Argument position paper - Amazon the only place for consumer needs

Influence of COVID-19 on Amazon Market
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Influence of COVID-19 on Amazon Market
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the governments to implement social distancing measures aimed to control the spread of the deadly virus. For that reason, many people avoid stores and have embarked on online shopping. Right now, Amazon products are on demand. Investors are also interested in companies that could benefit from the COVID-19 crisis. According to (LaMonica, 2020), Amazon dominates the online space, and in US alone, the company controls over 38% of the e-commerce market. Therefore, Amazon has an opportunity to capitalize in online marketplace as a result of COVID-19. Indeed, the company has witnessed a massive rise in the demand of its online shopping services. Recently, the company increased its stores and employee base by hiring more warehouse and delivery workers to keep up with the increasing demand (Palmer, 2020). Most of Amazon’s revenue originates from the retail business. As such, increased online shopping could expand the company’s financial position. As COVID- 19 pandemic continues to intensify, Amazon is slowly becoming the world’s number one market place for consumer needs.
Latest statistics show that COVID-19 has changed the world, claiming more than 350,000 lives across the globe, and threatening the US economy as well as the economies of other affected nations (Our World Data). Other than the hospitality and travel industry, the retail market has been hit hard by the pandemic. While grocery stores and online retailers have been allowed to operate significant store chains and other nonessential retail stores have been forced to shut down their operations (The Guardian). Those closures have inflicted catastrophic blows to cash reserves and increasing trends in consumer behavior. The closures have also affected the brick-and-mortar retail and more than 16 million employees working in the industry (Palmer, 2020).
According to Washington post, close to a million retail workers have recently been furloughed in one week. In the same context, over 250,000 stores have been shuttered according to (Rey, 2020). Some analysts have predicted that an upward of 15,000 retail stores may close permanently this year. However, not every retailer is suffering in the presence of COVID-19. For Amazon, which already dominated a large percentage of brick-and-mortar online business in the US, the pandemic has potentially boosted the company’s business and power. Google searches for Amazon are at peak, and the company is hiring over 250,000 new employees (Soper, 2020). In the meantime, a lot of customers are shifting to online shopping as well as grocery delivery and pickup, and they may continue with this trend even after the end of the pandemic.
With millions of people ordered to stay home, Amazon is now a lifetime for essentials for many Americans instead of just a suitable choice for online shopping. Many people have turned to online marketplaces such as Amazon to order fundamental products like food. In lieu of neig...