Zappos is an American online retailer store that sells footwear and clothing. Zappos competitors are JustFab and Zalando. (Slideshare, 2018) Zappos exceeds their competitors on two out of three points. Their website is easiest to navigate through, it is properly designed, informative about free shipping and their customer service is their differentiator. Zalando has better organic SEO than Zappos however Zappos is high on SERP when using free shipping as keyword.

 Zappos online-value-proposition is their customer service, both ways free shipping, 24/7 customer service and free 365 uncomplicated returns; this is what differentiates them from their competitors consequently it grants them with a distinct competitive advantage. (Luxury, 2018) (Forbes, 2018).      

Zappos target market is online consumers due to that Zappos is only an e-commerce store. Zappos (2018)

Geographics: 87.14% of their business is in America, United Kingdom 0.96%, Canada 1.28%, Russia 0.54%, Germany 0.45%. (SimilarWeb, 2018). Urban and suburban.

Demographics: 20-40, female and male, middle social class.

Behavioural: low involvement products, therefore, the customer is more likely to be further along on the buyer decision process by Dewey, J. (1910).

Psychographic: Customers who want excellent customer service, delivering wow, free shipping, free returns which is Zappos competitive advantage. (Zappos, 2018)

With the information from segmentation, two personas have been conducted please see appendices A and B. The two personas are in the customer journey for Zappos.

The personas used different platforms during their customer journey, both had their first awareness of the brand via advertisement but on different platforms i.e. mobile and desktop both heard positive word-of-mouth Clarissa experienced it in person since she does not use social media, Elena is very familiar with social media and uses it often which is the reason why she was exposed to positive word-of-mouth there.

Clarissa does not use social media, she did not do a social media check, however Elena did to make sure that the great things she heard about Zappos was true such as the free returns.

They have different experiences in SEO since they remembered different things from word-of-mouth  free shipping was important to Clarissa since she is has low income, when she searched for free shipping shoes online Zappos ranked high. However, for Elena who is used to searching in Google did not use a longer phrase she searched for shoes online.

Both had product information questions, Elena who is experienced in Internet she first went through web forums and then chat support. Clarissa who is not experienced called Zappos right away. Elena did not have any technical difficulties since she is used to using websites and figure out problems on her own. Clarissa again had a problem and went back to call Zappos for help.

The most important touch points are word-of-mouth, SEO and product-technical information queries. Please see appendix C for each personas evaluated customer journey.

(Youtube, 2018) 

(Youtube, 2018) 

Bibliography

Dewey, J. (1910) How We Think, DC Health and Company, Boston.   

Google, (2018) shoes online free shipping America. [Online] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=shoes+online+free+shpiing+america&oq=shoes+online+free+shpiing+america&aqs=chrome..69i57.5321j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Hubspot, (2018) How to Create an Effective Customer Journey Map. [Online] https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-journey-map. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

JustFab, (2018) Women’s Shoes, Boots, Handbags & Clothing Online. [Online] https://www.justfab.com/. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Micah Solomon, (2018) Tony Hsieh Reveals The Secret To Zappos’ Customer Service Success In One Word. [Online]  https://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2017/06/12/tony-hsieh-spills-the-beans-the-one-word-secret-of-zappos-customer-service-success/1. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

SimilarWeb, (2018) Justfab overview. [Online] https://www.similarweb.com/website/justfab.com [Accessed 10 December 2018]

SimilarWeb, (2018) Zalando overview. [Online] https://www.similarweb.com/website/zalando.com [Accessed 10 December 2018]

SimilarWeb, (2018) Zappos overview. [Online] https://www.similarweb.com/website/zappos.com [Accessed 10 December 2018]

SlideShare, (2018) Zappos Online Customer Journey Analysis. [Online] https://www.slideshare.net/BilalAbdallaoui/zappos-online-customer-journey. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

SlideShare, (2018) Zappos Marketing Strategy. [Online]  https://www.slideshare.net/kundai1nangati/zappos-marketing-strategy. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

SlideShare, (2018) The user experience at Zappos.  [Online] https://www.slideshare.net/valeriadeserto/the-user-experience-at-zapposcom. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Trustpilot, (2018) Zappos reviews. [Online] https://trustpilot.com/review/www.zappos.com?languages=all&page=4. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Trustpilot, (2018)JustFab reviews. [Online]  https://trustpilot.com/review/justfab?page=4. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Trustpilot, (2018) Zalando reviews. [Online] https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/zalando. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Valacich JS, Parboteeah DV and Wells JD (2007) “The online consumer’s hierarchy of needs”, Communications of the ACM, Vol 50, No 9, p84-90

YouTube, (2018) Customer Journey Mapping. [Online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsarh1BhC9U. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

YouTube, (2018) The customer journey—How to bring excellence to every touchpoint. [Online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij258_QAfrE. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Zappos Luxury, (2018) Return Policy | Zappos Luxury. [Online]  https://luxury.zappos.com/c/return-policy. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Zappos, (2018) Shoes, Sneakers, Boots, & Clothing + FREE SHIPPING. [Online] https://www.zappos.com. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Zappos, (2018) Zappos insight WOW. [Online] https://www.zapposinsights.com/training/school-of-wow. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Zalando, (2018) High Street to High End Fashion. [Online]  https://www.zalando.co.uk. [Accessed 10 December 2018]

Appendices

Appendix A: Persona One.

Appendix B: Persona Two.

Appendix C: Customer Journey persona summary.