Target, signaling its growing irritation with its rival Amazon, announced on Wednesday that it would stop selling the online retailer’s Kindle e-readers.

Target, with almost 1,800 stores, is one of the bigger carriers of Kindles in the offline world, though most of the devices are sold at Amazon’s Web site.

Like other big retailers, Target has been trying to figure out how to stop Amazon shoppers from visiting Target stores to check out products, and then buy them online from Amazon. It is a practice encouraged by Amazon; over the Christmas holiday, for example, the company offered a promotion on its Price Check app that gave shoppers 5 percent off any item scanned at a store.

Now that retailers like Target are aware of this so-called showrooming, carrying Amazon’s Kindle is a little “like Starbucks selling Dunkin’ Donuts gift certificates,” said Michael Norris, a senior analyst for Simba Information.