When Amazon started selling books online, two decades ago, it led to numerous bookstore shutdowns as much as it weakened all national book retail chains. The unmissable question is: why would Amazon open a physical bookstore now? As Amazon Books Vice President Jennifer Cast said: “We've applied twenty years of online bookselling experience to build a store that integrates the benefits of offline and online book shopping", i.e. the sales data Amazon collects every year are the best indicator of which books will be sold or not. The store, called Amazon Books and located at University Village in Seattle, offers nearly 6,000 references “based on Amazon.com customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, popularity on Goodreads, and our curators’ assessments”, as Jennifer Cast explains.
The prices at the 'real' store are the same as those on the website. With each book comes a card with its review and rating (most of them are rated with at least four stars on Amazon.com). Amazon now has a complete offer with both physical and digital stores. Will there be more Amazon Books in the future? Jennifer Cast answered to The Seattle Times: "We're completely focused on this bookstore. We hope this is not our only one. But we'll see."
*Photo: Amazon
News in the same category
Nordstrom is once again doing its best to facilitate our inclination for shopping and our communication with the salespeople. After Next last year, the upscale fashion retailer goes all the way with TextStyle.
Already well established across the US, the specialty grocery store plans some further openings in the coming months.
On Memorial Day 2013, Walmart promised to hire 100,000 veterans by 2018. Two years later, the company announced that the new goal is 250,000 veterans by 2020.
Tampa Bay in Florida is set to benefit from a huge investment by the Walmart chain as they spend an estimated $173m dollars on the opening and remodelling of 34 stores.
