MARCH 7, 2022|RETAIL & ECOMMERCE
Why Amazon Shutting Their Book Stores Is Good For Retail
A few years ago when Amazon announced they would be starting a line of physical retail stores, their assault on bookstores seemed to be complete. Now the online retailer has announced they would be closing over 60 stores and moving out of the book retail space. Some saw this as a sign that bookstores themselves are no longer viable.
Actually, the significance of this might be exactly the opposite. Amazon's retail experiments never truly recreated what people love about bookstores. Curation was done by algorithm instead of by humans. Books were confusingly organized by star rating. The retail experience was designed for transactions rather than browsing. And perhaps most importantly the brand itself was repellant to real book and bookstore lovers who blame Amazon for slowly killing community bookstores.
Now that Amazon is out of retail for books, there may be more space for bookstores to thrive as the retail community hubs they have always been.
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How It All Started
A Short Backstory Of This Blog
This is a blog about non-obvious ideas. Originally launched on the Typepad platform in 2005 as the Influential Marketing blog, the stories at first focused mainly on digital marketing while Rohit worked at Ogilvy Advertising. In 2015 Rohit officially rebranded to the Non-Obvious Insights Blog and published his WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious. For the past twenty one years, this blog has coined new terms, introduced future marketing practices and inspired the next generation of non-obvious thinkers and marketers.
