Netease Technology News, August 13, according to foreign media reports, different from the perception of the "virtual economy", Amazon's e-commerce business is not entirely online. Its physical space is also very huge.

As of the end of 2019, Amazon's e-commerce warehouses, packaging distribution centers, and back-end computing equipment centers occupied more than 17.65 million square meters of space in North America. This is larger than the total area of nearly 2,800 supermarkets of Kroger, the second largest chain retailer in the United States. In short: In order to operate smoothly in cyberspace, Amazon needs a physical store equivalent to the largest supermarket chain in the United States.

This is an interesting fact, but it shows that e-commerce is not a pure online activity, it will have a substantial impact on the real world. Amazon and other online shopping companies have been opening smaller commodity warehouses and parcel distribution centers near large population centers so that they can deliver orders to more people more quickly.

This makes sense for companies and consumers. For most small towns where e-commerce is located, filling an empty department store with an e-commerce distribution center can bring more employment opportunities and tax revenue to the town. Like many companies, Amazon usually gets huge tax breaks when it opens an e-commerce center.

Demand for e-commerce venues is now in short supply. Part of the reason is that in the short span of a few months since the outbreak, Americans’ use of e-commerce has advanced several years.

Amazon recently stated that it plans to increase the area of its e-commerce business by about 50% this year. In contrast, Wal-Mart’s US store area is 65.03 million square meters, which is several times the area occupied by Amazon e-commerce.

Although shopping in offline stores in those communities is good for the real economy, we also need to admit that online shopping has changed people's lifestyles.

Rather than feel guilty about online shopping, we might as well focus on promoting public policies, better planning roads and communities as a whole, and ushering in the future of e-commerce that is faster than any expectation. (Chenchen)

Source: NetEase Technology Report, translated by Google Translate