OUTSIDE-IN STRATEGIES

ARE BETTER THAN TOP-

DOWN: A CASE STUDY OF
AMAZON
MK4S34-V1

Instructor: Linh Truong

MARTINS OLAJIDE
R1609D1843150
 R1609D1843150

The best marketing strategies aren’t top down, they’re outside in, starting with the
customers’ needs and wants: A Case Study of Amazon

Introduction
There seems to be an ideological gulf between advocates of looking outside for long term
sustainability and those that believe that innate strengths and capabilities can produce the
desired results. Although, certain phrases which are used to depict an organisation which
focuses on customers as a marketing strategy feature prominently in modern marketing
lexicon, it is notwithstanding difficult to build a consensus among modern marketing scholars
and practitioners that the best marketing strategy is one that is formulated based on the
dictates of the customers. Phrases such as “customer-focused” or “customer-oriented” and
“market oriented” or “market-focused” have been variously and interchangeably used. Thus,
it is important to first disentangle the confusion around the propriety of the use of these
phrases interchangeably. Benson (1988), a Harvard marketing professor offers some
assistance in this regard by opining that there is not a great deal of difference between
“market-driven” and “customer-oriented”. He also defined the following attributes of a
customer-oriented organisation: a) the company completely understands its markets and
buying decision influencers. In this case, customer information permeate every corporate
function rather than being concentrated in a few functions that have direct influence on sales;
b) the company has mechanisms provide trade-offs which reconcile conflicting objectives
among functions and divisions; and c) functions and divisions within the company deploy an
integrative decision making model and implement corporate decisions with a deep sense of
commitment.

One key takeaway from Benson’s attempt to clear the confusion is that slogans and sleek
programs don’t confer the customer orientation laurel on a company. Rather, it takes an
ingrained philosophy and a corporate culture. It requires aptitude and constancy of focus. It
should not be approached in a manner that makes it routine for the employee, rather, it should
be fun and interesting – something that they enjoy doing (Polischuk, 1991).

However, many organisations that strive to be market or customer-driven may have adopted a
top-down approach. A top-down approach is about finding prospects who can afford a
company’s products using a discriminatory segmentation. For example, the marketer may
target the wealthiest 3%-7% of a locality as a pool. The marketer outlines and partitions this
identical market into distinctly identifiable segments with seemingly identical needs, wants,
 R1609D1843150

or demand attributes with the key objective of designing an optimal marketing mix that
matches the expectations of the prospects.

What difference would an outside-in strategy make to the effectiveness of their marketing
strategies? Has any organisation which utilised outside-in marketing strategy achieved more
success in marketing strategy implementation than any who adopted a top-down approach?
At this point, this paper takes a turn into critically analysing whether the outside-in strategies
are the best. To drive the analysis, focus will be on Amazon’s marketing strategy and the role
of customers’ voice in its formulation and implementation. Furthermore, the paper will
attempt to assess whether Amazon’s is a perfect example of an outside in marketing strategy
and what benefits the organisation has obtained.

Theoretical Framework
Top-down and outside-in are both customer focused strategies. Accordingly, a customer
focus initiatives can be approached in two ways – outside in or top-down. The major
difference is that top-down caters for a segmented pool while outside-in casts a wider net.

The dictionary of marketing and advertising defined customer-focus as the effort to

understand the wants, preferences and challenges of the customer with the aim of using this
information in meeting their needs as well as increasing the company’s bottom line.
However, this definition does not reveal how the effort to get this done should be
coordinated. While a top-down approach helps to target wealthy, prequalified segment which
can also introduce their peers to the company’s products, the disadvantage is that the same
over-prospected, hard-to-reach segment could emerge as targets for the competition (Sanders,
2017).

Outside-in thinking takes a customer-centric look at the universe of a company’s products

and services with an emphasis on acquiring and retaining customers by delivering sustainable
superior customer value (Narver and Slater, 1990). Mukerjee (2013), citing Deshpande, et al
(1993) defined customer focus as the “set of beliefs that puts the customer’s interests first,
while not excluding those of all other stakeholders [...] in order to develop a long term
profitable enterprise”. The customer focused organisation therefore creates a culture that
nurtures a relationship with the customer, which enables it capture information about their
needs and wants. The information derived from the customer interest becomes an input into
the process of designing and delivering products (Mukerjee, 2013). This approach helps
 R1609D1843150

improve the critical components of marketing performance through the ability of the
responsible functions to attract, grow and deliver value to customers.

