Amway Marketing Strategy (Sales and marketing plan )

Amway is an American (Michigan based) company and has the world’s largest direct selling business. The company uses multi-level marketing to sell a range of products, including health, beauty, and home care products. It also provides excellent business opportunity for Independent Business Owners as well.

Amway India is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amway and has been operating in India since 1998. The company sells more than hundred products covering various categories and has nationwide presence with over 130 sale offices and a number of small and big warehouses. Amway India has over five and a half lakh ABOs (Amways Business Owners). Amway sells a wide range of consumer durable products in India, believes in conducting business ethically and is committed to helping its direct sellers succeed.

Most of Amway India’s products can be categorised as falling under Consumer Durables, Healthy (nutrition) and Beauty.

FMCG products are usually low cost, required frequently, and so get sold quickly as well. Most FMCG products in India are sold at grocery stores, at superstores and many have now started ordering them online as well.

Buyers expect these to be lower-priced, and are only willing to pay a premium in case they are really convinced that the product is good. For example, Surf excel is a bit expensive that other competitive products, but still gets sold a lot because home-makers are convinced that it’s a great product.

Marketing strategies adopted by FMCG companies:

• Wide Distribution Network: The top FMCG companies have a wide distribution network which helps them increase their market share.
• As products reach the mature stage of the Product Life cycle, FMCG companies usually abandon their weaker products, and focus more on their profitable products and also quickly develop new products.
• Most FMCG companies adopt Multibrand Strategy where two or more similar and competing products are sold by the same firm. The idea is to capture as much of the market share as possible by covering multiple segments.

Amway FMCG products get sold through its strong army of direct-sellers who passionately explain the benefits of their products through product demonstrations to potential buyers.

The fact that you get commissions and can get associated with Amway to make a side income is also enough incentive for many to try out Amway products. Lot of people get associated with Amway for this very reason.

Amway wants to charge a premium for its products through product differentiation, and is putting in the required efforts to develop various channels to reach out to the consumers. It wants to be seen as a producer of premium products that are really useful to the end-users.

Amway India has resisted itself from selling any of its products through popular online shopping sites such as Amazon & Flipkart because it doesn’t want to sell its products at really discounted rates. It even dragged the top online shopping sites in India to court for selling Amway products without their consent.

FMCG companies have always used the right marketing mix – 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) to promote their FMCG products in a way that would best influence the target audience. The advantage these companies have is that they have a very strong line-up of products, which gives a strong lift to their marketing mix.

While most of it still applies, digital marketing is also playing an important role in marketing (not just in FMCG but in other industries as well). More consumers are taking to their smartphones or laptops to buy things, there are many who prefer to order things online than visit a physical store.

So companies are also changing their strategies to target this segment. In addition to promoting on mediums like newspapers, television, companies are spending on online marketing as well.

References: Amway on Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amway

Amway India aims to be a billion dollar company by 2025
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retail/amway-india-aims-to-be-a-billion-dollar-company-by-2025/articleshow/64855295.cms