryan,2003)
"Amazon boosts net profit by 29 %",( 2004). RTE Business. retrieved 20 October, 2004, from
http://www.rte.ie/business/2004/1022/amazon.html
Hansell, Saul. (2003) “Amazon Tries Word of Mouth� The New York Times retrieved 20 October, 2004, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/business/media/10ADCO.html
Ryan, Vincent. (2003) “Google Inks Search and Ad Deal with Amazon� E-Commerce Times retrieved 20 October, 2004, from
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/21185.html
Santa Clara, Calif. And Seattle, Wa.(1997) “Yahoo! And Amazon.com to deliver innovative new navigational service for books on the web� Yahoo! Media Release retrieved 20 October, 2004, from
http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release99.html
Sharon Tse 12:45, 9 Sep 2004 (EST)
