Amazon tests selling Kindle gift cards for individual ebooks at Bartell Drugs stores in Washington state
Todd Bishop / GeekWire :
Context & Ripple Effects
The Bartell Drugs test is another entry in Amazon's run of small-batch channel experiments from this period: weeks earlier it opened Kindle book previews to third-party websites and apps, and last fall it was building a shoppable Fire TV channel in the QVC mold. Each moves the point of purchase closer to wherever the customer already is.
What makes the drugstore pilot notable is that it puts Kindle content on a physical shelf — Amazon's home-state pharmacy chain becomes a retail front for ebooks sold as individual gift cards rather than generic store credit.
First-order effects
- Bartell Drugs gains a digital-goods product to sell over the counter, while Amazon gets brick-and-mortar shelf presence for individual ebook purchases without opening its own stores.
Second-order effects
- If the test spreads, other regional drugstore and grocery chains become candidate distribution points for Kindle gift cards, giving Amazon a low-cost physical acquisition channel that complements the embedded-preview push into third-party websites.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward Amazon dissolving the line between online catalog and offline shelf — a direction later visible when it brought its palm-reader payment system into Whole Foods stores — with any retail surface potentially becoming a checkout for Amazon content.
The trend: Amazon keeps converting new surfaces — third-party sites, TV screens, store shelves — into purchase points for its digital ecosystem.