There is role for Amazon that has not been mentioned yet. They do enable a range of products that really could not readily be sold other than online.

Around a year ago now I bought a 4Tb wireless drive. No local shop could afford to stock such a thing. The demand is too low - they could have it sitting unsold on the shelf for a year - and by the time they are on the point of selling it the customer would find it had been superseded by a 6Tb one for the same price, or maybe the price has fallen below what the local shopkeeper bought it for.

Niche products like that really do not work for local purchasers. As it happened, the manufacturer did not have 'direct sales' to end users either. Even if they had, searching through possible suppliers would have been difficult and risky: do I want to send a fair amount of money to a company I have never heard of?

Amazon has many faults, of course, and the way the treat their staff is a major one. I do not know a good alternative solution for this problem, though.