Your story of the mother’s wonder at her teen moving seamlessly between the digital and physical world has implications for education as well. Our students understand this … but do our faculty? And how do we help them embrace this facility with which their students enter classrooms already equipped?

I saw an article last year about a mall-type store that was moving to online shopping exclusively; they had samples of all products in the store, like one of each size, and then a computer to order online where the cash register would be.
But I can’t for the life of me remember what store this was.

From my own observations, I note that more and more retail businesses are transferring the value of their businesses from the product to their relationship with the customer. In that sense, I think we will see a rise in consumers paying for a continued relationship with particular retailers rather than the actual goods being produced. In this scenario, a bricks and mortar shop will serve as a meeting place to further the relationship.

Experience retailing … only applies to aspirational goods which feed on identity and status.

Alain de Boton notwithstanding, such certitude seems unmerited. Theory is not a prescription for reality, it’s a description of reality. Reality gets created first, then the theorists come along and try to explain it; and their theory, being a model of reality and not reality itself, is like the parable of the five blind men and the elephant. Which is why theorists are generally fellows at Harvard, whereas the people whom actually make reality happen are generally entrepreneurs. It’s also what led Einstein to remark that,

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

So I question the wisdom of reducing the complexity of the market to semiotics; especially a semiotics that is tinged by turgid quasi-marxist social theory.

Let us consider a rollercoaster. Is the compelling experience it represents merely an expression of status? Sure, teen males goad each other into loosening the grip of their fear to ride the things, but do you really think that as they experience 3Gs they’re thinking, “this should raise my status.”

You couldn’t sell PCs the same way because people buy PCs because it’s a computer and they need a computer. If you can get the same specs for $50 cheaper online, why not do it?

Only valid, again, with the intercession of woolly-headed social theory. Part of “experience retail” is knowledge transfer. My firm actually spent a great deal of time examining and modeling the Apple Store. Our experience led us to the conclusion that one of the biggest values it offers is in creating the expectation of a modest learning curve. Consumers are obviously invited to try the products, but they’re also given personal instruction in various uses both before and after making a purchase. It demystifies the machines and their use. It encourages confidence in the consumer that they can realize their goals with the machine.

Dell would be well served to pay attention. For that matter, so would Microsoft. Demand for computers in general is driven by ever-improved knowledge and expectations regarding what can be done with them. That is behind the modest ascendency of Apple much more so than the hipster Mac user shtick.

Fragrance is an interesting case because it clearly is an aspirational good but the aspiration is purely towards the fragrance itself. You want to buy something that smells like you think you should smell but it’s irrelevant where you purchased it from because it’s impossible to signal.

I’m more worried about the smug, ivory tower academics who sneer about so-called “consumerism” and the potential that they’ll inveigle ever more paternalist (sorry, maternalist) intervention in the market. Those of us who are unfettered by such ideological myopia are free to dream the future and get it capitalized. Which puts me in mind of a quotation:

“What every artist knows: No matter how great my contemporaries, they are human and fallible.
What every critic knows: One need not actually create anything to lift one’s leg and piss on those that do.”
- Sigismundo Celine

I find it frustrating in DRM debates that sides are forced to align onto two diametrically opposite positions:

1. Piracy is inevitable and good for artists because they gain exposure blah blah.
2. Piract is evil and should be stopped.

What nobody seems to be really grappling with is what if Piracy is both inevitable and bad for artists? In the same vein, the shift from retail to online might very well be inevitable but it might be detrimental for all parties involved, retailers and consumers and *that*’s what I’m worried about.