In this article:
- Amazon will be able to offer a cohesive, consistently personalized experience both off and online
- The brand’s move into the physical space is significant; marketers should keep a keen eye on how this plays out
Amazon announced that it is opening a brick-and-mortar store called Amazon Style that delivers a personalized experience in person.
Shopping online has raised expectations of personalization for customers, and now Amazon intends to deliver on such expectations in a physical store.
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The first Amazon Style store will open in the greater Los Angeles area, and Amazon offered a vision of the experience customers would have there in this video:
The key value proposition for shoppers is greater selection without more manual filtering. It describes it this way:
“Amazon Style offers more selection than a traditional store of its size—more than double the number of styles—without requiring customers to sift through racks to find the right color, size, and fit. Instead, Amazon Style features display items, bringing more looks and less clutter to in-store shopping.”
The integration of technology brings together the convenience of shopping on a screen with the capability of trying the clothes on in real life in one place. Instead of looking over racks to find what they want, shoppers use the Amazon Shopping app and scan QR code to see information on the product, available size and color options, and even customer ratings.
Then they select what they want to try on by tapping the button to send it to their fitting room. If they want to skip trying, they can send it directly to the pickup counter.
Like a personal shopper who understands your tastes and preferences, the machine learning algorithms offer recommendations designed specifically for each customer. Also like that personal shopper or well-trained sales clerk, the algorithm can physically deliver its own recommendations to the fitting room for the shopper to try on.
The more details about fit and style the customer fills in, the more accurate the recommendations can be. That is a good incentive for customers to share zero-party data (ZPD) with Amazon to discover what is likely to fit them and their needs.
Tech-enabled search and recommendations just might be the future of clothing shopping. It offers shoppers a seamlessly integrated experience that allows them to enjoy greater selection and curation without the premium price of the higher-end stores that typically offer that level of personal shopping service.
Flagship, chain or bust?
Amazon is extending the reach of their personalized approach to shopping, gathering even more preferences data, and utilizing it online or on your next visit to the store. Will this result in a few flagship stores in big cities or a multi-branch chain? Will it even succeed? It’s all too early to tell.
However, the bold move is one Amazon can afford and it does allow the brand to offer a more cohesive, consistent, personalized experience regardless of the shopper’s location, in-store or on-screen. Plenty of less-than-world-dominating brands will be interested in how this plays out and what elements can be adapted to their own brand’s strategy.