In the late 90's we saw a shift from brick-and-mortar stores to online-only stores. It seems like you just can't do some things (like hard sells) with online-only stores. I think this decade is going to find a good balance between online and b&m stores.
I think it is especially true with things you need to "play with" before you make a decision to buy - e.g. keyboards (and other input devices), tablets, phones, watches, etc.
Companies that have or are starting to have b&m presences again: Apple, Google, Microsoft, SparkFun (yay, Microcenter!), RadioShack (the good-old RadioShack from the 80s and 90s, not upsell-the-phone RS. Still holding my breath for this one). Fry's was one of the survivors because it understood the need for customer-product interaction (imho), even though it did decline in customer service quality, which is a result of the race to the bottom price against internet-only stores.
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In the late 90's we saw a shift from brick-and-mortar stores to online-only stores. It seems like you just can't do some things (like hard sells) with online-only stores. I think this decade is going to find a good balance between online and b&m stores.
I think it is especially true with things you need to "play with" before you make a decision to buy - e.g. keyboards (and other input devices), tablets, phones, watches, etc.
Companies that have or are starting to have b&m presences again: Apple, Google, Microsoft, SparkFun (yay, Microcenter!), RadioShack (the good-old RadioShack from the 80s and 90s, not upsell-the-phone RS. Still holding my breath for this one). Fry's was one of the survivors because it understood the need for customer-product interaction (imho), even though it did decline in customer service quality, which is a result of the race to the bottom price against internet-only stores.