we as a team specially focused on the value creation portion for Amazon. We separate various customer dissatisfaction from various daily issues and then structured them into value creation and non-value creation parts. We also combine various consumer types with this consumer journey path in matrix format to present a better insight. And not only that we also establish a relationship between profitability with this consumer journey path. We also discuss about coupling and decoupling activities.

1. Amazon: - Consumer Journey Map
Submitted By:
Group-5
Jolly Mallick
Swetha
Siddharth
Submitted To: -
DR. MRINMOY BHATTACHARJEE
Submitted on – 14.03.2020

2. Brief History: -Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington in July 1994. It
is known for its disruption of well-established industries through technological innovation
and mass scale. The company initially started as an online marketplace for books but later
expanded to sell electronics, software, video games, apparel, furniture, food, toys, jewellery
and many more.
LeadershipPrinciple: - Leaders are basically the owners of the company. Leader’s
principle affects each nook and corner of the company and Amazon is not exception of that.
Amazon is a customer centric company as Jeff Bezos does the same. This customer centric
approach reflects in the customer segmentation process where we can find consumers of
each category. Let’s have a broad insight in Consumer Segmentation.
Consumer Segmentation: -
Types of Segmentation SegmentedArea AmazonTarget
Geographic Region
Density
More than 100 countries
Urban and Rural
Demographic Age
Gender
Life cycle Stage
Occupation
New-born baby to older
Males and Females
Bachelor stage young single
people not living at home.
Newly Married couple,
sometimes shifting from
their permanent place.
Full Nest I- youngest child
under six years.
Full Nest II- youngest child
six years and more
Full Nest III- older married
couple with dependent
children
Empty Nest I- older married
couple with dependent
children
Empty Nest II- older married
couple retired, children are
not living with them
Solitary Survivor I- in labour
force
Solitary Survivor II- retired
Students, Employees,
Professionals.
Behavioural Degree of Loyalty Hard Core loyal
Soft Core loyal
Switchers

3. Benefits Sought
Personality
User Status
Widest range of products
Convenience of online
purchasing
Competitive prices
Easy-going, determined and
ambitious
Non-users, Potential users,
first time users, regular users
or es-uses of a product
Psychographic Social Class
Lifestyle
All social classes, Lower
classes, middle and upper
Retired, struggler,
mainstreamer, aspirer,
succeeder, explorer,
resigned, reformer
Emotional Attachment Attachment with the
products
High level attachment
Medium level attachment
Low level attachment
Expansionof Value Chain: - Customer Value chain starts from the purchasing action of
a product, continues with consumption and ends with the disposing of the product. This
value chain broadly serves the following objective, core value proportion and marketing
strategy.

4. STEPS INVOLVED IN CUSTOMER VALUECHAIN: - From start to end there are
several common steps involved in customer value chain. Let’s see what those steps are: -
The following figure shows the primary stages of consumption: -
Search Purchase Use
If we further describe how a consumer goes through Amazon App, then we can get the
following steps sequentially.
1. Awareness
2. Download the Amazon App
3. Search for the desired product
4. Differentiation among various product regarding their price, brand, quality, quantity,
usefulness, longevity etc
5. Fulfilment of basket with wish list items
6. Final decision among the products consumer have chosen
7. Proceed for payments
8. Make payments
9. Orders are placed
10. Order details are shown in Amazon page including delivery details
11. Consumers can track their shipments as they are updated time by time
12. On the delivery day shipment reached to the assigned courier
13. Courier employees deliver the product to the consumer
14. In case of return consumer hit the return button before the return window get
closed
15. This return request is approved by Amazon back end as per sellers return policy
16. Couriers are assigned to pick up the product
17. As soon as product details updated in Amazon backend refund process initiated
18. Review of the consumers
A Diagram How Consumer Journey Map Works

5. Measurement of Customer Journey Map is important for a consumer centric company like
Amazon. To create value for a company rather to create value for a brand, excellent
consumer experience is important.
 Inspiration: -Create a comprehensive vision for a customer-centric business and
operating model with clear targets.
 Insights: -Develop customer insights and link customer satisfaction to operational
key performance indicators and business impact (such as churn and cross-selling).
 Improvement: -Radically redesign customer journeys from start to finish, using
digital elements as the standard.
 Institutionalization: - Build customer-centricity into the organization, changing
culture and processes from the front line.
Each element can yield a better experience, but the full impact is seen only when the
four work together. For example, making improvements without insights can result in
resources being allocated to features that customers deem unimportant.
When a company fails in any of this stage to excel in consumer experience then value will be
eroded; and an organization should change rather modify its value according to its
consumers’ taste. It is very true for those companies who are consumer centric like Amazon.
Decoupling: -Decoupling is separation of two or more activities ordinarily done with the
conjunction of consumers. Moreover, it is different from unbundling (Unbundling separates
value creating products), decoupling separates stages of a buyer’s decision process some of
which that create value and others that don’t.
There are broadly three types of consumer activity-
 those that create value for the customers
 those that capture value from the customer for the producer
 those that erode value for the consumer without capturing value for the producer
The main decoupling activity done by Amazon is the following: -

6. Value creating Non-Value Creating
portion portion
Shopping = Test/try + Buy
Amazon first finds out what are the co-consumed consumer activity or traditionally been
coupled activity and think of ways to provide to consumers the desired value creating
activity without providing the others. Amazon provides a Market Place Model where initially
consumers are not obliged to buy if they surf any product which it different from traditional
buying and selling process.
Weak links:- If we consider present market situation of Amazon then it has the highest
brand value.
To continue with the highest brand value Amazon Should find out some weak links which
cause customer dissatisfaction in Consumer Journey Path. We have reviews of consumers
(both Primary and Secondary Data) who face issues while using Amazon and that leads to
churn which is obviously not acceptable for a consumer obsessed company. While probing
into the weak links we found that consumers are facing problem during purchase and after
sales service period. Those are like followings: -
1. Delivery of fake product: -Most of the sampled consumers who used to buy apparels
complain that the page was showing something, and it was delivered some other.
Consumer complaints that dress material is not good, they choose one colour and
they got another one, the apparel style shown in the page and the apparel they
received were not same.

