Amazon Opens Pop-Up Stores to Market Tablets and E-Readers

Seattle-based Amazon is promoting Kindle tablets and e-readers in a pop-up shop in a San Francisco mall, providing a glimpse at what the online retailer could look like in a physical space. Amazon is also offering devices, branded covers and power adapters via vending machines. While Amazon has been expected by some to follow Apple and Microsoft in opening brick-and-mortar storefronts, the company said it has no immediate plans to do so.

“At the San Francisco pop-up store, Kindle Paperwhite e-readers were displayed on shelves beside well-worn hardcover books like a volume of Lord Byron’s poetry and Charles Dickens’ ‘The Pickwick Papers,'” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Two women staffed the site in Kindle-branded denim shirts.”

One of the women said the pop-up would close following a two-week run.

Amazon hopes that providing consumers with a place to handle Kindles will ultimately help sell more devices. Kindles are currently available at Best Buy, but no longer at Target or Walmart.

“In another area of the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall, Amazon set up a small booth in front of a Microsoft store where shoppers could test the Kindle’s self-lighting screen under simulated low-light and outdoor lighting scenarios,” notes WSJ. “An Amazon spokeswoman said the temporary stores are in a handful of malls as part of a marketing campaign.”

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