TEST BLOG POSTING NO.4

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a point of view — and his strategies, intriguingly, focus on one compelling degree of index. Community attention. You might notice, in having any degree of relationship with Amazon, that progressively, the “connectedness” of your link to them can, and will, if you allow it, deepen. What that means really comes from the top of the organization — the headwaters of Amazon, Mr. Bezos himself. And truly, any brand, and any relationship is ultimately only as good as its funding “glue”; that is the audience. Strong, continuously re-identifying relational adhesion either builds, and mends the connections to audience links to brand, or progressively it dissipates.

The acquisition of Zappos spells a deepening of the understanding of brand in relationship – one in a string of consumer focused brand alliances now owned by Amazon. Zappos, however, extends the power of relationship management to new degrees; and it’s the Amazon strategy to learn from those lessons, even though they’ve offered to allow Zappos to exist unfettered by Amazon management. Patricia Edwards, a retail analyst with Storehouse Partners offers that, “They didn’t buy Zappos just because they sell shoes but because of how they do it,” She offers “You can generate incredible customer loyalty through a good experience.” And what happens in that model is the opening, which becomes the second, the third, the story shared and the building community. This, too, is the premise of Zappos