Will Amazon destroy Australian Retail?

[Cetacea]

Amazon is opening a giant automated warehouse in West Sydney and plans similar "fulfilment centres" across Australia where customers can order and pick up electronics, clothing, sports and outdoor goods with zero human interaction, all scanned and auto charged to their personal Amazon accounts. There is also speculation that Amazon will also enter the fresh food sector as well, presenting itself as an online supermarket.

One unnamed Amazon executive has reportedly said: "We are going to destroy the retail environment in Australia."

In the US, Amazon gets 50% of all money in online retail sales and in response existing Australian Supermarket and Retail companies are already establishing online presences and looking at their operations in order to cut cost. Ominously they are also lobbying government to free up labour laws saying that their physical stores are unable to compete with Amazon's 24/7 operation.

So what do you guys think? Amazon has deep pockets and a huge market share and thus could be a deathknell for lots of operations, repeating what happened to the small stores when Warehouse retailers began but this time on a much much bigger scale. Dick Smith Group died recently, so could other big Australian players like Woolworths, Coles or Myers follow suit?

Moreover are we entering the era of giant online megacorporations dominating global retail and driving both competition and seemingly retail jobs to extinction?

[Chessmistress]

Probably, yes.
Supermarkets and malls already destroyed most family-owned shops.
It will not be Amazon, it'll be Amazon and other similar chains using the same approach.

The interesting thing is that not always, nor even so often, the new alternative is cheaper when it comes at examining prices.

I thought that the first jobs to gone due automatization would have been bus drivers, turns out that I was wrong.

There's an answer to that: universal basic income.
It isn't perfect, but it would be a good start.
Otherwise on the long run the only possible alternative is people voting for dictatorships, theocracies, and such things...