Amazon has closed more store concepts than most retail brands will ever open.

Bookstores, 4-star shops, Pop Up stores, Amazon Style, the Treasure Truck, and (as of early 2026) every Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh location. For a company that built the most data-rich customer view on the planet, physical retail has been a surprisingly tough nut to crack. So what does that tell you, the brand with a handful of stores and a team of associates who actually know your customers by name?

It tells you there's a gap. Amazon's omnichannel strategy is built on convenience, data, and scale. It is not built on relationships. In this article, we'll break down how Amazon's omnichannel strategy actually works, where it keeps stalling, and the three areas where you can build a competitive advantage Amazon can't easily copy:

1. Omnichannel Mix
2. Customer Experience
3. Relationships

These are not novel concepts for retail, but when it comes to competing with the retail giant that is Amazon, you should think about them in different ways. Let's start by looking at what you're actually up against.

Key takeaways:

• Amazon's omnichannel strategy ties its website, app, Alexa, Prime, Whole Foods and Buy with Prime to one customer account.
• Its physical retail keeps stalling. Amazon closed its Books, 4-star, Pop Up, Style, Fresh and Go stores between 2022 and 2026.
• If you also sell on Amazon, use it for simpler products and keep launches and high-consideration items in your own stores and site.
• Compete on what Amazon can't copy: associates who remember customers, appointments and personal follow-up after the first purchase.
• Credit stores for online sales they influence so channel teams stop competing with each other for the same customer.

What is Amazon's omnichannel strategy?

Amazon's omnichannel strategy connects every way a customer can shop with Amazon (the website, the app, Alexa, Prime, Whole Foods, and Buy with Prime on other brands' sites) around one customer account. That single account lets Amazon unify shopping data, personalize recommendations, and make buying fast and familiar in every channel.

Here's how the main pieces fit together.

Prime: one customer view across every channel

Prime is the glue. Free shipping, streaming, and grocery perks give shoppers a reason to stay signed in everywhere, and every signed-in interaction feeds the same customer profile. That profile powers Amazon's recommendations, its advertising business, and the "it just knows what I want" feeling customers have come to expect.

New channels built around the same account

Amazon has repeatedly created new places to shop and tied them back to the same account: the mobile app, Echo devices and Alexa voice ordering, and a large advertising business that reaches shoppers on and off Amazon. Each new channel adds more data to the same profile, which makes the next channel smarter.

Physical retail, mostly through grocery

Amazon's store footprint today is mainly Whole Foods Market, which it acquired in 2017. After closing its Go and Fresh stores in 2026, Amazon said Whole Foods would open 100+ new stores over the next few years, while it keeps pushing grocery delivery.

Checkout beyond Amazon.com

With Buy with Prime, launched in 2022, merchants can offer Prime shipping and checkout on their own websites. It's Amazon's way of extending its omnichannel reach into your channels, not just its own.

The throughline? Convenience at scale. That's a powerful strategy, and it also leaves a very specific opening for you.

Is Amazon omnichannel?

Yes, but lopsidedly. Amazon is deeply omnichannel online, connecting web, app, voice, video, and advertising through one account. Its physical retail has been far less consistent, and its biggest remaining store presence (Whole Foods) is grocery, not the specialty categories where personal service drives the sale.

That second half matters more than it sounds. Here's the track record.

Where Amazon's physical retail keeps stalling

Notice the pattern? Amazon's store experiments have leaned on technology (checkout-free aisles, data-picked assortments, smart fitting rooms) rather than people. Apparel, the category where a knowledgeable associate matters most, lasted less than two years.

None of this means Amazon is going away. It means the in-store, human side of retail is where your brand has room to lead. Here's how to take advantage of it.

The new omnichannel strategy

Seeing the word "omnichannel" on any retail strategy list should not surprise you, since the buzzword has dominated retail for the better part of two decades. Originally, omnichannel described how brick-and-mortar retailers were moving online and/or wholesaling to generate more sales. Now, it's about pulling data across all the different sales and marketing channels to deliver more consistent customer experiences and personalized messaging.

The next frontier of omnichannel, though, is about breaking down the internal barriers across those channels and enabling every part of your organization to participate in an orchestrated, intentional relationship with every individual customer.

There are seemingly unlimited ways to measure the impact of online presence to in-store traffic and vice versa, yet each channel stakeholder is generally compensated or measured by the performance within their respective channel. See the problem? This model drives performance to be "silo-selfish." Shouldn't stores be rewarded for driving an experience so excellent that the customer decides to continue their purchasing online? Does product placement at a wholesale stockist drive customers to check out your Instagram? Or did a mobile ad capture your customer's attention at just the right time to get them to stop in on their way home from work?

