Many companies will not survive the pandemic. Amazon will emerge stronger than ever from

The pandemic has pointed businesses around the world, but very good for Amazon. Every Lockdown “click to buy” the company pushed a little ‘later in the direction of complete dominance shopping online as total e-commerce sales in May almost doubled. But when it was bigger better for everyone, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos did not appear before Congress to antitrust hearing on Wednesday. Charlene Anderson and sellers as they are one of the reasons why he will be there. Anderson is one of many retailers that sell goods on Amazon – and which represent more than half of sales on the site. But they also charge: Amazon Anderson post office $39.99 monthly fee knitting and craft on its website, and it takes an average of about 30 percent for each item sold them. Anderson experienced seller has deteriorated during the pandemic as Amazon exercised the power of what they call the “dictatorship” on the internal market that controls alone. In mid-March, for example, Amazon seller informed that during the, only his actions staples for home, health care and pandemic would accept “other high-demand products,” but to explain, failed because it determines what he would accept. Anderson was still a bit ‘of the labor exchanges in color knitting in the Amazon fields, but others do not send; could size of knitting needles, but not a different message. Some retailers have seen their sales evaporate; other USPS or other services paid for contracts with customers to send, while Amazon monthly fee to pay. Even after the order of Amazon raised crates of goods that Anderson ship to a warehouse are still sitting on loading docks for weeks, he says, and if Amazon and discards lost count the items, an error that Anderson Days takes remedy. The client company sends the wrong items, then you can leave negative feedback on their sell-side, even though the error was Amazon, says Anderson, 63, lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In Facebook group runs, Anderson says, some sellers are worried that the number of problems, their internal values ​​on Amazon so much lower that company will withdraw from the site. But where else they would go? “What we want to do, protest and will not sell on Amazon?” He asks Anderson. “Well, I’m just going to kill all my activities. They, and they know they have it, if you go, they’ll just find someone else to sell these items.” Consumer spending on Amazon last May to July year was 60% compared for the same time period after the Facteus financial data company. The extraordinary performance of the company – has 38% of the e-commerce market, driven by Walmart to 6% – it has been put under the microscope and COVID-19 But the blockade, which threw the company has strengthened the dominance in high relief the consequences for other companies. This surge of interest is written into federal law for more than a century update to correct the distortions of monopolies on an economy. Bezos will appear before a subcommittee on antitrust law, commercial and administrative, as part of an investigation by the Judicial Committee of the Chamber of online platforms and market power. The hearings are asking: in the era of Big Tech, how big is too big? New York University professor of marketing Scott Galloway, a longtime critic of Amazon says it is useful to think advantage enjoyed Amazon Prime membership service as the kind of massive competition, once owned by the railroad barons properties. logistics and delivery company network, Amazon not only has the eyeballs of millions of families deliver the company that ships packages, and what they buy. “Amazon has already the tracks in 115 million households in America,” says Galloway. “She really is a company that we want to be the referee of any business?” Economic crises have a way to create winners and losers. Procter & Gamble have thrived during the Great Depression, clicking on the doubling of advertising; Objective expanded after 2001 recession and saw profits rise by 50%. Before the pandemic, Amazon accounted for approximately 4% of total retail sales in the United States. But with the new habits formed during the pandemic, it predicts that by 2025, UBS e-commerce a quarter of total retail sales mind, compared to 15% last year. The company also estimates that 100,000 bricks and mortar stores closed in the next five years. “Consumers are increasingly turning to online shopping pass,” the analysts wrote. “You can get many of these buyers do not shop in the back of the store when the current condition is over.” Amazon, which makes refused an executive available to comment for this article, casts you as gentle giant in his ever-present messages to consumers; He spent nearly $7000000000 in itself (more than double the amount spent Walmart) in 2019 advertising. According to Ad Age, the biggest spender announcement of the company that in the United States last year. But Amazon also sells advertising – $3.9 billion in value in the first quarter of 2020 to around 44% over the previous year. The ads appear to be listed by the same seller small on Amazon on the Kindle on Amazon Prime TV and on Amazon.com, some pay to buy from them, but to lose the fear on the site without additional funding. Due to construction of e-commerce so, advertising on Amazon are for sale to anyone on the site is essential. According to marketing surveys, when online shoppers are planning to buy an item, about half go directly to Amazon and search for the item instead of googling or visit another website. Most of the sheets do not have the first page of results, and for