7. 2. Sometimes consumer got confused because suppliers are exhibiting too much in
their catalogue. We found one case like the consumer was looking for a utensil,
when she surfed, she gone through the catalogue and placed the order. Now when
she received the product it was only the hanger the utensil can place and not the
desired one.
3. High shipping charge and Low-quality product in high price discourages price
sensitive consumers.
4. Delay in delivery discourages those consumers who are in hurry to receive the
desired product.
5. Mysterious cancellation of delivery (often Amazon Backend people reports that
consumer was not available in phone so delivery boy could not deliver the product)
6. There are certain consumers who are still not comfortable to buy electronic products
from Amazon. When we ask about the reason then we got a reply like they are not
sure about the installation, repair or after sales service part. But they are sure about
installation, repair and after sales service part when they buy from shopping mall or
any brick and mortar store. So, the consumers feel a gap of physical touch point.
7. It is also true for apparel part. If a consumer buy apparel from any brick and mortar
store, then he/she is offered free alteration if required but Amazon does not provide
this service. And we found consumers are reluctant to pay for alteration while they
also pay for the apparel.
8. We found some potential consumers who avoid Amazon or any online shopping
platform just because they are working people and there is no one in home to collect
the coming product or handover the returned product to the assigned courier boy.
This type of consumers feels comfortable in brick and mortar store because they can
access themaccording to their convenient time.
Now if we want to decouple the weak links, we will get the following figure-
Value Creating Portion Value Capturing Portion Value Erosion Portion
Precise, Unbiased
information of the product
Authentication Biased, Fake,
Jumbled up information
Access at the convenient
time of the consumers
Value for Consumer time Consumers must operate on
Amazon’s time schedule
Taken Care of consumers
choice
Value for consumer choice,
Creating Emotional
Touchpoint
Send any other similar
product except consumer’s
desired one because of stock
issue
Providing a repairing,
installation and after sales
service platform for
electronics (it can be the
same platform the product
sold or any other, choice is
up to consumers)
Care for consumer
convenience
Facing hurdles regarding
repairing. Installation and
after sales service after
purchasing electronics

8. Providing free alteration for
the apparels when it is
required
Care for consumer necessity Expense for both purchasing
the apparels and alteration
Proactive and Prompt
delivery
Care for consumer’s urgency Delay in delivery
No mysterious cancellation
of delivery from Amazon
End. If there is some issue in
delivery, then consumer
should know the proper
reason.
Care for consumers’ right to
know things, add value to
consumers that they are a
part of company
Showing any fishy, general
reason of cancellation like
your phone was not
reachable.
Low shipping charge/low or
medium quality product
price should be like their
quality. No exaggeration
Care for consumers’ price
sensitivity, care for their
pocket, creating an
emotional touchpoint
through serving consumers
with moderate quality
product demand
High price and high quality
can only serve a deep pocket
consumer
The following matrix shows the relation between consumer activity and degree of Value
Creation.
High
Consumer activity
Low
High low
Degree of value creation
 If we want to describe how the matrix works, then we will get certain results which
are as follow-
 If degree of value creation and consumer activity is low, then people will only have
an awareness of the brand or product. The consumers’ mind set will be like “Yes,
there is a brand name X, I heard about that only”.
 If degree of value creation is low but consumer activity is high, then brand will get
negative reviews. Now when we were analysing people’s review, we notice that
consumers are more sensitive to negative review than positive. If there are both
Purchase Review (negative)
Search Awareness

9. positive and negative review consumers try to find out how many numbers of
negative reviews are there and that leads to their purchase decision. If positive
review is more then it creates a positive perception about the brand.
 If degree of value creation and consumer activity both are high, then consumers will
purchase the product that matches with their value.
 If degree of value creation is high but consumer activity is low, then people will just
search for the product buy they never buy. It can be caused for some competitive
advantage, like Brand X’s competitors are more efficient in value creation.
Recoupling: -
Recoupling = Value creating portion + Value capturing portion
Recoupling is the combination of value creation portion and value capturing portion. We
know that there are four type of consumers- Lead, Iron, Gold, Platinum. The following
matrix will show how degree of recoupling is related to types of consumers and profitability.
High
Profitability
And types of customers
Low high low
Degree of recoupling
When degree of recoupling and profitability is low then company will get lead type of
consumers who are not profitable at all.
When profitability is low, but we have high degree of recoupling then we must know
that our maximum consumer base is Iron who are buying but not in a significant volume.
When profitability and degree of recoupling both are high then we are serving platinum
consumer base.
When profitability is high, but degree of recoupling is low then we are serving gold
consumer base who buy a lot but bargain.
Platinum Gold
Iron Lead