Amazon has expanded its presence on the UK high street by opening its first non-food store offering its bestselling lines of electronics, homeware, toys, games, and books.
The outlet at the Bluewater shopping centre near Dartford is the first ‘Amazon 4-star’ store outside the US, where there are already more than 30 operating.
The store stocks around 2,000 lines that have been selected by analysing sales data from its website to judge which products are proving popular with local shoppers. The range of products will change regularly, based on customer feedback and new product releases.
Digital price tags are used to ensure the prices are the same in-store and online. Shoppers don’t need to have an Amazon account to shop there.
Meanwhile, customers will be able to use the store to collect items they’ve ordered online, as well as return them without the need for packaging and labels.
The first Amazon 4-star store was opened in New York in 2018. The concept is based on the idea that all of the products sold there have been rated at least four stars out of five by online shoppers.
The store’s UK launch comes seven months after Amazon opened its first bricks & mortar grocery store in the country under its Fresh banner. It has also experimented with pop-up shops in the past and opened a hi-tech hair salon in London earlier this year.
Andy Jones, the director of Amazon 4-star UK, revealed that the company had been working on the UK outlet since before the pandemic.
He said: “We are obviously just really keen now to get customers in and see what they think. We’ve seen that the model has worked really well in malls in the US, so a location like Bluewater made total sense to us.
“There are the Amazon products they will expect but also local products from small suppliers because that is a huge part of the Amazon business.”
Amazon did not say whether it was planning to open more 4-star stores in the UK.
Retail analysts Natalie Berg said that Amazon’s move was “purely about experimentation” rather than a full-blown move into physical retailing.
She suggested that the firm’s strategy was to encourage more online shopping. “This is not about shifting more product; it’s about baiting shoppers into Amazon’s ecosystem,” Berg said.
“It’s about getting shoppers to engage with Amazon’s devices, reminding Prime customers of the value in their memberships, and offering additional choice when it comes to collection and returns of online orders.”
NAM Implications:
- The ultimate in showrooming? (and some test-marketing…)
- Plus some incremental sales to non-Amazon account holders.