sellers, it is important to be seen in this first page. One can hope that the positive reviews on Amazon algorithm lead them there, or you can purchase ads. Amazon is now the third largest digital display provider in the US, after Facebook and Google. And as it consolidates its grip on e-commerce, you can pay for ads on its site. Buyers now compete in an auction for keywords related to their products; The more people, the higher prices go compete. Sales in the first three months of this year from advertising 43.8% over the previous year and 359% from 2017 for reporting on corporate earnings. “It ‘as she begins to feel to play chess, and think three or four steps forward,” Andrew Lipsman, Independent retail analyst, says the company eMarketer market research. “More and more I’m surprised there on Amazon,”. So do investors who have seen the title like an oasis in a dangerous stock market. Amazon has won half a trillion dollars of its market value this year, and stocks should rise even higher if the result will be reported on July 30, when, as Goldman Sachs analysts expected that the company’s sales in North America jumping by almost 50% from the previous show. Bezos, already the richest person in the world with a net worth of $178 billion dollars, the first Trillionaire could be the world since 2026. This type of wealth concentrated loads against stiff of people like Susan Bengel he embodied. One of Amazon’s 175,000 employees the set during a pandemic that costs 40 million American jobs, Bengel had 62, was living in his car before the end of March to work in the Amazon warehouse in Pennsylvania started. He told me that he had recently launched a range of UPS, but she remained in the Amazon, despite the difficult conditions that need to be throughout the film the night on their feet. UPS could pay or benefits that do not fit you get from Amazon, says Bengel. “It ‘a monopoly, but also offer,” he said after a round in which each employee a Chick-fil-A boxed dinner and a bottle of hand sanitizer courtesy of Amazon. As stores in his hometown near Wayne, Pa., He turned to buy on Amazon, what it needs, including new shoes and rear risers to get them through their shifts. Amazon buyers, there is not much wrong, apart from the discomfort of eating giant that rivals their customers says devoured. Amazon claims that a monopoly does not compete with brick and mortar stores because for distribution. “There is a market selling to single detail, one of which is an online channel. People are buying, not just online,” a spokeswoman for Amazon said in a statement. But the stores without LogistikNetz Amazon are impossible to compete. While Amazon tens of thousands of new workers was the setting, Jeff Curtis ran to his library Maine, Sherman, scrambling to meet orders online because online Bezos had done only for the first few days selling books in the mid ‘ 90 on Amazon. But Curtis was by himself because his business was closed with stay-at-home jobs to accomplish. He says the government his request for a special denied to bring aid workers allowed, although Amazon has been on site permit, the employee must meet its run online orders. Curtis has already close definitively chosen one of the six branches of his shop and is concerned, must close another tin. And ‘the way of the world, Amazon has built. Kathy Gonzalez, which operates two retail stores in northwest Florida says, to offer shipping tried for furniture, and sells other items, but the cost is so high that people Amazon call in which the shipping is free. “If you want to be able to reach customers online, you are essentially forced to be on Amazon’s platform, but the Amazon platform is not a place that you can be successful,” says Stacy Mitchell, co-director of ‘Institute for local confidence in the socket. “This sudden increase in online shopping, all that was expanded” Its mammoth size are Amazon benefits only to himself, one of his companies, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is a cloud computing platform, the rent on a company of leaves room server network. Its $35 billion in revenue in 2019 (36% compared to last year) that a financial cushion that Amazon grocery delivery ‘subsidizing, expanding its network of stores, and dare not think of the great ship leaks days Offer. The company now has 1,223 buildings covering 278 million square meters in its global logistics network, by 82% from 2016, according to International MWPVL, a supply chain and logistics consulting firm, and is always expanding to an even rhythm ‘unprecedented’, “says Marc Wulfraat, founder and president of MWPVL. and ‘built or announced plans to build 49 million square meters warehouse in the United States from March to July alone, he says. deep pockets Amazon are also insured the company’s ability during the crown in a way that no other company can operate. Bezos said in late April that Amazon to invest $4 billion of the crown protection efforts in facilities, including personal protective equipment workers, better cleaning and the development of its COVID-19 testing capabilities. Galloway says calls this the first “vaccinated Supply Chain”, which is dominated by competitors help Amazon more as more people choose to buy a service and sell products through which invested in his threats. Amazon will continue to invest in technologies that will further consolidate the e-commerce on their grip. In June, the company said it would spend $1.2 billion for the acquisition Zoox, a startup that makes the self-propelled vehicle that could help in their delivery services. Amazon is expanding its fleet of cargo planes, like other airlines in better its dependence on FedEx and UPS