The marketing practices and culture of Amazon Essay

Company Information
Amzon.com Inc., also referred to as Amazon the "Company" is the largest virtual retailer dealing in books, videos and music among other virtual products and services. The company was initiated in the year 1995 and is now one of the most widely known and cited commerce sites on the internet platform (United States Securities and Exchange Commission, 1998, p. 3). Its customers are guaranteed of superior shopping experience being that it is a proven technology leader. Even though the company initiated its business through the provision of virtual goods and services to its customers, its business base has profoundly expanded. Driven by technological developments, the company has developed advanced electronic commerce applications and methodologies such as the 1-Click ordering, personalized shopping services and easy-to-use internet search features. Coupled with s strong search engine optimization, the virtual retail outlet now offers its customers the best experience with regards to online shopping. The report summarizes into details, through incorporation of various theories and models, the marketing practices and culture of Amazon.
The Marketing Environment
Like all other business organizations and companies, Amazon does not operate in isolation. Its business is determined by factors, both internal and external that shape up the mode of its operation. According to Chaneta (2013, p. 1), the marketing environment is dynamic in nature and a slight alteration in any of its components greatly impacts the nature of business for an organization such as Amazon.
The External Environment/ Macro-Environment
The external marketing environment refers to all the events and factors outside an organization that have potential impact on the business operations of a company (Indris & Primiana, 2015, p. 188). Managerial influences on these environmental factors are very limited. There are various models that can be used to analyze the external environments of an organization. The report employs the use of the PESTLE model in critically evaluating the external marketing environment for Amazon.
The PESTLE Model for Amazon
The Model helps a company to identify its political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental issues relating to its business operations (Team FME, 2013, p. 9). Amazon could be categorized as a virtual multinational company since its geographic areas of coverage is not limited by national boundaries. With regards to this, the PESTLE elements may present unique attributes of the forces that shape up the commercial operations of Amazon.
Political Forces of Influence
With the practices that the company takes part in, international e-commerce policies are becoming of stronger influence to the company. With incidents of internet fraud and online retail theft, most countries are currently implementing stringent policies to curb further occurrence of these criminal activities. For this reason, Amazon finds it very difficult to extend its operations to some countries (Google, 2011, p. 1).
The internet society is a fast-changing business platform. More developments have taken place in the past and this has led to most countries licensing more internet service providers to their citizens. With increased competition from the service providing companies, internet users are