Walmart has one massive advantage over Amazon: its huge store fleet.

Observations suggest Amazon’s online recommendation engine is less effective at driving unplanned purchases, compared with the experience of browsing a physical Walmart store.

Currently, Amazon has been showing me guitars for sale. That made sense a few weeks ago, before I bought an entry-level guitar, but now the odds of me buying a second one are small.

Walking around a Walmart, however, I might see a music stand, a comfortable chair, or something unrelated to my recent purchase. And Walmart makes it really easy to access its stores.

“Approximately 90% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart or Sam’s Club,” Walmart shared on its website.

That’s something that would be a massive challenge for Amazon to copy, but it’s going to make its first major step toward doing that by opening its first-ever Supercenter.

Amazon quietly shares its mega-store plans

Usually, when Amazon makes a big move, it posts a press release, adds it to its blog, and otherwise tries to get as much attention as possible. In this case, the company has operated below the radar with its plans being discovered by local media.

“It’s the best that Amazon has to offer under Whole Foods, Fresh and their online offerings,” said Katie Jahnke Dale, an attorney representing Amazon at a community meeting, according to patch.com.

“We like to explain it as: So what does that look like? It’s a grocery store. But it’s purpose-built for what we’re seeing: retail customers demand today to provide a very safer experience for customers. As well as a more pleasant customer experience.”

The online giant plans to open a one-story, 229,000-square-foot store in Orland Park, a suburb of Chicago, RetailWire reported.

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“We regularly test new experiences designed to make customers’ lives better and easier every day, including physical stores,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. “The site in question is our planned location for a new concept that we think customers will be excited about.”

The typical Walmart Supercenter is about 170,000 square feet, so the proposed Amazon store would be larger.

Amazon has experimented in retail

I was a huge fan of Amazon’s 4-Star stores, which sold a selection of merchandise that the company’s customers rated highly. I also saw real potential for Amazon’s highly curated bookstores, as they were launched at a time when Borders Books had closed, and Barnes & Noble was struggling.

I’ve also enjoyed the no-checkout experiences at Amazon Go stores. There was one at the mall where TheStreet’s parent brand used to have an office, but the chain has largely backed off its non-Whole Foods retail efforts.

That’s because Amazon has struggled with its retail concepts.

Amazon Go offers “Just Walk Out” technology.

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Amazon has closed a lot of retail stores

Amazon Fresh

  • Amazon Fresh, Multiple store closures in Southern California: Amazon Fresh closed four stores in CA as part of restructuring its grocery operations, according to SuperMarket News.
  • UK Amazon Fresh closures: Amazon closed all 19 UK Amazon Fresh grocery stores after four years of operation, reported TimeOut London.
  • Amazon Fresh has also shuttered specific locations in Thousand Oaks, CA, and Manassas, VA, in 2025 due to performance assessments, added Grocery Dive.

Amazon Books

  • Amazon closed all of its physical Amazon Books stores (totaling 68 locations in the U.S. and UK) as part of a strategic pivot, according to Geekwire.

Amazon 4‑Star

  • All Amazon 4‑Star stores, which sold top‑rated products, were shuttered, along with the retailer’s Pop-Up formats, Geekwire added.

Amazon Style Clothing Stores

  • Amazon closed its Amazon Style apparel stores (e.g., Los Angeles and Columbus, OH) following underperformance, according to Spectrum News.

365 by Whole Foods Market

  • The separate grocery banner under Whole Foods (acquired by Amazon) was discontinued in 2019, Yahoo Finance reported.

Industry observers note that Amazon continues testing physical retail concepts, despite past closures.

“If you look at the statistics on consumer preferences, consumers actually like going to physical stores. There’s emotion that goes into a purchase, and they want to see an item, feel it, touch it,” Sam Cinquegrani, CEO of digital commerce solutions firm ObjectWave, told Retail Dive.

He believes that Amazon will figure it out eventually.

“If I were a retailer, especially a predominantly online retailer like Amazon, I would be concerned about that advantage. Given their success, you might think they wouldn’t be. But Amazon has always proven to be much smarter than everyone else, so it’s not surprising that they’d push into physical retail.”

Does an Amazon Superstore make sense?

Amazon may not be trying to float a trial balloon for a fleet of large stores, according to GlobalData Managing Director Neil Saunders.

“At this stage, the store is more experimental than anything else. However, Amazon has two primary aims. The first is to try and deepen share of wallet with customers and draw in new customers…The second is to see whether grocery combined with general merchandise can work — especially as stand-alone grocery stores are an area Amazon continues to struggle with,” he posted on RetailWire.

Goug Garnett, a retail expert and an adjunct instructor at Portland State University since 2001, does not think Amazon will make a mark with large-format stores.

“When Bezos bought Whole Foods, I expressed interest in the many savvy things they might do with the chain. Fundamentally, though, they did nothing. It may simply be that their digital obsessions blinded them to a good opportunity. I think it’s more likely that retailers have quite savvy structures in place, so there’s little dramatic advantage beyond doing the basics well. What might happen here? Nothing important. There’s no evidence Amazon has unique insight into stores,” he wrote.

Bob Amster, a former senior manager with the Northeast Retail Consulting Group of Ernst & Young, thinks Amazon is wasting its time.

“I don’t think that Amazon has the right amount of internal knowledge to run retail. I believe that, hoping they do not screw up Whole Foods, Amazon should stay with their online business and allow brick-and-mortar retailers to operate retail businesses,” he posted on RetailWire.

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