attention industry

physical vs digital shopping

I’m in New York for the week, and the determining factor of my trip thus far has been my luggage getting stolen somewhere on the way from Toronto to Penn Station.

I’m not writing to complain about that. But I am writing because the act of replacing so many possessions in a short timeframe has me thinking a lot about the realities of shopping for physical goods and digital goods, and the lack of a solid middle ground.

Digital Shopping for Digital Goods: This is in many ways my favourite experience. Instant gratification, discovery facilitated by algorithms and search. But, the downside is that no one has built a good enough experience for facilitating serendipity - you can’t browse on Amazon the way you would in Chapters, for example, and the filter bubble issue is definitely as apparent in commerce as it is in pure information discovery. The fact that digital / digital shopping can happen anywhere, and be supplemental to other activities, is a bonus - I’ve purchased Kindle books during a conversation so I can remember to look deeper into a topic, I’ve bought music while driving to work, and I’ve bought comics while sitting in a coffee shop, consuming all on a tablet or smartphone.

Digital Shopping for Physical Goods: The best part of this experience is the breadth on offer. If you’re looking for a physical product online, you can both find nearly any variation, and can generally find a lower price if you’re willing to put in time. But the same issue with serendipity applies as above, and the great demon of shipping complicates and over-impacts the entire experience. Given I’m Canadian, there’s another layer of complexity when it comes to shipping over the border, exchange rate fluctuations (and whether a company is actually reflecting the current exchange rate), and the cost added by the two. The biggest problem is the lack of a way to be sure the product will live up to expectations - will it fit properly, is it the right version, is the quality acceptable, etc. Digital /physical shopping is often an addition to physical / physical shopping for me, where I’ll determine exactly what I want, and if I determine I can wait for a few weeks, I’ll make the purchase. But this is a less satisfying experience than buying a physical good instantly, in person.

Physical Shopping for Digital Goods: Since the advent of the iTunes music store, this has felt confusing and awkward for me. Waiting in a line to buy software, or a CD that will immediately be ripped into data so I can actually listen to it, is an archaic experience in my life. I avoid this physical / digital shopping wherever possible, but it has only really become avoidable with the launch of Apple’s desktop app store. I imagine this will need to become standard for every platform, as physical media becomes less and less standard.

Physical Shopping for Physical Goods: This is the best of experiences when it goes well, and the worst when it doesn’t. This is also the reason this post was written. In a digital era, knowing exactly what you want, is completely divorced from your ability to get it *now*. And this is where the opportunity is - how can we take the most interesting parts of the traditional in-store shopping experience (in my mind, staff expertise, real-world trial and sampling, and instant gratification) and supplement them with technology? I went to 5 stores over the course of three days, specifically because I knew exactly what kind of headphones I wanted to buy. I found something close, but overpriced and confusingly co-branded. I finally caved and bought something else I encountered that I liked, but didn’t love. This is a failing of search (where is the thing I want?), of access (if a company doesn’t own its own distribution channel, where can I find their products?), the stocking process (why do you have 10 colours of one product from this manufacturer, but no other products from them?) and of course, an excess of information (I know too much about the options, and therefore get unnecessarily specific).

This was the ‘thinking out loud’ post on this subject. Expect a more strategically focused look at this physical / digital experience vs physical / digital product matrix at some point in the near future.