After badly hitting businesses of several bookstores, Amazon has now opened its own “brick and mortar” bookshop in University Village, The Seattle Times reported. Christened as “Amazon Books”, the store is stocked with 5,000 to 6,000 titles, best-sellers as well as Amazon.com customer favorites.
For years, Amazon has given stiff competition to bookstores by offering heavy discounts online. The retail giant now hopes to beat other bookstores by using “troves of data” generated from shopping patterns seen on its website, meaning Amazon Books will stock the titles that will most appeal to Seattle shoppers.
The Seattle Times further notes that apart from stocking best-seller, the store will also include books getting high ratings on the website, including lesser known titles.
“It’s data with heart,” Jennifer Cast, vice president of Amazon Books told The Seattle Times. “We’re taking the data we have and we’re creating physical places with it.”
While the store will showcase some of Amazon’s gadgets such as Kindle e-readers, Fire Tablets and Fire TV streaming media devices, it will not be a pick up location for Amazon orders.
“Our goal is to do a great job selling lots of books,” Cast added. Regarding future plans, she said, “We’re completely focused on this bookstore. We hope this is not our only one. But we’ll see.”
