Coronavirus will expedite Amazonification of the world

Coronavirus is expediting the Amazonification of industries worldwide. Here are the first order effects of shift of usage to Amazon

• People are staying home instead of visiting malls and ordering essentials on Amazon. This is expedited by the large scale closure of malls and retail complexes. 
• People are ordering groceries on Whole Foods for home delivery inspite of higher prices compared to their local grocery store. For a lot of families, the grocery budget is moving to Amazon. Given the large scale closure of restaurants worldwide, this will only increase. 
• People staying home are watching videos on Amazon Prime Video for entertainment purposes. Given Prime membership benefit is already providing so much value, netflix and disney could be a discretionary expense and Prime video could be a necessary essential
• Businesses going through the sudden demand and revenue shocks will need to rethink their expenses and specially fixed cost expenses. Technology and IT will be a big fixed cost expense waiting to be cut at this point. This will expedite the move to Cloud (AWS is rightly positioned for this) as it provides the value proposition of making this a variable cost - pay as much as you use. If there is no demand, dont pay. This will put Amazon into a strong position with respect to the shift to Cloud. 
• Audible has made 100s of kids audiobook free. This will expedite adoption and usage of Alexa. Parents at home juggling kids, job and a pandemic will find this great value. 
• Amazon Care, the healthcare arm of Amazon will work with Bill Gates to delivery Coronavirus tests to homes in the Seattle area. If it works, this could be scaled globally in collaboration with Governments and could put Amazon in prime position to enter healthcare. 

Data points supporting the above trends

• Amazon hiring 100k new workers to meet demand 
• Amazon pantry temporarily closes as online shopping surge amid coronavirus outbreak
• Amazon AWS launches 20 million initiative to fight the coronavirus

All the above viewpoints and facts show that how Amazon has grown in value during these unprecedented times the world is facing through the pandemic. There is the other side of the equation, which shows that malls, commercial real estate could be in dire shape and there could be a lot of bankruptcies.

At the time of this writing, US already has more than 100k coronavirus cases and given the exponential spread, it doesnt look like stopping. In fact, things will get a lot worse, before it gets any better. 

Cheesecake factory, Subway and other major retailers have told their landlords that they cannot pay rent. The restaurant industry has already gone through unprecedented layoffs. Given that the US response to the crisis has been delayed, the closures will last as cases will continue multiplying. This will have cascading effects onto the landlords, malls, commercial real estate players who have these retaurants as renters. There will be cascading bankruptices which will spread through the economy. Malls will find it hard to find replacements during these tough times. Even if the economy were to open up today, people who are seeing widespread deaths in their communities arent going to rush to restaurants/malls anytime soon. 

This will complete the other side of the puzzle and will expedite Amazonification of the world.

Update July 24, 2020 

Putting my Money where my mouth is :