As mentioned in the introduction, being customer-focused transcends glossy programs and

catchy slogans. Can an ingenious marketing communication improve a product’s
acceptability, even if inside-out approach was used to develop it? What happens afterwards if
customers are disappointed with their trial version? Sony introduced Walkman, a
revolutionary product that swept every young forward looking person off his feet. Thereafter,
Apple introduced the iPod, a more intuitive and innovative product which outwitted the
Walkman in look, feel and functionality but prohibitive in price. Despite this, the company
utilised its ‘golden circle marketing’ process to sway customers’ sentiments towards the very
expensive iPod. It was a communication approach that addressed the why before the what.
With the “why” question effectively appealing to the customers psyche, ingraining in their
subconscious mind that the product was designed with their interests and comfort in mind,
the “what” was a no brainer and the product became a huge success.

While it may be argued that Apple is a great company which is suitably qualified to make
such products, it was traditionally Sony’s territory. What is a computer company doing with a
music device anyways? A deeper analysis reveals that the design consideration for iPod may
not have been informed by an analysis of customers’ wants and needs for more features,
especially more storage space, better looks and portability. Rather, Apple is a company that
prides itself as having ‘customer instinct’ (Ozeritskaya, 2015). Therefore, they know what the
customer wants and do not need to ask them. Toyota is a company that also operates inside-
out strategy but it soon became obvious that they do not know what the customers want.
Consequently, they lost some grounds to GM Autos in the competitive landscape
(Ozeritskaya, 2015).

What are the key attributes of the outside-in approach and how would it make an organisation
more successful than the likes of Apple? In defining marketing Kotler (2011), negates Apples
approach by emphasising that products should emerge from deep understanding of customers
needs and wants. This is predicated by the sentiment that marketing is the science and art of
discovering, forming, and providing value to satisfy the desires of a target market at a profit
Kotler (2011). Marketing detects unsatisfied needs and desires. This definition is, in all
respect, similar to the definition of customer focus by the dictionary of marketing and
 R1609D1843150

advertising. It therefore becomes difficult to understand whether the primary objective of

marketing is customer focus.

Narver and Slater (1990) offer an insight into this quest by identifying the influence of
customer orientation on a company’s profitability. While arguing that a customer focused
strategy is the foundation of modern marketing, Narver and Slater (1990, 1998) also offer a
definition of ‘customer orientation’ role of marketing as the sufficient understanding of the
entire value chain of one’s target buyers with a view to creating sustainable superior value for
them. Thus, a customer focused organisation understands the cost and revenue dynamics,
economic and political constraints at all levels in the customer value chain and creates
products that satisfy their needs and wants with recourse to the dynamics and constraints
(Narver and Slater, 1998). Their argument is rooted in the rudimentary concept of marketing
which puts the responsibility on the organisation to discover the needs and wants of its target
markets and satisfy them better effectively and efficiently than competitors.

Accordingly, customer-focused organisations deploy tools to obtain information from

customers. Tools used include surveys and focused group discussions (FGDs) to elicit
insights about customers’ needs and improvement observations about existing products and
services (Narver and Slater, 1998). However, the demerits of the customer focus philosophy
include the tendency to fall into the “tyranny of the served market” and its short term,
reactive and adaptive (rather than propagative learning) nature. This is further compounded
by the fact that customers are often unable to articulate their wants and needs with
impeccable accuracy. It therefore makes futuristic innovation largely impossible. Feedbacks
from surveys and FGDs are just sufficient for quick fixes to achieve immediate customer
satisfaction.

Notwithstanding, Ripsam and Bouquet (2016) believe that a well-designed customer strategy
requires a set of ten universally applicable principles to position a company for sustainable
success. The process of becoming a customer-focused organisation is long and windy and a
determined organisation needs to go through a number of chronological steps to attain
maturity (Mukerjee, 2013). These are shown in the diagram below.
 R1609D1843150

The process involves extensive data gathering efforts and developing a culture of data sharing
without internal boundaries and resistance (Mukerjee, 2013). These requirements for building
and operating like a truly customer-focused organisation can be categorised into domains
such as customer focus, customer service culture, customer segmentation and customer
convenience. These are discussed in further details in the subsequent sections.
 R1609D1843150

