How COVID-19 will Impact Internet Services and E-commerce
Professor Dan Wang discusses how COVID-19 will affect Internet services and e-commerce through the lens of Amazon.
Dan Wang, Lambert Family Associate Professor of Social Enterprise in the Faculty of Business
March 3, 2020
There’s never been a moment in history when it’s been more clear what the strategic importance of a company like Amazon is. While the U.S. might lack the coordination capabilities of other countries, the U.S. has a concentration of industrial might and technological innovation that no other country possesses. There’s no better example of this than a company like Amazon.
In fact, companies like Amazon, or Walmart for that matter, are already strategically important to the U.S. - they’re how most of the country gets what it needs. Walmart is the largest employer in the United States, and 90% of Americans live within 10 minutes of a Walmart. And last year in 2019, about $280 billion came to Amazon in revenue.
One of the largest categories of revenue for Amazon is Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS provides cloud and backend computing for some of the biggest businesses in the world. These companies all need to function at an even higher level than they did before - and Amazon is the backbone of those efforts.
Coming out of the coronavirus crisis, I think you’ll see companies like Amazon gaining greater market power, and changing our view of what an ecommerce company should look like. If traditional retail hasn’t adapted by now, this crisis will force their hand.