Amazon, the world’s current leader in e-commerce is now tackling multiple aspects of everyday society, such as fulfilling the demand for instant and fresh fruits and vegetables. Not more than fifteen years ago, Walmart dominated the retail industry. Every single product was available on the shelves of the retail bull, people would take out hours and hours for shopping, suddenly, Walmart became a retail icon but then came Amazon.
Amazon delivered a body blue to Walmart with it’s direct and attractive methods of advertising and purchase platform. It portrayed laziness in the face of buying items as acceptable, it made people feel divine. Sitting at home and getting products delivered to your doorstep was associated with godliness before Amazon’s rise to power. Amazon made that heavenly emotion available to the general public. With better infrastructure than any other company to date, Amazon tackled the problem of sorting and organization with technology and robotics, almost all of Amazon’s warehouses are automated, with robots doing all the hard work, the good part, they don’t complain! Then, Amazon took another quantum leap, it introduced data structures and artificial intelligence into its program. As a result, content was guided towards customers, Amazon gave customers what they wanted, deep inside. All of a sudden, Amazon knew more about your buying habits than your wife. Now, Amazon is delivering its final punch, aimed to kill off conventional retailers and other e-commerce giants such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and E-Bay. Amazon has now pulled off immense leaps. First came echo, Amazon’s voice assistant. Alexa, unlike Siri and Bixby, exists in the physical world, it is a living person. Then. amazon tackled worldwide delivery systems with the introduction of automated shipping lines and aircraft carriers, its now dominating the shipping market and overshadowing companies such as Fed-Ex and DFL. With new ventures such as the Amazon fire series, Amazon Go and Amazon fresh, the monopoly is now truly taking over the retail industry all around the globe. Note, amazon has now become the second largest search engine in the world, officially.
With such vast advances in all aspects of the retail industry, and allotment of resources towards production of modernised and automated brick and mortar stores, Amazon is capturing the entire macroeconomic market. Amazon is making lives more divine and comfortable, now, you can tell your echo to add items to your shopping list, or to play songs, or to buy stuff, or to make to-do lists or you can listen to the news. Ultimately, Amazon is trying to capture the household, the products in the household and how the products reach that place.
Anyone would now be in belief of the fact that Amazon is overpowering Walmart, but that may not be true, Walmart still has tricks up its sleeve. Firstly, Walmart still is the biggest gainer from true retail, that is brick and mortar retail. It has a far better physical infrastructure than Amazon. Although Walmart is far behind in e-commerce, advertising, product change, policy change and permission to operate in India might just change that.
Given all this, there are many other companies apart from Amazon and Walmart that could be dominating the retail sale market in 2030. One potential candidate is Alibaba. Founder Jack Ma has sole permission to sell to the world’s largest population, China.