Amazon has launched a shoppable feed of photos and stories within its mobile app, designed to drive purchases by its Prime members.

The etail giant has positioned Amazon Spark as a social network on which shoppers can buy the products displayed with a tap on their smartphone.

Platform users can react to posts with ‘smiles’ – Amazon’s equivalent of Facebook’s ‘like’ button.

Spark, which is currently only available for Prime customers in the US, combines the ecommerce style capabilities of Pinterest with the picture-feed interface of Instagram.

Preference filters

Shoppers are asked to select a minimum of five interests to follow when accessing Spark for the first time via the online retailer’s mobile app, on which a curated feed of content is compiled for shoppers to browse.

Categories include Amazon’s own merchandise as well as wider ranging topics such as ‘TV bingewatching’ and ‘internet of things’.

If a photo features a product that can be bought on Amazon, a shopping bag icon appears in the corner of the screen, which if clicked on will display product details.

The move could signal that Amazon is aiming to reposition itself as the go-to for online inspiration as well as convenience.