About Amazon
From being merely an e-book seller in 1994, Amazon has metamorphosed to being one of the
largest e-commerce companies in the world under the leadership of its founder, Jeff Bezos, a
former Wall Street hedge fund executive (Mark, 2018). The company has grown from a start-
up status to a Fortune 500 within a period of 24 years (Lindic and Silva, 2011). During this
time, Amazon has penetrated into several activities, including cloud hosting, warehousing,
logistics, and online retail, amongst others. The online retail business enables shoppers to buy
a variety of products. The orders are fulfilled by either Amazon itself or third party sellers
who leverage the functionalities of the platform to offer their products to Amazon’s
customers.

Amazon is currently the world’s largest online retailer and the second largest e-commerce
company after Google. The company has a brand value of USD 176 billion and enjoys a high
level of customer loyalty. This has resulted in more than 50% of customers being repeat
buyers (Annual Report, 2016).

The company’s global workforce is about 341,400. Over the course of 2014, 2015, and 2016,
Amazon’s operating income totalled USD178 million, USD2.2 billion, and USD4.2 billion
respectively while net income totalled USD2.37 billion and USD0.596 billion in 2016 and
2015 respectively (Annual Report, 2016). Amazon is committed to four ideologies: customer
obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational
excellence, and long-term thinking. These ideologies form the bedrock of Amazon’s
competitive advantage.

Amazon’s 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” (Annual Report, 2016).

Outside-in marketing Approach at Amazon

The outside in strategy is a sage approach for utilising customer insights to improve
relationship with the customer. Successful organisations adopt the common approach of
studying external market orientation and applying the learnings to shape their strategy. One
of the tools used for outside in marketing strategy is called the voice of customers (VoC).

Some evidence of the following outside-in marketing approaches as outlined by Annette

(2015) can be found at Amazon:
R1609D1843150
 R1609D1843150

Customer focus at Amazon

Amazon operates a full customer-centric culture. Gestures ranging from replacing faulty
items to sending personalised offers provide Amazon customers a sense of belonging. The
company has been widely regarded as one of the Voice of Customers (VoC) leaders. VoC
programs have emerged as a tool to thoroughly listen to customers, apply the feedback to take
action, and keep track of performance over a period of time (Hinshaw, 2016). In reality,
customer experience “resides” in the minds of customers. Experience can thus be categorised
into three: great experiences connoting exceeded expectations; good experiences expressing
met expectations; and bad experiences indicating expectations are not met.

The managers at Amazon find CEO Jeff Bezos daunting enough. But they are more
overwhelmed by the internal epithet “the empty chair.” Jeff Bezos occasionally leaves one
seat unoccupied at a meeting and introduces the imaginary occupant of the seat as their
customer, “the most important person in the room”. If the empty chair is the ultimate boss in
the room, then the CEO is its advocate, the protector of what he regards as the “culture of
metrics” that attempts to provide that inanimate object an audible, flawless voice.

Customer focus has been one of the key strategies at Amazon and it permeates all areas of its
operation. Customer passion at Amazon is defined by fast and reliable delivery, customer
protection against maltreatment by third-party sellers and competitive prices (Kirby and
Stewart, 2007).

These customer benefits are the tip of the iceberg which are seen by the customers and have
endeared them inextricably to the brand. As a VoC leader, Amazon possesses unrivalled
capability to thoroughly obtain and evaluate customer data, and an unparalleled ability to
regularly apply the insights in its operations (Hinshaw, 2016). Consequently, customer value
is derived in two key stages: product development and customer experience (Kirby and
Stewart, 2007).

The product development

Amazon has an S Team – S for senior- which meets once every week to generate new
product ideas. This has engendered an open door policy for empowering employees to
participate in the decision making processes, especially relating to innovative ideas that
benefit customers. During the S Team meetings, several ideas are evaluated and considered
with focus on the customer. The knowledge of employee roles in customer experience is a
culture in Amazon. Accordingly, customer insights influence everything people do.
 R1609D1843150

Employees are equipped with the tools they require to serve the customers. These include
metrics, trends and feedbacks (Kirby and Stewart, 2007).

