The online behemoth has signed roughly a dozen leases in the Los Angeles area alone, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal. These stores, in such locations as Irvine, Studio City and Woodland Hills, could open by the end of the year, the newspaper reports.

One such store will operate at North Topanga Canyon Boulevard, at a retail center in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, occupying a 35,000-square-foot space that had been a Toys R Us, the paper's sources say.

Amazon is targeting Chicago and Philadelphia as well, and is also looking at grocery spaces in the New York City metropolitan area, in New Jersey and in Connecticut. Many of the locations under consideration are in shopping centers.

Many of the stores will be outside urban centers, serving middle-income consumers and offering prepared foods and mainstream grocery items, according to the newspaper report. As such, these stores will differ from the company’s 16 cashierless Amazon Go stores and its upmarket Whole Foods supermarkets. The company also operates four Amazon 4-star stores, which stock popular products from the website, and 18 Amazon Books stores.