An open wallet from Wall Street drives all of this. It is the prime strategy followed closely by undercutting competitors early to dominate markets second. Finally, first to market wins the battle, everything else is just details.

I believe when it pertains to Amazon, what we are missing here from the classic four Ps of marketing model is Prime membership, which is the most critical value-added component from a customer experience standpoint. One of Amazon’s wisest strategic moves was to establish the Prime membership program, which provides seamless second-day guaranteed free shipping, exclusive membership-only pricing promotions and the added on benefits of Prime video streaming.

From a customer experience perspective, it’s clear that Amazon has won the hearts and minds of their customers via the Prime membership model, vast assortments, ease of shopping, etc. However this perception may cloud the consumer’s judgements when it comes to the actual product, place, price and promotional strategies. Amazon may not actually have the advantages in these areas, however, the Prime membership strategy and now Alexa voice-activated commerce are clear competitive advantages.

The discussion of the “four P’s” makes sense as far as it goes — and it rightly points out that assortment is more important than price to the Amazon customer. But there are other secrets to Amazon’s success that deserve at least as much attention.

First, Amazon’s predictive technology does an industry-best job making purchase recommendations based on shoppers’ past buying and browsing behavior. Second, Amazon has created an Apple-style “ecosystem” (from the Kindle to the Echo) enabling its own hardware to drive e-commerce sales. And finally, Amazon’s TV advertising does a great job creating an emotional connection between the company and its customers.

All of these points would mean little if Amazon didn’t execute well. The level of trust between Amazon and its customers may be the most important brand-building exercise of all.

Amazon has made itself a great place to buy product when you know what you want. So it starts with product.

And we need to remember that the product “P” is about product strategy — different competitors choose different strategies. The successful Amazon strategy is necessarily different from, say, Walmart’s strategy. Or the Home Depot/Lowe’s strategy for product.

Whereas Amazon is a great place to buy, competitors can succeed by being great places to shop for products.

Amazon is now a retailer, a cloud-services provider, a film studio, a device company, a parcel carrier and a technology giant. An estimated 40 percent of U.S. online spending goes to Amazon. Clearly the success of Amazon comes from its willingness to innovate and take risks in ways that are meaningful to its target markets.

While the four Ps noted in the article are critical to the success of Amazon, I would argue that the one C, namely, the customer best explains the company’s success. Amazon is probably the most customer-centric organization in today’s economy. While other companies are more concerned about the competition or Wall Street, Amazon focuses on Main Street. This obsession with the customer drives every strategy and tactic the company executes. Clearly, Amazon’s success has left many clues for competitors to emulate — the primary one being that everything begins and ends with the customer.

First, I’d challenge the claim that Amazon’s prices are “often” not the lowest on the web. We have data that suggests otherwise (and will publish it very soon).

Of the elements presented here, the comments about Amazon’s customer obsession (under “place”) is probably closest to what has driven Amazon’s growth. Amazon builds and helps people buy products and services that are in-demand with as little friction and fuss as possible. And they’re always striving to outdo themselves.

I think it is difficult to identify one single aspect of the marketing strategy as being “most responsible” for Amazon’s growth, but if forced to choose only one, I would say promotion, if you allow me to consider Amazon Prime part of their promotion strategy. The extremely high conversion rates and retention rates of Prime members say all that needs to be said about the promotional program’s effectiveness.

A disruptive, three-word sentence sums up Amazon’s contrarian advantage, with an “f word” deserving a place among the musty Ps: Fulfillment IS marketing.

Early adopters to Amazon enjoyed the concept of buying almost anything they could think of through their website. The flywheel concept of having affiliated retailers offer their products in addition to Amazon’s own massive warehouse selection was and continues to be a major catalyst for adaption and growth. Individual retailers that now compete with Amazon for online market share are still largely disadvantaged with their relatively limited offerings.

Amazon went around some of the 4 P’s and added an R and a C. They took the Risk out of internet shopping, making Amazon a safe place to buy (and return). The C stands for convenience, from one click to 2-hour delivery how much easier can shopping be for the consumer. As for product, an overwhelming assortment with at least “fair” pricing, if not best price.

Amazon is about 2 key things: price and place. The Internet gives them an everywhere and everything presence. Amazon is not confined by traditional retail place issues or space issues. More importantly, it gives them unlimited inventory, since space for inventory is not an issue either since products can be fulfilled by the manufacturer or FBA.

Pricing is what originally drove Amazon’s model, and to a large part still does. Pricing clarity allows consumers and competitors to easily see the price point they need to sell products at and what it will take to be successful from there.

The lessons to be learned are not necessarily found in the four P’s.

#1 is an obsession with customer-centricity.

#2 is to constantly innovate — even if you get it wrong! (Anyone remember the Amazon Fire smartphone?)

#3 isn’t quite a marketing lesson. I’ve said here previously that Amazon can be defined as a logistics company first and foremost. They are constantly optimizing their costs both from the supply chain through to last-mile fulfillment. One can make the argument that this is a reflection of their obsession with being customer-first and delivering the best value to their customer.

The article is correct in that Amazon isn’t always the best price, but they do deliver on value. The Prime program is the best example of that. What other loyalty program can claim to be so successful as to have over 50% of households in the program? Every marketer would like to have those stats!