Amazon is widely reputed for its ability to predict the next contents of a customer’s virtual
cart. Business is driven by algorithms and customer analytics but it is predicated on a strong
customer service culture. CEO, Jeff Bezos, states that, “The customer-centric way is at this
point a defining element of our culture”. In other words, customer-centric strategy has shaped
many corporate decisions. For example, Amazon painstakingly monitors customer sentiment
for the Kindle, making product improvement and packaging updates through information
derived from a careful analysis of VoC data (Ganeshan, 2016).

This attitude is consistent with the sentiments expressed by Jaworski and Kohli (1990) that
every customer-focused organisation with long term orientation is predominantly data-driven.
In addition, prior to launching a new product, Amazon attempts to answer the question about
the envisaged life span of the product – will the product last in the market up to five or ten
years? This is a clear hint that the company is implementing a long term vision with its long
term perspective of customer needs (Kirby and Stewart, 2007). This has some elements of
market oriented philosophy which aims to understand and satisfy latent needs of the
customers (Narver and Slater, 1998).

For Amazon, customer is at the centre of its product design effort – ideation, development
and implementation. Amazon is arguably both a customer-focused and market-oriented
organisation. Its customer satisfaction culture goes beyond short term focused, reactive
satisfaction of immediate, and expressed needs; it also adopts a proactive approach of looking
at the longer term effect of the products on its customers.

Customer experience

At Amazon, the key word is customer needs rather than product. The business ideas and
value propositions derive from the market, based on Amazon people’s expansive knowledge
of their customers (Ozeritskaya, 2016).

Amazon goes beyond introducing great customer intuitive products into the market and
leaving customers to grapple with the results. Rather, it tracks every movement of the users
and evolves a follow up action. Any negative response from the customer is followed up with
a fix (Kirby and Stewart, 2007). As noted above, Amazon tries to give the imaginary
occupant of an empty chair an audible voice through a conglomeration of 500 metrics against
 R1609D1843150

which it evaluates its customer satisfaction performance. About 80% of these objectives are
customer related (Anders, 2012).

Amazon has implemented procedures to ensure that customers consistently receive positive
shopping experience, whether directly from Amazon or the multitude of merchants who
leverage the capabilities of the platform. Accordingly, Amazon has deployed a number of
defences, influenced by the voice of the customer. For example, there is an internal email
system to enable and observe conversations with customers and merchants; subsequently, it
applies metrics to track customer complaints about third-party merchants; and it implements a
fulfilment process that permits merchants to leverage Amazon’s distribution channels. Each
of these initiatives was established to ensure a consistent and stable experience for the
consumer. According to Jeff Bezos, “Fixing customers problems builds loyalty with
people...” (Endeavour Management, 2012).

Furthermore, Amazon innovates expansively to ensure that customers get good experience at
all times. There are initiatives to reduce customer shopping efforts rather than making the
experience complex, time-consuming and frustrating (Annett, 2015). Amazon has an
unbelievably well-articulated and comprehensive yet easy-to-use help centre, which allows a
customer drill into a number of specific product and service-related issues of concern. Under
the menu, there are numerous articles, but the search experience is efficient, visually
attractive, and in tandem with the website’s shopping experience which allows patrons to
search by product category or by pre-determined need. With efficient help and customer
service tracks, shoppers save time and assume authority as they are able to find their way
around.

Amazon has also matched its culture with its customer service experience by demonstrating
commitment to enhanced customer interaction. For example, the company has nurtured a
community of customers who are approached to voluntarily contribute to solving fellow
customers’ product-related issues in addition to self-service FAQs. This approach at Amazon
has numerous advantages. Firstly, time-consuming activities have been deflected to a
voluntary community of loyal shoppers, freeing up time and space for paid Amazon
representatives to attend to other pressing customer requests faster. If the self-service FAQs
and the community fail to resolve a customer’s issue, there is an option to reach out to a real
person via the 24/7 service desk. Users of Amazon fire phones can also use the “Mayday”
button to gain instant video connection to a tech advisor.
 R1609D1843150

All departments at Amazon rely significantly on data—based on the comeuppance of the

customer experience. CEO Jeff Bezos is an ardent promoter of voice of customers (VoC),
providing executive leadership for its implementation. He is reputed for forwarding emails
from disgruntled shoppers to his team and requesting a redress within hours (Hinshaw, 2016).
This approach helps to manage the ‘Fifth P’ (i.e. perception) which goes with the classic Four
Ps of marketing (Polischuk, 1991). Perception, the experience offered by a customer-focused
organisation is as important as the other Four Ps and can surface from product search, item
selection, checkout, delivery, use and support. Perception can also come before, during and
after a customer experiences a customer’s product and can be positive, neutral and negative
(Mukerjee, 2013). Therefore, Amazon constantly takes customers feedback on board,
modifies its approaches, and introduces customer-intuitive shopping features and products to
ensure better customer experience.

