Two charts that show why Amazon is building a giant physical store

This week Amazon received approval to build a hybrid big-box store and fulfillment center outside Chicago that’s roughly twice the size of a typical Target. Why would the e-commerce giant want to wade into a costly and cumbersome physical store, especially after earlier brick-and-mortar iterations like Amazon Go have failed?

There are at least two reasons. First, despite e-commerce’s rapid growth, the vast majority of retail purchases still happen in physical stores, according to Census Bureau data:

Second, Amazon’s own customers regularly shop at competing big-box retailers: Consumer Intelligence Research Partners found that 93% have also shopped at Walmart. And as Amazon pushes further into groceries — a category still dominated by in-person shopping — CIRP estimates that basically all Amazon customers buy groceries elsewhere.