Amazon Looks to The Past, Moving Forward

JUNE 13, 2018

Is Amazon’s book selling strategy madness or is the future in the past? Amazon’s strategy to sell books over the internet and deliver them to your home has earned it their megastar category-killer credentials. It’s logistics business, Amazon Prime ensures members receive items they purchase over the internet in 2 hours. Amazon Go is the creation of fresh food stores which are totally self-service and automatically debits your store entry card. There are no staff on-site, it is true self service monitored by masses of cameras.

What a change it is then to witness Amazon Books, where this monster retailing activity started is now returning to the past by embracing old style retailing. Amazon has now entered the “bricks and mortar” retail property market with plans to expand. They now sell books out of a classic book shop adding their 7th store at the Time Warner Centre on Columbus Circle in New York.

The premises are about 370m2 and they stock 3,000 titles, all facing out from their shelves. Amazons other stores are in Seattle, San Diego, Portland, Chicago and a few in Massachusetts. They will add more throughout the year.

The selection of titles for sale is simple. Amazon are only stocking books rated at 4 stars or more so this is a data driven exercise. Perhaps this suggests that book consumers are not all enamoured investigating new titles online and actually prefer the opportunity to browse and spend impulsively.

To see more of what’s to come, click here…