One way to avoid reviewing channels in isolation is to find a weighting system to reward employees more holistically, where their success takes into account their direct channel and their impact on other channels. This approach, however, still requires detailed attribution models that may or may not be available. Even with the right model, it can be hard to attribute those successes to individual or team performances.

The more optimal way is to redefine KPIs and technology in order to break down perceived barriers altogether. In doing so, you can amplify your marketing team by the power of your store, e-commerce, and wholesale teams, where each stakeholder feels empowered to deliver your brand's core messaging and value to each customer, no matter where they're shopping. In practice, that starts with a retail CRM that pulls your POS and e-commerce data into one customer profile your associates can actually see.

Of course, Amazon will continue to try to diversify into omnichannel, from its Whole Foods acquisition to experiments like the Treasure Truck and Amazon Style (both since shut down). However, the breadth and variety of their offerings and the siloed divisions within the company make it very hard for them to deliver the kind of connected, personal experience you can offer if you embrace the new frontier of omnichannel. Their size becomes their problem instead of their advantage.

The other benefit of an internal/external omnichannel approach is that it de-risks the company from both global and local events. The pandemic proved this the hard way. After retail layoffs and furloughs for millions of workers, many retailers struggled to find the right talent to provide the consultative and knowledgeable expertise their customers expect once stores reopened. While having an online presence likely helped mitigate some revenue losses, the siloed approach led to a colossal failure in the arena of human capital. In a cooperative, un-siloed omnichannel strategy, top sales associates could have been retained to engage with VIP customers from their stores and continue driving sales. The same logic applies to the next disruption, whatever it turns out to be.

Customer experience is (still) king

The customer shopping experience has been a focus for retailers for nearly two centuries. Merchandising and store display teams have been around since department stores like Macy's started selling a way of life back in the 1800s. But the arrival and growth of e-commerce dramatically expanded the potential ways a customer engages with a brand.

While increased touch points mean more opportunities for customers to buy, they also add more work for brands to ensure their customers' experience is always positive and consistent. As customers bob and weave through online and offline channels by taking advantage of services like BOPIS and BORIS (buy online, pick up in store, and buy online, return in store), or texting with a sales associate after meeting them in store, you have the opportunity to provide such a high level of service and ease of purchase that customers will never want to shop with anyone else.

And stores are still where most of that happens. According to the US Census Bureau, e-commerce accounted for 17.1% of total US retail sales in the second quarter of 2026. That means the large majority of retail spending still happens outside online checkout, much of it in physical stores where your team is standing.

By focusing on the actual experience of shopping with your brand (instead of just the products, discounts, or marketing), you can put yourself miles ahead of big-box retailers like Amazon and increase customer retention. Customers are inclined to stick with you because they know all your channels will serve them well.

Amazon competes on speed and selection. You compete on everything that happens around the product: the fit advice, the styling, the "we'll hold it for you," and the follow-up text when the new colorway lands.

Human-to-human relationships: the channel Amazon can't copy

Relationships are an area where technology-driven companies like Amazon are completely out of their depth. When people picture relationships in retail, most still think of small-town businesses who know their local customers by name. But thanks to modern retail technology, that same closeness can exist not only in major cities, but in a remote or digital capacity as well.

That practice has a name: clienteling. It means your associates build ongoing, one-to-one relationships with customers, using what they know about each person's purchases, preferences, and plans to reach out with the right product or invitation at the right time.

Similar to providing a top-notch customer experience, relationships are key to motivating customers to consistently bring their business back to your brand over more transactional, volume-driven sites like Amazon. The key to good relationship-building is having the right tools to scale while keeping all customer names, preferences, and habits stored in a safe, but readily accessible, way.

While Amazon might be great at having "everything," they're not so great at the human aspect of shopping. Offering your customers a dedicated, knowledgeable human they can turn to when things get complicated or confusing is yet another way to ensure all shopping activity stays within your brand network.

Think about it from the customer's side. An algorithm can recommend a jacket. An associate can remember that you're traveling to Copenhagen in March, know which size worked for you last time, and text you when the right piece arrives. Which one would you rather hear from?

