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Amazon goes a mile high for its second brick-and-mortar ‘4-star’ store

Amazon has opened its second 4-star store, this one in Denver, Colorado.

Joining its brick-and-mortar bookstores and Amazon Go grocery stores, Amazon 4-star offers items that have been rated highly by customers who use its burgeoning web store. Top sellers, as well as new and trending items, also feature among the store’s goodies.

Amazon opened its first 4-star store in New York City in September 2018, and another one is “coming soon” in Berkeley, California.

Visitors can choose from a wide range of products drawn from popular categories at Amazon.com, among them consumer electronics, kitchen, home, toys, books, and games.

You’ll also find displays featuring “most-wished-for items” that have been set up using data from the online store, as well as products that are popular in the store’s local area.

Each item bears a digital price tag showing the regular price, as well as a cheaper price for Amazon Prime members.

Amazon’s growing interest in physical stores

At first it seems odd that Amazon is cool with taking on all the overheads and hassles of operating brick-and-mortar stores, competing as they do with the very business model its own web operation has endeavored to pressurize over the years.

But the company is clearly intent on experimenting with various shopping formats that offer consumers something a little different, evidenced most clearly by its Go store that uses tons of technology so you can simply grab your items and leave, with your account being automatically charged when you walk out of the door.

Besides its 4-star and Go stores, Amazon also has a number of physical bookstores across the U.S., as well as numerous pop-up outlets that sell its growing line of hardware items, including its Echo smart speakers and Fire tablets. And we mustn’t forget Whole Foods, which the Seattle-based company acquired in 2017.

Notably, to increase the chances of each store’s success, Amazon is making good use of sales data from its online store to work out what sells best and where, so it can arrange store displays accordingly.

Amazon’s new 4-star store is located in the Park Meadows mall, three miles south-west of Cherry Creek State Park in Denver, and opens Monday through Saturday between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m., and on Sundays between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
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