The Future Of Brick-And-Mortar In The Online Era Will Depend On The Value Of The Face-To-Face Experience

The success of online selling has prompted a knitted-brow debate on the future of “brick-and-mortar” stores. Much of this debate has centered on what merchants would have to do to get customers to leave their homes for the purpose of buying goods.

The history of commercial transactions shows a back-and-forth of the willingness of both merchants and customers to travel, but always with the end goal of arriving face-to-face for business to be conducted successfully.

Traveling merchants, Traveling customers: We’ll go where customers are going to be passing through. 

In an age and parts of the world where there was lots of movement of people and goods, merchants thought “We’ll bring the goods to where we know potential customers are going to be so it will be easy for them to have access.” People traveling on their way from one place to some other place would “run into” the goods. Vendors knew they had to make it easy for people to see and buy their wares. They saw themselves as supplicants, willing to do whatever they had to do to get their goods in front of customers.

Sedentary merchants, Traveling customers: Let’s entice customers to walk to us by banding together in a town center.

Town centers. Main street.  The proliferation of trade center destinations people could get to. Individual merchants had the attitude that said “This is ‘the Marketplace.’ We’ll set up together so people will have to come to us to buy anything. If they come to buy one thing, merchants selling other things will be right next door. Many people can walk here from their homes.”

Sedentary merchants, Sedentary customers, Transaction and fulfillment by mail: If they can’t come to us, we’ll send goods to them.

Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery, Ward pioneered the mail order business, allowing customers in farming communities who couldn’t get to town centers to get things they wanted via catalog shopping by mail. But it was always considered a poor substitute for going to the store.

Sedentary merchants, Traveling customers, Part 2: We can get customers to drive to an upgraded enclosed space by providing food, entertainment and a more exciting environment along with merchants with goods for sale.

The mall. Once most families had cars, the mid-twentieth century saw the rise of a more exciting, more inviting destination merchants expected customers to drive to. “Like the town center, we’ll have an aggregation of merchants but under one big roof. We know it’s not near where you live or where you’re going to be naturally, but we’ll make it a comfortable environment and  interesting with food and movie theaters so that you’ll want to come here as an outing.”

Sedentary merchants, Traveling and Lingering customers: We want customers to spend more time in our store, and to do that we’ll offer a range of consumer and financial products all in one store.

The Big Box Concept. Sears and J.C. Penney tried the “stocks-and-sox” approach and failed. Walmart and Costco are doing better with a similar concept. It’s still based on the hubristic notion that “We can make it so attractive, you’ll be willing to go out of your way to come here and buy all kinds of products.”

Sedentary merchants, Sedentary customers, Transaction by internet, fulfillment by mail: We’re not going to try to get customers to come to us. We’ll make it possible for them to get whatever they want without leaving home.

Financial services and insurance. Amazon. Online pharmacies. Food delivery services. Bedding. Even cars. What’s the difference between this and old-time mail order? Lightning-fast delivery time and low or no-cost shipping and easy, no-questions-asked returns and refunds mean customers can get virtually any product they want in a day or two and try it out on approval, risk-free.

It’s always been assumed that for most business to be conducted, merchants and customers had to get face-to-face. But after thousands of years of various face-offs, merchants traveling, customers traveling both traveling, that assumption has finally been successfully challenged. Online selling has finally made it possible for business to be conducted briskly and expeditiously with both parties sedentary — that is, in different permanent locations — never meeting face-to-face. Does that mean the end of face-to-face selling?

Our brief review above shows that merchants have been willing to do what is necessary to get in front of customers, and they are not likely to go away quietly even in the face of the success of online transactions. And though being in the same physical space at the same time may have started out as a practical necessity to doing business, customers and merchants alike have valued the personal relationships that grew out of this kind of interaction. Will everyone be willing to let this go away?

The next iteration:

Sedentary merchants, Re-locating customers: We’ll fight back by enticing customers to live where the goods are going to be. 

Live-Work-Shop was a logical next move. Recognizing that the old idea of “brick-and-mortar” isn’t going to get people to come to them, merchants have decided to try to get people to come and live where the goods are going to be offered for sale!

Wait. Isn’t this is starting to sound like some of the upscale over-55 communities cropping up all over? It’s not far off. Those places began with ideas about what mature adults and empty nesters might want and expect from the places where they live. It’s turning out that some younger adults with families seem to prefer this kind of living to traditional suburban locations where they have to drive to a restaurant, to a movie or even to get a cup of coffee.

What will it take to make it work?

• The housing designs must be up-to-date and offer a range of floor plans consistent with people’s current expectations of living spaces.
• Price ranges must be attractive to customers with a variety of levels of resources.
• Locations must have easy access to rail and air and major highways.
• The merchants must be sufficient in number and offer high quality products. Stores must serve as much for showrooms for home ordering and delivery as for traditional cash-and-carry transactions.
• Popular restaurants of different levels — from mid-priced chains to upscale chef-owner establishments — must be on site.
• Everything has to be within walking distance.

Above all, more than beautiful facilities and convenient locations and anything else, store and restaurant staff must actually care about the person they’re serving and be willing to do whatever it takes to make the shopping experience a pleasant and rewarding one — worth getting up from the table and walking out the door and down the street.

Without that, customers would rather stay inside and click.