Here’s a new Amazon store about to open in Chicago. I think it’s interesting—and, from a marketing standpoint, a bit of a gamble.
Right now Amazon is kind of what you want it to be. Like good fiction, what you make of it is typically more compelling than seeing the story unfold through someone else’s eyes.
As Amazon creates storefronts, they will sacrifice some of that magic. Maybe they’ll get it exactly right, maybe they won’t. But from a marketing standpoint, it certainly raises some questions:
1. How will tying real faces and personalities to transactions effect the brand?
2. Will seeing the Amazon logo on main street recast it as institutional? Walmart-ish? A little too pervasive?
3. Will the foibles of retail—store hours, local rules and regulations, architectural style, and so on—tarnish Amazon’s online shine?
4. Will the integration of advanced technologies—personalized marketing, data management platforms (DMP), geotargeting, and so on—with everyday shopping be viewed as a convenience? An intrusion?
5. Will it be like Best Products?
Hard to know. I’m sure they’ve done their homework, but I can’t help but think its a gamble.
Some further reading…
Amazon granted a patent that prevents in-store shoppers from online price checking…
Introducing Amazon Go and the world’s most advanced shopping technology…
Amazon Goes Brick And Mortar At Kohl’s…
Whole Foods Is Becoming Amazon’s Brick-and-Mortar Pricing Lab…
Thanks to Jim Green for the photo.
Posted in OCTOBER 2017 / Chuck Green is the principal of Logic Arts, a design and marketing firm, a contributor to numerous magazines and websites, and the author of books published by Random House, Peachpit Press, and Rockport Publishers. Contact.
Thoughts?