Customer Service Culture

The key word in a typical customer-centric organisation is customer need and not product.
Their people think expansively about how to improve customer experience. This immerses
them in the hearts of their customers, looking for ways to expand demand (Ozeritskaya,
2016). A cursory look at Amazon’s mission statement would reveal that customer service is
built in Amazon’s DNA and it is deeply ingrained in their annals - “to be earth’s most
customer-centric company”. This is defined by Mukerjee (2013) as “integral coordination”. It
is part of the maturity process that indoctrinates customer service orientation into the DNA of
an organisation. As part of commitment to building and sustaining that culture, Amazon has a
rotational policy that mandates every employee to work for a period of two days per year in
the company’s fulfilment centre. This is to ensure that every employee imbibes the customer
orientation culture of the company (Anders, 2012). The customer fulfilment is a branch of the
company that analyses customer wants and evolves an approach to satisfying them.

As it is in the product development stage, Amazon’s interest in customers extends beyond the
reactive short term phase. The company engenders customer service to ensure sustainability
of the culture. The long term focus does not blur its vision for short term fixes of customer
issues and feedbacks.

Amazon gets unrivalled customer loyalty because of the culture of going the extra mile for
customers even when not obligated to do. This enables them to benefit from free publicity.
For example, Amazon once replaced, free of charge, an item delivered but stolen from a
 R1609D1843150

customer’s pouch. With this kind of gesture, the company may have won the heart of the
customer eternally. As CEO Bezos revealed, “We're in the midst of a gigantic transition,
where customers have incredible power as a result of transparency and word of mouth. It
used to be that if you made a customer happy, they would tell five friends. Now with the
megaphone of the internet, whether online customer reviews or social media, they can tell
5,000 friends” (Forbes). The power has undoubtedly shifted to the hands of customers.

A 2015 Aberdeen group’s research report revealed that companies with customer-centric
culture like Amazon’s enjoy greater year-on-year revenue increase in multiples of 10 than
their peers. The report further revealed that those companies enjoy better customer retention
rates up to 55%; customer service costs decrease annually by up to 23%; and more than 200%
increase in customer engagement (Hinshaw, 2016). The Aberdeen Group’s research report
shows that implementing outside-in strategy through the VoC is a game changer. Using three
important metrics, the report shows the following performance improvements for Amazon
and other “best-in-class” category organisations, compared to organisations who do not use
VoC:

The above outlook supports the numbers at Amazon. The 2016 company report showed
progressively impressive financial performance. The company grew by over 40% between
2015 and 2016, even as global average and North American growth rates lingered around 7%
and 13%, respectively during the same period (Ecommerce Foundation, 2016). The key areas
of growth include those that touch customers directly. These include the Amazon Prime,
direct e-commerce sales and third-party retail sales. Obviously, the company is benefiting
immensely from customer loyalty, resulting in a pool of extra spending Prime members and
other service subscribers. Third-party organisations are also leveraging the high patronage to
offer their goods and services through ads on Amazon platform, thus adding another $2.9bn
to the Company’s revenue in 2016 (Company report, 2016).
 R1609D1843150

Customer Segmentation

The customer segmentation analyses and categorises all customers according to their current
purchases and future needs and expectations (Polischuk, 1991). This exercise enables a
customer-focused organisation to delight customers by aligning its products to the needs and
expectations of the customer. Amazon uses data from customers’ actual purchases to classify
them into demographic and psychographic units. Through such segmentation, the company
creates personas who will purchase certain products and in a specific manner. For example, in
a campaign in India, it demonstrated its Glocal (Go global Act local) tag by launching the
AurDikhao ashtag (#AurDikhao) to capture a significant mindshare in the online shopping
space (Hitesh, 2017). Amazon has built a convenient market place for the busy middle class
& upper class market segments who have experience in the use of basic technology and fancy
the convenience of online shopping over the hassles of the physical outlets.

