In the early days of U.S. commerce, people waited with anticipation for the Sears catalog, and then with even more anticipation for the Wells Fargo wagon to bring their orders. In 1897, the Sears catalog was almost 800 pages and even had a section offering homes for sale. Pre-cut lumber, doors, windows, and roofing were shipped by rail for the buyer to self-assemble. (Some of these homes are still standing today.) It could take weeks or even months for the order to make its way to Sears, be fulfilled, and shipped back. But even this slow process was a radical improvement over the pre-railroad system of carts and wagons that would supply local stores with a limited array of goods.

Today, we expect to go to a store like Walmart to find just about anything we need in vast supply but, even more importantly, we expect to be able to order online and receive our shipment within days, if not hours. We are accosted by a previously unimaginable array of colors and advertisements. Various studies have shown that message and brand “exposure” can range from 3,000 to 20,000 contacts per day. In addition to traditional ads, those numbers include every time you pass by a label in a grocery store, all the ads in your mailbox whether you see them or not, the label on everything you wear, the condiments in your fridge, the cars on the highway, and every other imaginable brand contact. However, just the fact that you and the message or a brand name or logo are in the same proximity doesn’t mean you actually notice it. No one can really process that many exposures. We can’t notice, absorb, or even judge the personal merit of 3,000 visual/audio exposures per day, let alone 20,000.

But online vendors have become experts at collecting and collating individual and marketplace buying patterns and tracking individual shopping preferences. Algorithms then predict purchasing patterns and arrange for items to be warehoused within two hours of the final destination. Companies like Stitch Fix deliver clothes based on established personal preferences and then allow the purchaser to return those that don’t fit or that are not appealing. Advertising and promotion have changed dramatically as the information age has made targeted marketing possible at a micro-level never before feasible.

E-commerce is changing the physical landscape of the nation as well. Plain, no frills distribution centers in industrial areas are slowly replacing the high-profile, brightly-lit shopping centers that have dominated the urban experience in the past. According to Business Insider, in 2017 Macy’s announced that it is planning to close 100 stores, Sears rolled out plans for shuttering at least 30 Sears and Kmart stores by April of 2017, and JCPenney announced plans to close 138 stores by the end of the year. Credit Suisse released a research report in early 2017 predicting that more than 8,600 brick-and-mortar stores will close their doors by the end of the year.¹

Companies that want to survive, both those that rely on online sales and those that rely on brick-and-mortar locations, are reaching toward the next level of differentiation. Many products, including cars, are able to be customized online by the consumer, made-to-order and delivered quickly. Amazon and other companies are already experimenting with self-driving delivery vehicles and ways to deliver products before consumers even know they need them, and we can only imagine what is next. 3D printers in every home ready to assemble items to order? Tactile holograms to virtually try on clothes? The next big breakthrough is likely something we haven’t even imagined yet. For certain, it is the business students of today who will be creating the shopping experience of the future. After studying the content in this chapter, you should be able to answer a set of discussion questions found at the end of the chapter.