Amazon has been synonymous with online stores. You can’t talk about online stores without thinking of the company. The American retail giant first started out as an online bookstore, but kind of rebranded into an all-encompassing institution as time wore one.
Amazon has truly redefined the online retail industry and with interesting patents, it looks like they’ll do that for quite some time. It comes as a surprise to many people that Amazon recently took the decision to open its first physical Bookstore.
This shocked many as Amazon seemed to be a company looking to dominating the online world rather than the physical one. There has been a lot of speculation as to what Amazon is actually looking to do. Many don’t believe that Amazon is looking to be another old-fashioned bookstore. Let’s explore some of them.
Are they actual Amazon stores?
Many tend to think that Amazon has moved to having brick and mortar stores rather than just having an online presence. There are people that speculate that this is Amazon’s move in trying to push Alexa and other products into the market. They believe that this move from Amazon might help the company push devices like Alexa and many others to the people easily. This isn’t the only hypothesis out there.
Maybe, prime feeders
The other hypothesis is that these stores are prime feeders. No, they don’t eat Amazon users, they are meant to push users to Amazon Prime. For those that don’t know Amazon Prime, it’s a paid service offered by Amazon that gives its users so many perks. It’s at the center of the Amazon business model right now.
The reason people say this is because Amazon Prime users pay less compared to non-Amazon Prime users. Speculation is that the stores are meant to push the users towards Prime, which makes perfect sense.
What does Amazon have to Say
Amazon through their Books Chief Jennifer Cast denies this claim. Jennifer says that the above aspects might have played a role in the decision-making process, but they aren’t the main focus/reason. She claims that books were at the forefront of the Amazon initiative.
In addition to that, the company had studied data on how users buy books and everything related to books. This made them push for a physical store as they believed that they could improve the user experience in general. In short, the main aim of the physical bookstores is to give customers a better user bookstore experience.
Conclusion
The explanation provided by Amazon did make some sense, but they still had gadgets at the display on the front of the store. They may not be forthcoming with their intentions, but Amazon is not your everyday company. They may have actually just reverted to selling books or they are looking to push Alexa to users with a first-hand experience. Only Amazon knows their intentions, ours is left to speculate and see what their next move might be.
