Tech: Amazon is opening its first brick-and-mortar location in New York City — take a look inside

Tucked inside The Shops at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, the physical location uses millions of Amazon.com customer ratings and reviews to curate its selection.

On Thursday, Amazon will officially open its first brick-and-mortar store in New York City — its seventh in the US.

Tucked inside The Shops at Columbus Circle in midtown Manhattan, the physical location uses millions of Amazon customer ratings and reviews as its guide to providing customers with a unique shopping experience.

The store — which sells mostly books and some electronics, like the Amazon Echo — doesn't have traditional price tags, and with the exception of new releases, it stocks only books that have an average online rating of four stars or above.

Take a look inside the brand-new store.

The new store is 4,000 square feet, and it houses about 3,000 books.

One of the first things you'll notice is that all of the books are displayed with their covers outward.

Customers will find classic categories like Business & Money and Cooking ...

... as well as categories that you wouldn't find at your typical bookstore, like Books with More Than 10,000 Reviews on Amazon.com.

While the store shelves only books that have an average rating of at least four out of five stars online, a table of Highly Rated 4.8 Stars & Above books greets you at the entrance.

There's also an entire wall that, similar to Amazon's online shopping experience, provides you with three suggestions based on popular novels you might have already read.

In another parallel to the online shopping experience, each book is accompanied by a select Amazon review, along with its average rating and the number of times it has been reviewed.

There's also a curated selection of books that are highly rated online by users based in New York.

There are no traditional price tags at Amazon Books — you have to scan the books to find out how much they cost. Amazon Prime members can get the books at the same price listed on Amazon.com, while nonmembers can purchase titles at the publisher's suggested retail price, which appears on the back of each book.

There's also a Gadgets & Gizmos section that includes the Amazon Echo and Samsung's Gear VR headset.

With online sales still accounting for about 8% of all retail sales in the US, the goal of Amazon Books' physical store is to help capture those purchases that happen offline.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Jennifer Cast, the vice president of Amazon Books, told Business Insider in March: "We had an opportunity to create a new kind of store and create a different experience in a physical world. Our special sauce is knowing the reading habits and passions of a city through our Amazon.com data."

Source: Business Insider

Amazon Books is planning to open five more locations soon, including stores in New Jersey and another in New York City.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the store stocked only books with an average online rating of 4.5 stars or above. This location stocks new releases as well as books with a four-star rating or above.

Tucked inside The Shops at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, the physical location uses millions of Amazon.com customer ratings and reviews to curate its selection. Read Full Story