It's not just the staff, I think -- it's the real estate. Amazon doesn't have to have conveniently located distributed locations and the inventory headaches associated with them; they can just have one gigantic warehouse in Jersey that provides goods to all their customers in Manhattan.

> is not having an actual store that is accessible by customers (and coincidentally, the neccessary staff), that much of a operational advantage?

Absolutely it is. Real estate, depreciation, maintenance, utilities, not even to mention salaries, insurance... there's a lot to go into that.

No it isn't, because it's markedly less efficient. Amazon is, literally, taking the concept of the "store" and putting it online - yes they've done that already, but the instant gratification of receiving your item same-day; that's a true shopping experience that you, previously, could only really have with Brick and Mortar shops.

Instead of physically shopping inside of a store where you will have fewer selection, you shop online with a lot more selection, a powerful search based interface, recommendations, reviews, etc...; then have the items efficiently sent to you same-day.

Amazon is very successfully grounding the "internet" in the real world - and they are eating quite a few lunches.

I don't think Amazon would ever go the brick-and-mortar route, but having these facilities in major metropolitan areas might enable it to have a lot of 'Pick up at location' kind of shopping.

You fail to realize how tremendously expensive it is to operate a retail environment. The real estate, the overhead, the heating and cooling, the cleaning, the customer associates; It's absolutely huge compared with a warehouse.