amazon books launches in seattle! a guide to the shopping experience

Welcome to Amazon Books!

This store is interesting for a few reasons:• It allows Amazon to test the waters of physical retail in an

industry it dominates• For a company that sells the world, the store has a small foot

print and is highly curated• The store brings together information from the Amazon

community with expert help and self service

Opening Day

Location, Location, Location. The store is located in a high-end,outdoor mall in Seattle (including Apple, Microsoft, lululemon,Anthropologie and many other hip stores). It is situated near Din TaiFung, a highly popular restaurant with long waits – great for bringingpeople into the store.

We’ll take you inside to see what’s here…

The store puts the books first. They are the stars of this show (notbranding, or seating, or coffee bars).

The books go to the ceiling and while many are singles not displayedbelow (unlike the Costco model of using high shelves for storage),they are all available for purchase – if a sales person gets it down foryou.

Digital meets physical.The store caries a variety of new and popular books seemingly basedon online purchases and reviews.

Ratings and Reviews from the site highlight each of the displays.

Merchandising signage is playful and has personality.

Kindles are nested in many aisles, both encouraging users to exploreand trial the device.

Snippets of reviews from Amazon users are shown on manyproducts….makes you wonder if you should look for your own!

Dynamic Pricing. Using the Amazon iPhone app to read the bar codeor cover, you are able to see what the prices are for a given book. Itdefaults to the version in the store, but you can easily navigate tosee the eBook price.

I was surprised that many of the eBooks were more expensive.

How could it be Amazon without recommendations?

The children’s section has small tables, tablets on which kids canread or play.

The books are sorted by age group, rather than author (which isgood for finding options, but can make finding a specific book ascavenger hunt).

Small amounts of seating are available in the periphery (and ondisplay to those walking by).

Tablets abound.

Check out – matches credit card with those stored on Amazonaccount.

Returns in store only for items bought in store.

Launched in November 2015, but still with magnetic stripe payment(no EMV here).

Worlds colliding: Antiqued paper meets community, meets quotes,meets solicitation for feedback via email.

Cross selling.Bringing media together – Movies + Books + Kindle + Audio.

Amazon merchandizes it’s physical store to support sales acrossmedia.

Cross Selling key Amazon Products – while the store is mostly books,Amazon does a nice job of cross promoting related products –largely for media consumption.

Customer reviews are present, even for the products that Amazonmakes.

The book store has a keen focus on drawing in kids and theirparents. The fire Kids Edition display is featured in the center of thestore (while the kids section is at the back).

Cross-promotion follows you everywhere!

What works: beautiful display, focus on books – feels likea great local bookstore. Where other Amazon productsare featured, it feels like a natural extension – goodcuration.

What doesn’t: hard to find specific books withoutassistance. No way to search what books are here in print.

Point BRetail and Consumer

Products Practice

www.pointb.com

Julie Smith, Principal

@smJulie