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High street stores from Amazon on the cards

Thursday, February 9, 2012 - 10:49 by Simon Crisp

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Amazon, the world's largest provider of safe shopping online, could be bringing its brand to the high street, according to rumours circulating this week.

There are reports that Amazon will be opening the doors on its first bricks and mortar outlet in Seattle over in the US before the end of 2012, which some industry experts are actually seeing as a natural progression for the site.

Of course a retail outlet which mirrors the all-encompassing nature of Amazon's online store would be impossible to create, so instead the company is going to establish a selection of boutique venues which copy heavily from the framework established by Apple.

Apple Stores can be found across the UK and they are often packed with people trying to get their hands on the latest iPhone or iPad, which feeds into the wider branding of this company.

Amazon is competing more directly with Apple than ever before, thanks to the launch of its Kindle Fire tablet, although it has a host of other own-brand devices and services which it could sell, both via safe shopping online and on the high street.

From a strategic point of view, some people believe that Amazon would see the immediacy of the high street attractive when it comes to getting its products into the public consciousness.

Giving users a chance to play with the Kindle range in an attractive environment will lend prestige to the Amazon brand and it will be able to fare more favourably alongside Apple and its rivals.

However, with Kindle sales going through the roof and Amazon's business continuing to grow, advocates of e-commerce might ask why a move into a dying high street is necessary in the first place, since the internet is the more secure market at the moment.