I worked with Sharon and Michelle for the Amazon audit. I am pleased to say that the result was truly a team effort. Initially, our group were interested in the corporate strategies of both Dove and Amazon.com. After extensive research into both, we decided on Amazon because of a lack of information on Dove's marketing strategy, which was mostly just on IMC. I spent a whole day researching both companies to make an informed decision. In the process I also learnt about Dove’s strategy, which was a bonus. Looking back, Dove’s strategy links in well with Ian Wilkinson’s lecture about the relationship between a company and its environment.
Applying the theoretical frameworks we have learnt to Amazon’s strategy was much easier than I expected. There have been a lot of courses during my degree where I have had to explore the “practical applications” of the theory but found it very difficult to link theory to real life, mainly because the models have been too abstract, mathematical or so disparate from the information that I found about the company. In contrast, I found that there was a huge variety and depth of information available in which strategic marketing theory could be applied. From my research, one of the things that stood out was an interview with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, in which he expressed disdain for the company’s early corporate strategy. Here he was, talking very normally about what happened in his own casual words, but it was rich with material to analyse from a strategic perspective.
