Enemy To Hero: Amazon

Amazon is an e-commerce site that enables consumers to purchase anything from the comfort of their homes. In the beginning, society see that Amazon was replacing or "killing" the traditional retail businesses.

Yes, we are all aware there is higher sales traction in Amazon than in retail businesses. But, retail businesses sales traction has always been like that – never change. Hence, Amazon just enables farther and wider reach to the potential markets.

Traditionally, and till now, commercial real estate are valued based on locations. Prime locations like shopping districts and office buildings have higher traffic of customers visiting compared to the non-prime locations such as at outskirts. And Jeff Bezos see the opportunity of the internet as the new infrastructure that is accessible for everyone in any part of the world. And since everyone holds their smartphones, the online stores are accessible for larger markets with potential customers from across the streets or from the other side of the sea.

As COVID-19 Pandemic occur, conventional retail businesses are unable to have a high traffic of customers visiting their fixed-located stores since the people movement are restricted with the ‘movement control order’. These restrictions make the retail businesses adapt to use an online platform such as social media to market their products and Amazon to sell their products. Imagine if this pandemic occurs back then in the early 90s where the internet was still an infant, maybe they need to close down their businesses.

This makes Amazon a saviour from an enemy in the eye of retail businesses. Amazon is an outcast and a trendsetter. In the future, soon, every business will have most of their sales through online than their physical stores.

I’m in the business development role and I no longer need to go across the states to meet potential clients (that may also result in an unsuccessful deal). With the internet, I can connect with leads via video calls and share highly interactive information easily.

However, it is easier to build trust by interacting with customers face-to-face. And these are the challenges of online business, is it very steep exponential growth with slow starting because very few early adopters will try first and the business need to reduce the entry price for the mass market at the beginning. Trust only can be created from past customers reviews. And there are influencers to promote the products. Influencers with a high number of followers will be contacted by many businesses asking for them to promote the products.

Or maybe the company employees or shareholders can be the influencer (like Elon Musk) to create followers and then promote the company products.