How to build an omnichannel strategy with Amazon and direct sales

Many brands sell on Amazon and through their own stores and website. That can work, as long as each channel has a clear job. Here's a practical way to set it up:

1. Give Amazon a defined role. Use it for discovery and replenishment of simpler, lower-consideration products, not as the home of your full brand experience.
2. Keep high-consideration products and launches in your owned channels. New collections, made-to-order pieces, and anything that benefits from advice belong in your stores and on your site, where you control the experience.
3. Capture the customer relationship on channels you own. Marketplace sales generally don't hand you an ongoing, direct relationship with the shopper. Your stores and site do, so make it easy for customers to join your list, book time, or connect with an associate.
4. Keep pricing and brand presentation consistent. A customer who sees wildly different prices or product content across channels trusts all of them a little less.
5. Give customers reasons to buy direct that Amazon can't match. Styling appointments, alterations, personal recommendations, early access, and an associate who knows their name.
6. Measure across channels, not within them. Credit your stores for online sales they influence (and vice versa) so teams stop competing with each other.

The first five steps are mostly strategy. The sixth is where the right technology makes all the difference, because it lets you see and reward the whole customer journey.

6 ways to compete with Amazon through clienteling

So how does this look on the sales floor on a random Tuesday? Here's what the associate's side of a winning omnichannel strategy looks like.

1. Know who your VIPs are. Pull your POS and e-commerce history together so associates can see who spends the most, what they buy, and when they last visited. You can't treat your best customers like VIPs if you don't know who they are.
2. Follow up after the first purchase. The moment after a first purchase is your best shot at a second one. A personal thank-you and a relevant suggestion from the associate who helped them beats another generic promo email. (Our guide on turning first-time purchases into repeat revenue goes deeper on this.)
3. Offer appointments, in store or virtual. Letting customers book time with an associate turns a browse into a consultation, and a consultation is something Amazon doesn't offer.
4. Get store notes out of notebooks and into the CRM. Fit notes, gift plans, and upcoming events are pure gold, but only if they're saved. AI Notetaker lets associates capture visit details by voice, typing, or photo and syncs them to the customer's profile.
5. Make outreach a daily habit, not a heroic effort. Most teams have one or two star clientelers carrying the program. Endear's AI Opportunity Engine surfaces a daily queue of high-intent customers with brand-aligned message drafts that associates review, edit, and approve before sending. One specialty retailer went from 60 outreach messages a week to 360 within 6 weeks of turning it on, without adding headcount, and earned $35 in attributed revenue for every $1 spent on actioned opportunities, with conversion rates holding steady.
6. Move clienteling off personal phones. When associates text from their own devices, your brand voice and your customer data walk out the door with them. Keep email, SMS, and WhatsApp conversations on a company platform that connects to your POS and e-commerce integrations.

Want to see how this works for your stores? Request a demo and we'll show you what your associates' day would look like in Endear.

FAQ

Is Amazon an omnichannel retailer?

Yes. Amazon connects its website, app, Alexa, Prime Video, advertising, Whole Foods, and Buy with Prime through a single customer account. Its online channels are tightly connected; its physical retail has been less consistent, with several store formats closed between 2022 and 2026.

What is an omnichannel strategy?

An omnichannel strategy connects every place a customer interacts with your brand (stores, website, email, SMS, social, customer service) so the experience feels like one continuous relationship. The customer's history, preferences, and conversations follow them from channel to channel instead of starting over each time.

What are the pillars of an omnichannel strategy?

There's no single official list, but most frameworks come back to the same foundations: a unified view of customer data, a consistent brand experience across channels, integrated operations (inventory, fulfillment, and returns), and personalization. For store-based brands, we'd add a fifth: associates empowered to build relationships with customers.

What strategies do top companies use to rival Amazon?

Retailers that compete successfully with Amazon don't try to beat it on price or delivery speed. They focus on expertise, curated products, memorable in-store experiences, services like appointments and alterations, and personal relationships between customers and associates, all backed by connected customer data.

Can a small retailer really compete with Amazon?

Yes, if it competes on different terms. A specialty brand with 5 or 50 stores can't match Amazon's selection, but it can offer personal advice, recognize customers across channels, and follow up like a trusted friend. That kind of loyalty is hard for a marketplace to replicate.

Don't beat Amazon at its own game. Play yours.

As Amazon continues to grow, now is not the time to throw your hands up in defeat. In fact, it's time to think about how Amazon's growth creates space for you to differentiate. By focusing on your omnichannel mix, the customer experience you deliver, and the relationships your customers have with your brand, you'll be able to stretch every marketing dollar even further by increasing customer loyalty and, therefore, customer retention.

Being a huge corporation isn't always a positive. Sometimes it creates an opportunity for David to defeat Goliath.

Ready to give your associates the tools to build those relationships? Request a demo of Endear to see how clienteling, AI Opportunity Engine, and AI Notetaker work together in your stores.