First 'real' Amazon store opens in New York

Amazon has launched yet another new physical store concept in New York. Amazon 4-star’s is a curated non-food store, where the online retailer sells only the highest-rated products.

Physical version of online platform

Everything at Amazon 4-star was rated four stars or more by the website’s users, or comes from a top seller of the platform. So, it is either new, or trending online. In short: what you see in the new Amazon store is the offline equivalent of the top search results online. From electronics to toys: Amazon offers a selection of its best scoring products. In other words, the store is a literal physical translation of the online platform, and thus actually the first ‘real Amazon store’.

 “We created Amazon 4-star to be a place where customers discover products they will love. The selection is a direct reflection of our customers: what they’re buying and what they’re loving”, a blog post says. Currently, the average rating of all products in the ‘Amazon 4-star’ store is 4.4 stars. The products in the store received more than 1.8 million five-star reviews from customers. The range starts with some of the most popular categories on Amazon.com, but the door is already open for further expansion.

 Thanks to the large amount of data Amazon has at its disposal, the offer in the store is also personalised locally: in the store shoppers find displays with products that are ‘trending’ in New York. There are signs with quotes from customer reviews and there is an island with the products most often saved in the wish lists of Amazon members.

Goal:  win souls for Prime

The real goal of the store is not as much selling products, but actually recruiting new Prime-members. The electronic price labels constantly keep up with current (online) prices, but more importantly: they show the price advantage that members of the subscription formula enjoy on each product. In the shop, shoppers can therefore try a free 30-day trial subscription, so they can immediately start buying at the Prime-price.

Meanwhile Amazon is also trying to get Alexa, the retailer’s voice-assistant, into people’s houses: connected devices, such as Echo’s smart speakers and the brand new speaking microwave oven, can be tested in the shop.