Amazon sees 'overwhelming' influx in orders amid coronavirus outbreak: WSJ

Amazon is struggling to keep up with demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal. Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley joins Seana Smith to discuss.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Hey Dan, it's interesting what we're seeing, just among a lot of these tech giants. Apple obviously has a few stumbles here because of the coronavirus potentially. But Amazon, on the other hand, it's almost a totally different story, when we take a look at what's happening with Amazon in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

And we know that the coronavirus outbreak has been altering consumer behavior. More people are obviously staying inside their homes. They're ordering online. And because of that, Amazon is seeing a huge jump, just in terms of the demand for their products. And it was interesting. There was data compiled by comScore, just in terms of the big uptick, or they were going through the big uptick that Amazon has seen on its site over the last couple of weeks.

And we compare the second week of March to what we saw last year. It's an increase of 32%. And that's pretty staggering, when we talk about the ability for Amazon in a time like this, trying to keep up with the increased demand on their site.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, I mean they're hiring 100,000 more people. They usually only do that around the holiday period. And they have time to ramp up for that. They know that the holidays are coming. They know it's something they're going to have to prepare for. And so they do so. With this, they didn't have that opportunity.

You know, as much as there was talk about the pandemic coming and hitting the US especially hard, there still wasn't a lot of preparation going on behind the scenes. And I think that's really kind of catching up with them at the moment, where they say they're hiring those people, they need to get them on the lines where they package the goods.

But then at the same time, we're seeing people step back and say, look, we can't work in these facilities. We're having some walkouts at the likes of Whole Foods, their grocery store arm, at some fulfillment centers. I saw one on Staten Island the other day in New York. So people are saying, I don't feel comfortable working. I'm just plain sick and I can't come in. And that's hurting Amazon as well.

But overall, we're seeing more people turn to the site, as you said, year over year. And that really is leading to some products being unavailable. We talked about Lysol wipes, toilet paper in some instances, name brands soaps. Those won't be available. And then if you think you're going to get Amazon Prime delivery in that two day time window, good luck, because some things are sold out or won't be delivered for months.

I myself was looking for a pair of weights. I'm not going to get them until June. So it's not normal Amazon operations. They really are putting essentials first and making sure that people can get what they need when they need it.