Customer Convenience

One of the frustrations with the conventional shopping approach is the presence of queues at
checkout points and absence of a quick feedback mechanism. Yet, Amazon, in its quest to
continue to compete as well enhance customer experience, pushed the boundary further to
launch the Amazon Go, a cashier-free grocery store (Wahba, 2018), regarded as the world’s
most advanced shopping technology (Chaffey, 2018). The solution fuses computer vision,
deep learning algorithm, and sensor into one single integrated solution for offline shoppers to
experience comfort comparable to what is offered online. With no cashiers, the solution relies
on shoppers announcing their presence at the grocery store by scanning the barcode on the
‘Amazon Go’ mobile application installed on their phones. Cameras and sensors track items
taken or returned to the shelves by shoppers and bills them accordingly, using credit card
information on their Amazon profiles (Wahba, 2018). As a data-driven organisation, Amazon
utilises the data from customer’s visits to target them with products. It also provides
customers with feedback real time and provides VoC model-like intelligence to the store on
which products they should stock.

Amazon’s mobile-first model is now an industry vogue and standard. It is a remarkable

accomplishment that compliments the company’s massive selection of products and
categories. Amazon’s crisp streamlined user interface and easy to navigate site provides
intelligent search functionality and product categorization. Other features which are crucial
for modern-day shoppers include the auto-fill and 1-click ordering.
 R1609D1843150

Amazon also towers above competition for being on the side of the consumer in the event of
a dispute or a problem with a merchant’s product or delivery process. In addition to this, the
company takes responsibility for fostering relationships between its shoppers and hosted
brands. As part of this initiative, the company introduced Amazon Exclusives (Mcorp.cx,
2017), which provided a platform for entrepreneurs to showcase their story. The hosted
videos provided shoppers with personal connection with the brands and their products.
 R1609D1843150

Conclusion:

From merely a book seller in 1994, Amazon has invested time and resources to become the
2nd largest e-commerce company in the world. Over this period, it has utilised the outside-in
approach to emerge a strong brand and acquire a significant brand equity. Based on the
analysis in this work, a brand grows stronger once it is able to acquire new customers and get
the loyalty of existing ones. The literature shows two approaches to building a customer-
focused organisation: short term focus and long term customer focus. The short term focus
aims to satisfy immediate needs and wants, and resolve only emerging issues. On the
contrary, the long term approach seeks to meet immediate and future needs. As future needs
and wants are more complex to satisfy and the users do not necessarily know what they want,
the organisation is required to establish a culture that takes customer feedbacks and turn them
into actionable tasks that help in improving the present situation of the customer and also
address the unstated future needs.

This paper portrays Amazon as an organisation that seems to have impressively combined
both approaches to impress itself indelibly in the hearts of its customers for current needs and
repeat purchases. The customer focus posture and culture have helped the company to the top
spot on the list of ‘best-in-class VoC companies and customer satisfaction index for four
consecutive years. It has also had significant impact on sales and profits.

Amazon’s journey to the Fortune 500 club also shows some evidence that outside-in thinking
is a truly smart strategy as it eliminates the fallacy of losing sight of customers’ needs. The
company has evidently always introduced products that meet the needs of the market. This
reduces the incidence of loss of capital due to unsold stocks.

However, some of the innovations at Amazon also have the coloration of market orientation,
involving attempts to stay ahead of competition in terms of product offering and service
platforms. This raises the question of whether it is a predominantly customer-focused
organisation, a market focused company or a mixture of both. It would be interesting to probe
deeper into this question in a structured research work, with a view to providing answers in
the future.
 R1609D1843150

