Hahaha Steve, you and your Nero d'Avola! You're as bad as me and my crumpets.

The attraction for us with Amazon is the convenience of delivery to our door (saves a lot of petrol as we are out in the sticks) and the very keen prices. If they opened shops, one would have to actually go there.
And that type of system would put up the costs.

We're supermarket tarts really, we haunt Asda, Morrisons and Tesco indiscriminately as the mood takes us, and also to obtain good prices and stuff which only one or the other stocks. But the store has to have a nice atmosphere, a cafe if possible and some clothes/household goods for yours truly to have a browse.

I used years ago to go to Waitrose with a (very posh) friend who looked and spoke a bit like Joanna Lumley, with a great sense of humour. She was happy to pay through the nose for what seemed to me stuff which was much cheaper elsewhere. I reckon she liked the 'ethos'. She lives in Somerset now, and shops in Bristol at all the posh places.

I also used to accompany my old Norfolk neighbour to what she called 'Lidl's For Diddles', and it was the opposite, poor quality stuff but keen prices. Didn't like that much either.