According to the report, Amazon's Manhattan location would function as a "mini-warehouse" for same-day delivery in New York, product returns and pickups of online orders. (Photo: LIONEL BONAVENTURE, AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 LOS ANGELES — Could this be Amazon's Miracle on 34th Street? 
 
 Online retail giant Amazon will take on Macy's and other Herald Square retailers with a physical store of its own for the holidays in New York, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing people familiar with the plans. 
 
 The Manhattan location would function as a "mini-warehouse" for same-day delivery in New York, product returns and pickups of online orders, according to the report. 
 
 Amazon has shaken up the retail world by offering lower prices than many brick-and-mortar stores and offering comparison app tools that brought forth the trend of "showroom buying" — folks going to a physical store to see the item, then going home and ordering it online to save money. 
 
 The E-tailer, now with a line of its own tech products — several Kindle e-readers and tablets, a TV set-top box and new smartphone — would be able to put its homegrown goods in front of more eyeballs and tout its growing offering of same-day delivery. That service is available in 12 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Phoenix. 
 
 Richard Doherty, an analyst with the Envisioneering Group, says New York attracts many foreign tourists who shop on Amazon back home, but find many products only sold here. 
 
 A retail store offering same-day delivery could be "a tremendous uptick for tourists" and generate "tremendous volume," Doherty says. 
 
 Amazon declined to comment, with spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman adding, "We have made no announcements about a location in Manhattan." 
 
 Amazon would be expected to devote much of the floor space to its Kindle e-readers and tablets, which have sold well, as well as the underperforming Fire set-top box and Fire smartphone. The Fire phone started at $199 in July, but was marked down to $1 (with a two-year contract) just two months later. 
 
 Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, sees this as an experiment for Amazon to get its products in front of consumers. Only a handful of retailers sell Kindles, including Best Buy and Wal-Mart. 
 
 "There's still a segment of the population that's touchy-feely," says Bajarin. "They want to see the product up close, and have it shown to them." 
 
 By opening in New York during the holidays, Amazon "gets high traffic, and the kind of feedback it needs to see if it wants to expand." 
 
 Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, says Amazon wouldn't just stock its own products. "Even the Apple Store carries non-Apple products," he says. "They'll showcase Amazon, but also show off the breadth of Amazon's catalog." 
 
 According to the Journal, the address for the store is 7 West 34th Street, across from the Empire State Building and a block east from busy Herald Square, home to the flagship Macy's, and site of the classic 1947 Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street, about a Santa Claus put on trial for believing that he is indeed Kris Kringle. 
 
 Follow Jefferson Graham on Twitter. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1vUlJcM ||||| CLOSE Amazon's plan to be a one-stop food shop may extend well beyond those rumored drive-up grocery stores. Mobile apps, and possibly in-store touchscreens, would let you order longer-lived food for same-day delivery. USA TODAY 
 
 An artist's rendering of a drive-through grocery pickup site proposed for Sunnyvale, Calif. According to reports, Amazon may be the company that plans to run the site, though Amazon would not comment on the topic. (Photo: City of Sunnyvale) 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon may be looking to open a series of convenience stores, in addition to possible drive-through grocery pickup sites, the Wall Street Journal reported. However, grocery experts say they believe it’s more a targeted marketing ploy than any broad move to become the next 7-Eleven. 
 
 The stores would sell a small number of perishable goods such as milk, meat and vegetables, with shoppers able to order non-perishable items such as cereal for same-day delivery rather than immediate pickup at the store, the report said. 
 
 That model ties in with reports that Amazon is planning as many as three drive-through grocery pickup sites, two in California and one in its hometown of Seattle. These sites would allow customers to order online, then drive by and get parking lot delivery of their groceries during a set window of time. 
 
 Amazon declined to comment. The stock (AMZN) was down slightly Tuesday. 
 
 Amazon wouldn't be the first large retailer to try to create their own type of convenience stores. Walmart tried Walmart To Go and Britain's Tesco with Fresh & Easy. In 2006 The Home Depot announced it would open 300 Fuel stores, but only a few actually appeared. 
 
