Charlotte Jia’s Blogpost discusses Amazon’s recent debut of its first physical bookstore, located in Seattle.

Amazon’s physical store; Image Source

The store offers books with ratings of 4 stars (out of 5) or higher online. Ideally for Amazon, the store will become the “go-to” place for purchasing a (physical) book. What advantages does it have over a traditional bookstore? In my opinion, not many. Since it only offers books that have good ratings, by nature it will not have any newly-released books. I am struggling to visualize the customer segment that could embrace this type of store. For instant gratification on a book purchase, an E-reader does just fine. If having a physical copy is necessary, then Barnes & Noble, The Elliot Bay Book Company, or any other Seattle bookstore would almost certainly satisfy that desire.

In a world where physical companies migrating to virtual world, it is surprising that an dominant online presence would chose to move in the opposite direction. While it is an interesting idea, I disagree with Ms. Jia that opening a physical store is “great move to expand Amazon’s business”. It will be interesting to see how this new venture works out for Amazon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if its the next big flop.