Apparently, to avoid blocking a parking lot driveway? That’s a rather odd traffic engineering choice.
Agree with many poster’s theories. Here’s a couple no one has mentioned yet.
Some folks are told that to avoid being trapped by carjackers, leave a car length or more ahead of you when stopped. The paranoid propaganda victims are many amongst us.
Once you get habituated to stopping a car length-plus behind the vehicle in front, it’s an easy unconscious path of least resistance non-decision to stop equally short of a stop line when you’re first in line. Many drivers are functionally indistinguishable from zombies. The big difference is that zombies are always seeking more brains, whereas zombie-like drivers seem to have no use for brains.
Unrelated to the above …
Some years ago I read (so no cite) some driving advice to always stop well back from the intersection. If you get rear-ended while stopped you won’t be immediately pushed into high speed cross traffic and promptly involuntarily t-boned. As well that extra space might prevent you from being pushed into a crowd of pedestrians in the crosswalk.
As always in driving, optimal individual behavior for personal safety or economy is at odds with optimal group behavior for maximum group throughput or speed. Or even optimal group safety.
A parking lot for a hospital.
Here in Colorado, particularly Boulder, people tend to stop well back from the stop line. I will stop right at the stop line. About 80% of the time when the car in the lane next to me is 5-10 feet back, and I pull up to the line, they will creep forward to line up with me. Peer pressure, shame, not wanting someone to be ahead of them?
Where I grew up in Austin, people routinely stopped with their back bumper at the stop line. I always wondered how that should change my behavior at a stop sign. I’m stopped at the line, but I’m the second car back, do I have to stop again after the car in front of me goes (assuming clear site lines, etc.)?
I don’t think it’s odd - it’s treating the driveway like an intersection , which it kind of is. And it might be busy enough that cars blocking the entrance cause traffic in the other direction waiting to turn left into the lot cause a traffic build up on that side or cars get stuck waiting forever to exit the lot. I’ve seen plenty of parking driveways that have actual traffic lights so a stop line doesn’t seem strange to me.
And in the satellite photo, it also looks like a car is parked in the “no stopping” zone. 
No need for that much room. In general, stop while you can see the back wheels of the car in front of you. Usually that will allow you to enough room to steer out of the line if you have to (if possible given traffic around you). It is a good idea to leave yourself that room. It’s the difference of a few feet. You won’t get home any faster if you leave only a foot or two between you and the car stopped in front of you.
Haha! My sister has been banned from every carb I’m driving because she constantly harassed me as a teenager and young adult for following this “rule”.
30 years on and she’s still driving her husband nuts with her passenger seat driving “advice”.
I wouldn’t call it a rule. Just good advice. 99.99% of the time it won’t matter. It’s just that one time where it can really count that you wished you did it.
Otherwise…put your air intake right up against the exhaust of the car in front of you and enjoy the fumes! 
Regarding the distance between my car and the car ahead of me, oftentimes I will stop a normal distance behind the car in front of me, but then they will slowly inch forward as they’re waiting for the light to change. But I’m one of those rare Americans with a manual transmission car, and I don’t want to step on the clutch, shift into first, and engage the clutch, just to move forward a few feet. So I don’t, and the gap between me and the car ahead of me keeps increasing.
I was told when I was learning to drive more than 50 years ago to always leave enough room for you to move your car out of the lane if, for any reason, the car ahead can’t move.
In any case, I don’t the carjacker advice. Surely if you fear carjackers you would want to move your car up to the next car’s bumper so they wouldn’t even think of choosing you.