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ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.barrons.com/articles/how-amazon-is-disrupting-these-6-sectors-1539250602\nHow Amazon Is Disrupting These 6 Sectors\nNicholas Jasinski\nOct. 11, 2018 5:36 am ET\nFew companies have a tangible or perceived impact on as many industries as Amazon (AMZN). From e-commerce to cloud computing to consumer products to media and entertainment, the $900 billion behemoth has its hands in practically every of the economy. Add to that the industries that Amazon has promised or been rumored to disrupt, and it takes an army of experts to fully assess the investment implications—opportunities or threats—to the companies in Amazon’s way.\nEleven equity analysts from Bernstein recently came together to take a swing at it, each offering their perspective on the impact that Amazon has and could have on the sectors they cover. Together, the analysts have put out a combined 116 reports on Amazon across their sectors, the Bernstein team writes. Today’s joint effort comes in at 61 pages.\n“After transforming Enterprise IT & Retail (& sending further shock waves through its Whole Foods acquisition), Amazon has set its eye on Payments, Logistics, Pharmacy, Media & Consumer Brands (among other sectors) over the last few years,” they wrote.\nHere’s how the analysts see Amazon shaking up each of the following sectors:\nPayments: Amazon has made clear its desire to create a PayPal (PYPL) or Alipay competitor by “rebranding its product, launching stored balance capabilities, and reportedly adding discounts to attract small retailers,” writes analyst Harshita Rawat. With Amazon already responsible for up to 3% of Visa ’s (V) and Mastercard ’s (MA) global payment volumes, a base of 2 million merchants and 100 million Prime subscribers, not to mention its ‘formidable’ tech prowess, Amazon could become a headache for PayPal in the long term. Visa and Mastercard appear more insulated since Amazon transactions are a small part of their sales and Amazon has shown its willingness to partner with Visa for its branded credit card.\nMedia: Included in Prime membership is access to Prime Video, a streaming video offering that includes licensed and originally produced movies, TV shows, and other video entertainment. Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger called Prime Video’s impact on traditional TV providers and Hollywood studios “undeniably bad,” accelerating cord-cutting and increasing the cost of acquiring creative talent and intellectual property. It’s a positive for Netflix (NFLX), however: “Prime Video only hurts Netflix if you believe a meaningful number of consumers will look at their Internet TV options and conclude ‘I don’t need Netflix, I have Amazon Prime, I’m good,’” wrote Juenger. He sees Amazon increasingly pursuing sports streaming rights, making Prime membership increasingly compelling and sticky to subscribers.\nConsumer Products: Analyst Ali Dibadj wrote that while Amazon has certainly increased competitive pricing pressure in the world of consumer packaged goods—which includes items such as packaged foods and beverages, toiletries, and diapers—big brands have held their own on the platform. Despite concerns that unlimited online ‘shelf space’ would remove large incumbent brands’ protection from small challenger brands, “most shoppers still only purchase from listings on the first page where big brands dominate,” according to Dibadj, thanks to their investment in sponsored listings and participation in Amazon programs such as Subscribe & Save and Dash. The bigger threat going forward will likely be from expanding private label offerings on Amazon.com , which currently have a lower penetration than in brick and mortar stores and may be supporting some of the current strong online performance by big brands.\nIT Hardware: Amazon represents an “existential threat” to the traditional enterprise IT hardware industry, according to Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi, as “IT organizations have begun to fundamentally change their thinking about tech spending, as companies increasingly eschew running their own datacenter hardware in favor of outsourcing most of this infrastructure to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft (MSFT) Azure, and Google (GOOGL) Cloud Platform.” In a Bernstein survey from June, CIOs reported that on average 20% of their organizations’ workloads were running in the cloud, a share that is only increasing. Amazon and other cloud providers have the scale and expertise to cut out traditional hardware players such as Dell, Oracle (ORCL), or Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) through the use of whitebox hardware and in-house support teams. According to Sacconaghi, at its current penetration the cloud already represents at least a 4% headwind to traditional IT infrastructure spending growth, and will lead to negative growth as more organizations migrate functions to the cloud.\nHealth care: Analyst Lance Wilkes believes that Amazon is gearing up to enter the U.S. health care services industry through several channels in coming years. First, he sees Amazon developing an online pharmacy offering and reaching 12.5% share of the $300 billion market by 2027, at the expense of the likes of CVS Health (CVS) or Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA). In June Amazon acquired PillPack, an online pharmacy startup that allows customers to manage their prescriptions online and order them for delivery. Second, Amazon’s joint venture with JPMorgan (JPM) and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) to provide health insurance for the companies’ employees could provide insights that are expanded to other employer health plans, a space where Cigna (CI) and Aetna (AET) are most active. Lastly, Wilkes sees Amazon pursuing other health-care initiatives that align with its current businesses including “providing AWS services to health care companies, distribution of products to providers, Alexa as a health care concierge for individuals, and digital services include telemedicine.” He noted that Amazon has made several health care hires in recent years.\nRetail: Last but not least, there’s the area where Amazon began. “By offering the ‘long tail’ of products that brick and mortar retailers can’t provide in stores, Amazon was able to gain massive share in the growing online market and take share from inefficient brick and mortar offerings of broad assortments,” wrote Bernstein’s Brandon Fletcher. Traditional retailers have fought back in several ways, including by offering in-store assistance or services that can’t be provided online, such as personalized selection or installation advice at retailers like Home Depot (HD) or Best Buy (BBY). With most of their stores in rural areas, retailers such as Dollar General (DG) or U.K.-based Tesco (TSCO.UK) can achieve more attractive economics in sparsely populated areas than Amazon’s relatively expensive shipping and delivery to remote locations. Others such as Walmart (WMT) have been experimenting with online ordering followed by in-store pickup from its network of stores. Walmart and Home Depot have also shown willingness to use their established store networks as distribution centers for their own online offerings.\nFew companies have a tangible or perceived impact on as many industries as Amazon (AMZN)."