Amazon plans hundreds of brick and mortar stores

The Seattle company plans as many as 400 bookstores, Sandeep Mathrani, chief executive of large mall operator General Growth Properties Inc., said on an earnings call with analysts Tuesday.

“You’ve got Amazon opening brick-and-mortar bookstores and their goal is to open, as I understand, 300 to 400,” said Mr. Mathrani in response to a question about mall traffic.

That compares to the 640 stores Barnes & Noble Inc. operates and the 255 locations Books-A-Million Inc. said it had as of last summer.

The WSJ story is here, here are others.  What is the underlying business plan?  To make these iconic locations like Apple stores?  To treat all future business, in all sectors, as depending on the focality of the company behind it?  To start with books, move on to other items, and eventually steal middle-class and upper-middle class consumers away from Walmart?  Somehow use these stores to lock people in Amazon Prime?  Do you have other hypotheses?  Is this overconfident folly, or is it the “for good” return of brick and mortar bookstores to our lives?

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