As millions of people stay in their homes in America, the country has been relying more on the online marketplaces including Amazon to get the much required essentials including food, toilet paper, cold medicine and hand sanitizer. In the wake of neighborhood supermarkets and consumers are relying on the online grocery delivery services including AmazonFresh that are resulting in a cascade of delays along with the out of stock notices amidst the unexpected rise in demand. The eCommerce giant has hired around 100K employees as their warehouse and delivery workers ever since the March for helping in managing the surge in orders, and it is planning to add around 75K more workers.
The demands have gone unprecedented thus propelling the shares of Amazon to fresh highs. The stock was seen hitting all time high this month of 16th April is up more than 28% for the year, when compared with an 11 percent decline for the S&P 500. The investors are now flocking to the company along with other stay-at-home stocks including Zoom and Netflix. in the recent months, the consumers in the recent times are seen relying on their services amid the lockdown. The outlook seems to be brighter than ever for the e commerce giant. However, it is the ascent that seems to be occurring against the worrisome backdrop of the financial turmoil in the retail industry along with the broader economy.
With the physical stores, which remain open face vanishing the foot traffic, while the other retailers across the US seemed to have closed stores along with the furloughed thousands of employees. On the other side, the smaller and non-essential businesses, which are seen shutting down and shut their doors and are now expecting them to stay active long enough to reopen. The consumers spending seems to have declined too often with the retail sales failing a record 8.7% in March. A number of shoppers seemed to have confined themselves to making huge amounts of purchases of the essential, while the others are generally seen with caution regarding the purchases, along with the 22 million Americans who filed for unemployment benefits in the last four weeks.
The retailers are seen shutting down their doors of opportunity that have allowed them to sell online, but this has not translated to surge in the sales including the experience by Amazon. The survey of around 100 digital retailers by CommerceNext, which is an e-commerce marketing and consulting company seemed to have found around 64.5% of businesses that seems to be reported that e-commerce activity was low amidst the crisis. If you check the retail industry troubles, it seems to have garnered the concern regarding the competitive landscape, which seemed to have gone down with the pandemic subsides. Besides Walmart, Target and Costco, the big question is will anyone else be left to compete with the ecommerce Amazon? Stay tuned, the Amazon has much more to tell the world.