 Food and grocery analyst Jim Prevor sees the rumored Amazon convenience stores as more a market research effort than a plan for a major roll out, much as Amazon has opened two brick-and-mortar bookstores, one in Seattle and one in San Diego, with more planned. 
 
 “There’s no particular advantage to Amazon to open physical stores. I suspect the lofty multiples they get on Wall Street would not be supported if they suddenly announced they were going to spend millions on brick-and-mortar stores,” Prevor said. 
 
 Amazon would effectively have to re-train Americans to shop in very different ways, though admittedly it’s already done that when it comes to buying non-food items online. 
 
 Traditional food retailers rely on impulse sales, with shoppers wandering the aisles, often coming out with far more than they planned. Splitting up ordering between fresh items like milk, bread and meat and pantry items like peanut butter or macaroni and cheese isn’t the usual American grocery shopping method. 
 
 “The question is, is there some material advantage that they have that would make people to feel it’s desirable to order things from them rather than other places such as their local grocery store?” said Prevor. 
 
 Tobacco and hot dogs 
 
 Perhaps an even larger question is whether what Amazon is reportedly planning would fit into the American conception of a convenience store at all. 
 
 These ubiquitous shops — there are 154,000 nationwide — account for about 34% of all retail sales in the United States, according to Nielsen. 
 
 One out of three stores in the country is a convenience store and they do 160 million transactions a day, said Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for the National Association of Convenience Stores in Alexandria, Va. 
 
 While extremely popular, those stores are not places where Americans go to buy the next few day’s worth of fruit, veggies, meat and milk. 
 
 The number one sales category in convenience stores is tobacco products, which account for about 35% of store revenue, said Lenard. Amazon does not sell tobacco. 
 
 Next comes ready-to-eat items, which account for about 20% of convenience store sales and then drinks, which are 15%. A full 83% of items sold in convenience stores are consumed with an hour. While logistics is an arena Amazon is known for, prepared food hasn’t been, Lenard said. 
 
 “It’s not to say that they’re not inventing their own category,” he said, but any Amazon convenience store would likely be a very different animal from the way most Americans think of them today. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2e4HwK2 ||||| Two decades after it started selling books online, Amazon opens a shopping center storefront with books for sale on actual shelves. 
 
 Bookstore owners often think of Amazon.com as the enemy. 
 
 Now it’s becoming one of them. 
 
 At 9:30 Tuesday morning, the online retail giant will open its first-ever brick-and-mortar retail store in its 20-year life, in University Village. 
 
 The store, called Amazon Books, looks a lot like bookstores that populate malls across the country. Its wood shelves are stocked with 5,000 to 6,000 titles, best-sellers as well as Amazon.com customer favorites. 
 
 Last month, the online book newsletter Shelf Awareness broke a story speculating that Amazon was developing the store in the former Blue C Sushi location. 
 
 There is some irony in Amazon’s opening a physical store. For years, it could undercut physical retailers on price because it didn’t have brick-and-mortar locations. But those stores offered something Amazon couldn’t: the instant gratification of owning an item the second it was purchased, as well as the personal touch of a knowledgeable sales clerk. 
 
 Amazon is betting that the troves of data it generates from shopping patterns on its website will give it advantages in its retail location that other bookstores can’t match. It will use data to pick titles that will most appeal to Seattle shoppers. 
 
 And that could also solve the business problem that has long plagued other bookstores: unsold books that gather dust on shelves and get sent back to publishers. More than most book retailers, Amazon has deep insight into customer buying habits and can stock its store with titles most likely to move. 
 
 The company will stock best-sellers, of course. But it will also include books that get the highest ratings from its customers, including little-known titles. The store will also include such categories as “Most Wished-For Cookbooks.” Another section features “Award Winners, 4.5 Stars & Above, Age 6-12.” 
 
 Data only goes so far, though. Book lovers often see stores as a piece of their community. And some blame Amazon, and online retail more broadly, for the slow demise of independent booksellers. 
 
