A new(ish) store in New York offers a very strong pointer to the way in which things are headed for retailers.
The Amazon Books shop in the Time Warner Center at New York’s Columbus Circle is an enigma. This is a shop that it certainly a store, but which is in reality (if that’s the phrase) a website.
Stand outside this one and the right-hand side of the shop window is devoted to Amazon tech equipment, from the retailer’s Dot devices to Kindle reader cases and ‘electronics’.
The left-hand side does offer views of books, and peering deeper into the interior this looks like a conventional library-style bookshop.
“The chances are that if you like what you see, you may well find yourself heading back to Amazon.com to make an Amazon Prime future purchase”
Appearances are misleading, however. Step across the threshold and one of the first things that is immediately apparent is the signage. The bookshelves along the perimeter have arrows with the words ‘If you like this, you’ll love this’.
Elsewhere there are multiple notices giving the ratings of books by Amazon.com shoppers. Other than the obvious fact of instant gratification, this is truly a website that just happens to have a physical carapace.
The other point about what has been done in this store is that there are no prices on the shelves beneath any volume.
Instead, shoppers are encouraged to scan a book at any of the many readers around the shelves and understand that if they are an Amazon Prime customer, in most instances the book will be considerably cheaper (the two prices are displayed side by side).
Digital Trojan horse
It turns out that not only is this a website that has been given a robust bricks-and-mortar shell, but it also happens to be a method of driving shoppers back to the web.
The chances are that if you like what you see, you may well find yourself heading back to Amazon.com to make an Amazon Prime future purchase.
This is a marketing tool backed by a website, and given that bookshop visitors may well be a mite conservative as far as embracing new technology is concerned, this is a gentle way of easing them into the digital economy.
Or put another way, it’s a digital Trojan horse, primed with widgets and ways of getting the shopper online, as well as offering the chance to buy books in the normal manner.
It is also significant that almost no book in the store has less than a 4.5 out of 5 rating. This is an Amazon bestseller store and does well in consequence.
Today is the first whole day of the National Retail Federation show in New York, but visitors to the city could do worse than taking some time out and heading uptown to take a look at this shop.
It’s the future of retail and it’s already here.
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