Amazon Thinking Of Opening Up Retail Stores

Massive online retail giant Amazon is reportedly looking at prime retail locations in the UK with the view to opening up its own retail stores. According to the Times today, the American company, which has a market value of $59.1 billion (£35.6 billion), is on the look out for “Brick and Mortar” stores on the UK high street.

The Times claim they’ve heard from property retailers that Amazon have been inquiring about retail units in prime locations. It seems quite ironic that one of the worlds largest online retailers is looking to move to the physical high street. Amazon were proclaimed as one of the top attributes to the dot com boom and have been growing rapidly ever since.

It seems that Amazon are looking to adopt the reserve and collect method which, retailers such as Argos and Tesco have began using, this allows consumers to purchase there goods online and go and collect them in store. This prevents consumers from having to wait at home for the delivery man and allows them collect in store at their leisure. According to the Times, Argos said that 18% of its internet sales are items bought on the web and collected in-store. In the run-up to Christmas it predicts 50% of its television sales will be bought this way.

When Amazon originally started, it sold small easily delivered items such as CD’s and DVD’s. But since then they’ve grown a lot and now sell everything from Books to Hoovers and Frying Pans!

When Amazon was just selling books and CDs that fitted easily through the letterbox it was fine to be a web-only business, but now it has branched out into everything from children’s bikes to electricals it believes it could boost sales by having stores that offer a collection point for shoppers. It will probably be an Argos-style operation.

According to a reliable source of the Times.

This would lead us to believe that some retail stores would be located outside of major cities to ensure adequate parking for consumers who want to collect larger goods like TV’s

However

Amazon has denied these reports, telling Reuters it has no plans to open stores “anywhere in the world”. The conversation stopped there, with Amazon refusing to comment on whether it plans to tie in with current retailers, or any future plans altogether.

It certainly would be interesting to see Amazon going against the trend which most retailers are adopting of moving from the high street to the Internet. What do you think of an Amazon store?

Let us know in the comments

Source:

Times

Read Related Posts

1. HMV CEO Quits After Poor Sales Due To Increased Online Competition From Amazon and iTunes
2. Argos Caught Selling Halo 3 Games Early
3. Amazon UK Launch “Search Inside”
4. Amazon Kindle 5 Facts And 5 Lacks
5. Apple iPad Coming To Stores April 3rd – Pre Order From March 12th

Subscribe To RSS Feed Updates (What is RSS??)