Marketing
Order Description
The coursework is about Zappos, “Happiness in a box” .
Please read attached file which contains 3 different files.
Emphasis on the Assignment Guidelines IMLO’s and Tasks,
Underlined and coloured very important.
Please use refrences mentioned in presentations , i.e Kottler, Fodness etc
You are required to write an academic essay
Based on Zappos – Happiness in a box
Assessment is against specific criteria from the module learning outcomes
IMLO 1
Critically discuss the relevance of theories of consumer and buyer behaviour to different marketing situations
Task 1
Critically discuss the relevance of theories of consumer and buyer behaviour at your chosen organisation. Compare consumer theories of buyer behaviour with business buying behaviour theories (20 marks)
IMLO 2
Demonstrate an understanding of the contribution of marketing to different types of business organisations
Task 2
Explain how marketing contributes to your organisation. Give examples of a marketing contribution at two additional and different types of business organisation (20 marks)
CASE:M-333
Sara Gaviser Leslie and Professor Jennifer Aaker prepared this case as the basis for class discussion rather than to
illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.
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Z
APPOS
:
H
APPINESS IN A
B
OX
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will
never forget how you made them feel.
?0D\D$QJHORX
American author
Zappos is about delivering happiness to the world.
?7RQ\+VLHK&KLHI([HFXWLYH2IILFHU=DSSRV
i
T
HE
B
EGINNING
ii
Nick Swinmurn, a Bay Area entrepreneur, founded Zappos in 1999 after unsuccessfully trying to
find a specific pair of shoes in
several stores. He believed the internet could address the
selection problems traditional shoe sellers faced by removing the physical constraints of shoes
stores. He launched Zappos (whose name was an adaptation of the Spanish word for shoes,
“zapatos”),
despite having no experience in retail or the shoe industry, to provide access to a
wide variety of shoe styles, colors and sizes.
Meanwhile, just three years after graduating from Harvard, Tony Hsieh (pronounced “Shay”)
and Alfred Lin sold their inte
rnet ad
–
banner business, LinkExchange, to Microsoft for $265
million. In 1999, Hsieh and Lin founded a venture capital fund called Venture Frogs. Hsieh
originally served as an investor and advisor to Zappos and then joined the company in 2000,
serving as
the co
–
CEO with Swinmurn. (Lin later joined as COO/CFO.) Swinmurn was intent
on building the next internet retailing powerhouse and satisfying customers’ needs faster and
more simply than ever before. Hsieh, on the other hand, was not focused solely on
profits. He
wanted to create a new universe, a company that was different from any other company he had
known. His focus was on culture and employee happiness. Recalling his outlook on the new
position, Hsieh explained, “It was about: What kind of compa
ny can we create where we all want
to be there, including me? How can we create such a great environment, where employees get so
much out of it that they would do it for free?”
iii
What Hsieh did not know at the time was that he
Zappos: Delivering Happiness M
–
333
p.
2
would move beyond a focus on
creating enjoyment and fulfillment for employees towards
delivering happiness to both customers and the greater public.
F
INDING THE
V
ISION
Zappos survived the burst of the internet bubble and its own struggles to create a reliable supply
chain and distribu
tion system, but, in 2000, was on the edge of running out of cash. Hsieh knew
the company was doing something right and went to enormous lengths
—
propping up the
company with personal funds and even selling real estate
—
to ensure its survival. The dire
cir
cumstances forced the team to focus even more on customer service to enable the company to
continue.
iv
Even as a retailing newcomer, Zappos was already collecting customer accolades.
In 2003
Hsieh
commented to Fred Mossler, then
d
irector of
p
roduct
de
vel
opment, about a customer who had
been shocked by the level of service Zappos provided. The customer had ordered a pair of shoes
and Zappos surprised him by upgrading his shipping from one week to two days: “He loved the
customer service and would tell his
friends and family about us. He even said we should one day
start a Zappos Airlines.” Recently, Hsieh had finished reading Jim Collins’
Good to Great
and
latched on to Collins’ idea that great companies focus on more than just making money or
becoming ma
rket leaders. With these two events top of mind, Hsieh
and Mossler realized they
needed to focus on both short
–
term goals
—
making money
—
and becoming a great company.
Hsieh recalled, “We realized that the biggest vision would b
e to build the Zap
pos brand t
o be
about the very best customer service.”
v
C
REATING THE
C
ULTURE
The start
–
up culture, where everyone pitched in and felt integral to the success of the company,
invigorated Hsieh and his colleagues:
Even though we were going through some tough times, w
e were going through
everything together, and we were all fiercely passionate about what we were
doing. We had made sacrifices in our own way because we all believed in the
potential and future of the company.”
vi
The need for employees to work as a unit o
nly strengthened when the company moved from the
San Francisco Bay Area to Las Vegas in 2004. Most employees were new to the area
—
their
lives at work and outside of work merged. Hsieh and his colleagues enjoyed feeling “part of a
tribe,” and Zappos enco
uraged this activity. The culture and Zappos’ performance were so
intimately related that Hsieh believed, “If we got the culture right, then building our brand to be
about the very best in customer service would happen naturally on its own.”
vii
Knowing it
would be hard to maintain the start
–
up feel and culture, in August 2004, Zappos
asked all of its employees to provide their thoughts on what the Zappos culture meant to them. It
compiled this feedback into a culture book that it shared both internally and
externally. (From
that point on, the book was published annually with new employee comments.) Zappos wanted
employees to understand that they were building the culture and ensure that employees had a
shared experience in working at the company. Serious
about creating an environment where
