Important question -- part of the answer

...the secret reason for why shops still exist is not merely because it is useful to have a clerk explain the product and/or so you can actually hold it yourself and get its essence. The not-so-secret (additional) reason is because people actually like the contact with other people which "bricks and mortar" provide...even merely chatting up a clerk, much less sitting down in a cafe.

Comments

[Brian Miller]

I'm reading through (it's not really a standard "book", so peruse may be the right word.) Rem Koolhaas and Harvard Graduate School of Designs' tome on "Shopping" (A fascinating book. Most of the profits from the privatized airport system, for example, comes from shopping in the airports) contains, from 2001, pronouncements that "50% of shopping will occur on the internet within five years.

I still buy music in actual stores, beleive it or not. :)

[Michael Pereckas]

I don't buy music in stores, but I do buy it off folding tables in hotel convention rooms at science fiction conventions, or directly from the artists in hallways or people's basements. Actual official stores? You're never going to find much there worth buying.

[Brian Miller]

Ah, but if you live in the Bay Area (Northern California) or, oddly enough, Louisville, Kentucky, you CAN find some neat music. Especialyl when the store is managed by an aging metal head who has death rock shows on the local college radio station (KDVS, man!) It would still make more sense for me to shop for music online, of course, but I love browsing Amoeba Records or Rasputins.

I have very, very "odd" tastes in music, though (more Scandinavian albums than British, for example), so...