Amazon.com Inc. is showing its strength amid the COVID-19 pandemic as other retailers get hit hard, but the e-commerce giant’s chief technology officer says the key to the company's survival is continuous innovation. 

“Our belief is that if Amazon the retailer would stop innovating, we'd be out of business in 10-15 years," Werner Vogels told BNN Bloomberg's Jon Erlichman in a television interview Tuesday.

"And not because there's another Amazon stepping out, it would just be death by a thousand cuts. Someone would be doing diapers better, someone would be doing shoes better."

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Vogels added it's important the company maintains a culture that allows it to move quickly when it comes to innovation. 

The online retailer reported a 26-per-cent surge in sales in its first quarter as consumers stocked up on items as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. However, the company saw its profit drop and warned it could incur deeper losses as it boosted spending to better serve customers during the pandemic.  Its cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, posted sales of US$10.2 billion, up 33 per cent year-over-year.

 Vogels said the e-commerce giant continuously has a number of experiments in its pipeline to see what its customers like and should be seen as a “massive innovation engine."

"The drive for innovation is something that's continuous at Amazon," he said.

"We often really want to make sure innovation also meets the needs of our customers."