to reduce them a favorable lease. It has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Rivian, an electric car company and the purchase of 100,000 electric vans from the start. In July, Amazon said it would open cashier melt Amazon Go shopping. “Some people, and I am one of them only buy something if on Amazon,” says Brandon Fishman, CEO of VitaCup that vitamin coffee and tea infused both in retail stores and online and has seen an increase of 35% Amazon sells its sales in March and April. Fishman says it’s cheaper shops for him as its brick and mortar selling products to sell on Amazon, because Amazon takes the average for shipping. But he will not miss e-commerce customers, who are his most faithful. More than half of the people who VitaCup products on the Amazon site to return to buy more now. “The third-party sellers say it is a pact with the devil,” says Galloway, a professor at New York University. “Amazon brings us a lot of revenue, and we are addicted to it, but each year our economy worse.” In April, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon was from third-party data vendors to determine which items sell well, then private label versions of the same products are to compete with the sellers’ products. (Amazon has said that such a practice would violate its policies, and promised to investigate.) Other retailers have argued that Amazon fake versions of items sold on its website not to lose weight; suspect the company that taxes will be lost by both legitimate and illegitimate collects seller. (Amazon says it will help to prohibiting the sale of counterfeit products, with automated systems ferrets from plagiarism is investing “heavily” and that 99.9% of all visited by the customer side has received no indication of possible fake injuries.) During the pandemic, sellers say communication has deteriorated and Amazon’s response to the glaring problems on the site has slowed. Charlene Anderson says he can not sell a sample because the image on Amazon page number is imprecise; has three months looking for the problem is solved. In July, Anderson said, Amazon seller said it would limit the number of products that could keep them in camps based on a performance metric. The ups and downs of the pandemic have led to that during the beginning of the sales Anderson COVID-19 blast decreased, are about 3% so far. But some sellers in the Facebook group operates, report their sales by more than 50%. More frustrating for all of them is the inconsistency; they have no idea when Amazon change again the rules. “We hate to do with all this, but to build our business, we have to,” says Anderson. Amazon says that its platform anyone can make an income in an otherwise challenging economic pandemic, and that works, while meeting increased demand to help sellers by consumers. “Our commitment to our channel partners has never been more constant,” a spokeswoman for Amazon said in a statement. In the twelve months to May 31, 2020 Small and Medium Enterprises 3.4 billion sold products by 25% over the same period last year, according to a report published on July 21 Amazon Amazon the small and medium-sized retailers has average size of Americans say It had more than $160,000 in sales in that period, but it is not expected to average for this seller after deducting costs brought home. Amazon is now valued by the market at $1.5 Katherine, a figure that represents the shadow of the GDP of Saudi Arabia. Exactly what made them so successful, during the pandemic size and many layers, companies-made is the one that has given so much influence on retailers, workers and governments. Existing antitrust laws are designed to protect consumers from predatory pricing. This orientation Amazon protected because in many cases the consumer, the company save money, but is made by scientists in question, and now lawmakers. Critics say the regulation or destruction of Amazon’s best for retailers on its website and in the long run for the economy. The rate of start-up activity in the US has been declining for years; There is some evidence to suggest that this is because big companies like Amazon to force their size with smaller competitors out of the market, or prevents created them in the first place. If small producers and distributors with Amazon had a chance to compete, which may help reverse the decline in start-up. New businesses in America are what drives much of the country, productivity and economic growth, to raise the quality of life and increase prosperity and jobs. Historically, the application of antitrust law helped upstarts; Companies like Google arisen because of the government antitrust case against Microsoft in 1990 in part; contributed to the failure of AT & T in 1980 to launch a renaissance of technology. “A key component of our success as a society is the basic idea of ​​checks and balances,” says Galloway, NYU. “We tried to avoid dictatorships, we try to avoid monopolies. We do not have judges, we have a judge and jury. And we believe in the wisdom of the masses.” Charlene Anderson agrees. He says he does not want and other retailers, Amazon will disappear. If that happened, they would lose their source of income and access to millions of buyers. They just want better communication with Amazon, more democracy, not dictatorship. “Non-transparent Amazon,” he says. “Amazon will not tell you anything.” Wednesday heard the Subcommittee Room for Antitrust examine this statement and more than Congress summit behind the curtain of one of the most successful American companies. The next question is whether it has the tools to do something about what he sees.
Image Copyright Jason Redmond AFP / Getty Images