References
Aberdeen Group (2018). The business value of building a best-in-class VOC program.
[online] Aberdeen Group Research, pp.1-6. Available at:
http://meritdirectlistmanager.com/creative/aberdeen/10449-RR-VoC-business-value.pdf
[Accessed 25 May 2018].
Anders, G. (2012). Inside amazon's idea machine: how Bezos decodes customers. Forbes,
[online] p.Single page. Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2012/04/04/inside-amazon/#2805d7fc6199
[Accessed 25 May 2018].
Benson, S. (1988). What the Hell Is “Market Oriented”?. [online] Harvard Business Review.
Available at: https://hbr.org/1988/11/what-the-hell-is-market-oriented [Accessed 25 May
2018].
Bhasin, H. (2017). Marketing strategy of Amazon - Amazon marketing strategy. [online]
Marketing91. Available at: https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-strategy-of-
amazon/ [Accessed 26 May 2018].
Chaffey, D. (2018). Amazon.com case study - 2018 update | Smart Insights. [online] Smart
Insights. Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/online-
business-revenue-models/amazon-case-study/ [Accessed 24 May 2018].
E-commerce Foundation (2016). Global B2C E-commerce Report. [online] E-commerce
Foundation, pp.1-10. Available at:
2016http://www.asendia.at/application/files/9514/8664/1553/Global_B2C_Ecommerce_
Report_2016_Full_version.pdf [Accessed 25 May 2018].
Endeavormgmt.com. (2012). The Top 10 Voice of the Customer (VOC) Best Practices - Key
Insights on how to Win the Race for Customer Trust and Business. [online] Available at:
https://www.endeavormgmt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Top-10-VOC-Best-
Practices.pdf [Accessed 26 May 2018].
Ganeshan, S. (2016). Why Established Companies Are Embracing an Amazon-Like Culture.
[online] Entrepreneur. Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/275965
[Accessed 26 May 2018].
H, M. (2018). Amazon.com | History & Facts. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Amazoncom [Accessed 25 May 2018].
Hinshaw, M. (2016). The Real Value In Voice Of The Customer: The Customer Experience.
[online] Cmo.com. Available at: http://www.cmo.com/opinion/articles/2016/3/29/the-
real-value-in-voice-of-the-customer-the-customer-experience.html#gs.cP7BYY4
[Accessed 24 May 2018].
Kirby, J. and Stewart, T. (2007). The Institutional Yes. [online] Harvard Business Review.
Available at: https://hbr.org/2007/10/the-institutional-yes [Accessed 26 May 2018].
Kohli, A. and Jaworski, B. (1990). Market Orientation: The Construct, Research
Propositions, and Managerial Implications. Journal of Marketing, 54(2), p.1.
 R1609D1843150

Kotler, P. (2011). Dr. Philip Kotler Answers Your Questions on Marketing. [online]
Kotlermarketing.com. Available at:
http://www.kotlermarketing.com/phil_questions.shtml [Accessed 25 May 2018].
Lindič, J. and Marques da Silva, C. (2011). Value proposition as a catalyst for a customer
focused innovation. Management Decision, 49(10), pp.1694-1708.
Mukerjee, K. (2013). Customer‐oriented organizations: a framework for innovation. Journal
of Business Strategy, 34(3), pp.49-56.
Narver, J. and Slater, S. (1990). The Effect of a Market Orientation on Business
Profitability. Journal of Marketing, [online] 54(4), p.20. Available at:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1251757?newaccount=true&read-
now=1&seq=5#page_scan_tab_contents [Accessed 24 May 2018].
Narver, J. and Slater, S. (1998). Customer-led and market-oriented: let’s not confuse the
two. Strategic Management Journal, [online] 19(3), pp.233-236. Available at:
https://www.scribd.com/document/125326806/Slater-and-Narver-1998 [Accessed 25
May 2018].
Ozeritskaya, E. (2015). Inside-out Versus Outside-in – What’s the Better Strategy?. [online]
Blog.hypeinnovation.com. Available at: https://blog.hypeinnovation.com/inside-out-
versus-outside-in-whats-the-better-strategy-part-1 [Accessed 26 May 2018].
Polischuk, F. (1991). Delighting customers. Managing Service Quality: An International
Journal, [online] 1(3), pp.163-165. Available at:
https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/EUM0000000003143 [Accessed 26
May 2018].
Ripsam, T. and Bouquet, L. (2016). 10 Principles of Customer Strategy. [online]
strategy+business. Available at: https://www.strategy-business.com/article/10-
Principles-of-Customer-Strategy?gko=083a5 [Accessed 26 May 2018].
Sanders, B. (2017). Why a top-down marketing strategy is attractive. [online]
Bizjournals.com. Available at: https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-
to/marketing/2017/11/why-a-top-down-marketing-strategy-is-attractive.html [Accessed
25 May 2018].
Wahba, P. (2018). Amazon Dishes About Its First Amazon Go Cashier-Free Store. [online]
Fortune. Available at: http://fortune.com/2018/03/19/amazon-go/ [Accessed 26 May
2018].