The research problem investigated in this study is the decline in customer satisfaction marks that Amazon.
com has received over the last five years, from 2002 to 2006. Although Amazon. com and eBay. com, the consistent leaders in the e-retail category of customer satisfaction reporting, have been receiving high marks since 2000 when the e-retail category was introduced, the industry has dropped overall by almost 5% (Beal, 2005).The primary reason for the client’s interest in the problem is due to the growing competition in the online market reducing the number of customers that Amazon. com has contact with.
Initially, Amazon. com’s customer satisfaction score was 88, dropping to 84 in 2004 and only rebounding to an 87 in 2006 (ACSI, 2006). A majority of the information collected was taken from various articles, both online and in print. Additionally, websites like the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) were utilized to extract facts and figures related to the study.
The resources were collected through a combination of methods, but mostly internet search engines. In some cases, articles were mentioned in referenced sources and then explored for other possible uses. The sources that were selected for use were extremely representative of the research problem. All of the information that was assessed for inclusion covered different aspects of the same concerns from the customer’s point-of-view to that of Amazon.
com.The research that was used spanned a time period from 2000 to present, as the e-retail category has only been around for that amount of time. Future scores reported by ACSI are most likely going to steadily decrease over time based on the analysis of available information. It seems that while the customer satisfaction marks that Amazon. com are receiving are still high, it is the best time to change their marketing strategy and business model in order to grow and stay ahead of the curve as they have been from the beginning (Beal, 2005).