 Jennifer Cast, vice president of Amazon Books, is careful to say the store won’t be stocked solely on data. 
 
 “It’s data with heart,” she said. “We’re taking the data we have and we’re creating physical places with it.” 
 
 Some of that data includes reviews from the millions of Amazon customers who have left appraisals of books on the website. Below each book on the shelf is a card with either a review or a rating from the site. 
 
 And the company also has included a staff-favorites section that will change from time to time. For the opening, the section includes a few of Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos’ favorite titles, including “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker, “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman and “Traps” by his wife, MacKenzie Bezos. 
 
 “A page-turner written by an award-winning novelist, who also happens to be my wife,” Bezos writes. 
 
 The review cards are similar to the staff-favorite notes found at many bookstores. But Cast believes that having comments from passionate readers adds a wide range of voices recommending titles. 
 
 “The bookstores I love celebrate reading,” Cast said. “What better way to celebrate reading than to have the voices of readers under our books?” 
 
 Amazon’s customers help select books for the store in other ways as well. The new store includes, for example, “Bald, Fat & Crazy: How I Beat Cancer While Pregnant with One Daughter and Adopting Another” by Stephanie Hosford, a title that ranks 622,923 in books sold on Amazon. But those who have read it seem to love it. The book has a 5-star rating from all 56 customers who have reviewed it on the site. 
 
 One other way the store, with 5,500 square feet of retail space and 2,000 square feet of storage, is distinct from traditional bookstores: Every book will face out, rather than be stacked tightly with only their spines showing. That leaves far less space for books. 
 
 But Cast said Amazon wanted to showcase authors and their work, rather than cramming as many titles as possible on shelves. 
 
 “We realized that we felt sorry for the books that were spine out,” Cast said. 
 
 Amazon will charge the same price for books in the store as it does online. 
 
 It had reached out to sales staff at local stores, such as Third Place Books, to work at the new store. It wound up hiring 15 employees, including librarians, retail clerks and even a receptionist from Amazon who loves reading. 
 
 Ever since Shelf Awareness broke the story about the possibility of Amazon’s opening a retail store, there have been many rumors and much speculation about what it would be. 
 
 The store will not be a location to pick up Amazon orders. It won’t be a showcase for Amazon Publishing imprints, whose titles often aren’t picked up by the company’s retail competitors. 
 
 And while the store will showcase some of Amazon’s gadgets, such as its Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets and Fire TV streaming-media devices, it will be first and foremost a bookstore. 
 
 “Our goal is to do a great job selling lots of books,” Cast said. 
 
 Amazon has opened pop-up stores over the years to sell its Kindle devices. And it’s been replacing bookstores on college campuses with pickup locations, where students can retrieve orders. 
 
 The company chose Seattle for its first physical bookstore because it’s close to Amazon’s headquarters and because Seattle is a top market for readers. 
 
 Cast declined to detail future plans, including additional locations. 
 
 “We’re completely focused on this bookstore,” Cast said. “We hope this is not our only one. But we’ll see.”
– After 20 years of selling a dizzying array of products online—including bricks and mortar—Amazon.com may be moving into new territory with plans for its first brick-and-mortar store. Sources tell the Wall Street Journal that the New York City store, in a prime 34th Street location across from the Empire State Building, will mostly function as a place where people can pick up goods ordered online, but it will also give people a chance to take a look at Amazon devices like Kindles before buying. Amazon plans to have the store open in time for holiday shopping, and it could be the first of many nationwide if the experiment is a success, the sources say. Retail analysts say the move could help the company take advantage of the growing popularity of ordering things online and picking them up in-store, as well as boost sales of Amazon gadgets. "There's still a segment of the population that's touchy-feely," an analyst at Creative Strategies tells USA Today. "They want to see the product up close and have it shown to them." Amazon, which was rumored to be planning a store in Seattle two years ago, declined to comment on its New York City plans, saying only that it has "made no announcements about a location in Manhattan."