????幾個月前，筆者在百思買（Best Buy）親眼見證了零售業的現在和未來之間慘痛的沖突：一對二十出頭的情侶在平板電視展區晃來晃去，一會兒粗魯地擺弄遙控器，一會兒重重地拍打音箱。兩人看起來心不在焉，與普通的購物者毫無二致。最后他們確定了一款三星LED電視，這時那位男士突然拿出手機，拍下電視的二維碼，然后連接到網絡，查找更優惠的價格。

????然后，他對自己的女朋友說：“亞馬遜（Amazon）上的價格可比這兒低49美元。”

????他們一邊在享受百思買豐富的產品展示所帶來的真實體驗，同時卻選擇在線訂購，最終得利的卻是亞馬遜，當然他們自己也享受到了實惠。但這種做法無異于在百思買的傷口上撒鹽。

????這件小事包含了很多與未來零售業相關的元素，比如手持設備、網絡，以及更加自主的消費者等；對于腳踏實地的傳統零售商而言，這些或許會讓它們感到絕望。但不論未來如何，實體商店仍會繼續存在。

零售業真的要消亡了嗎？

????眾所周知，早在1998年，尼古拉斯?尼葛洛龐帝就曾預言零售業必將消亡。他曾預言互聯網將改變購物方式，這一觀點已被證實，但他認為實體商店將走向終結的預言卻并未成真。毫無疑問，零售業仍處于不斷進化中。比如紐約布魯克林一家名為Shopbox的商店就是這種進化的產物，這家店通過專門銷售威浮球（Wiffle）和帶自動裝置的商品（Thing-o-Matic），向人們展示了這一地區玩世不恭的民風。商店的展示廳其實是一個船運集裝箱，有一面大型單片玻璃落地窗，并且沒有明顯的入口。最近，這家商店被迫搬遷，于是商家直接就用吊車將其運到了新的地點。

????顧客根本沒有機會與商店里的店員“打情罵俏”，甚至不必進入店鋪，只要通過櫥窗就可以查看其中陳列的商品。如果顧客相中了某件商品，可以把訂單用短信的形式發送給Shopbox，然后在家里等著他們送貨上門就可以了。

????這種方式與歐洲比較普遍的手機支付方式密切相關。英國零售業巨頭樂購（Tesco）在韓國的分店Home Plus便是這一理念的先行者。為了擴大市場，公司在地鐵站的墻壁上張貼了傳統貨架的2D海報。其中包括牛奶、果汁、水餃、拌飯醬，以及在韓國超市中隨處可見的各種日常用品。當然這些都是虛擬商品，顧客只需通過智能手機拍攝商品的二維碼，便可以直接將這些食物添加到在線購物車，然后坐等店家送貨上門即可。上班族在車站已經浪費了不少時間，何必再花費寶貴的時間親自到商店購物呢？

????從某種程度上說，這些例子對近期的零售體驗來說是一種提示：如今零售業不再是消費者去超市采購，而是商品尋找消費者。時間似乎又回到了過去，當時貨郎開著貨車挨家挨戶叫賣，鍋碗瓢盆叮當作響，告訴人們有食品出售。當然，兩者最大的差異在于，過去的流動雜貨店老板需要猜測客戶的需求，而反過來，消費者的需求也基本受到店鋪老板供貨能力的限制。其中并沒有多少商量的余地。

????Just a few months ago, I witnessed retail's present and future collide in a Best Buy (BBY). It was ugly. A twenty-something couple fiddled around with the flat screen TVs on display; mauling the remotes, thumping the speakers, and generally behaving like carefree shoppers. When they settled on a Samsung LED model, the guy whipped out his phone, captured a QR code on the TV, and beamed it up to the web to check for more favorable prices.

????"It's 49 bucks cheaper through Amazon," he said to his girlfriend.

????They rubbed salt into Best Buy's wound by ordering the TV online while still standing in the store, enjoying Best Buy's endless display models, all to the benefit of Amazon (AMZN) -- and themselves, of course.

????Even though this story contains many elements of retail's future, like hand held devices, the web, and empowered consumers; this isn't sustainable for retailers with boots on the ground. Fantasy futures aside, real-world stores are here to stay.

Death of retail, really?

????Back in 1998, Nicolas Negroponte predicted the death of retail as we knew it. While he was correct to say that the Internet would transform shopping, he was wrong to think it would be the end of physical stores. Still, they are changing, no doubt. For instance, there's the Shopbox, a self-conscious Brooklyn pop up store selling that borough's playful bohemianism in the form of products like the Thing-o-Matic and Wiffle balls. The showroom is a shipping container, with a big picture window and no clear entrance. Recently, when the store had to move, a crane just picked it up and carried it to a new spot.

????You are not going to be flirting with any sales clerks at this store. Instead of stepping inside, you examine the goods through a window. When you want to buy something, you text your order to Shopbox and they ship the stuff straight to your house.

????This ties in nicely with the fairly common practice in Europe of paying for goods via cellphone. Korean grocer, Home Plus, a division of English giant Tesco (TESO), pioneered this concept. To expand their market, they set up 2-D posters of a typical grocery aisle on the walls of commuter rail stations. They included milk, juice, dumplings, bibimbap sauce and everything else you'd expect from a grocery store in Korea. Except none of it was real. Feed an item's QR code into your smart phone, and that food goes into your online shopping cart, to be delivered straight to your home. Why waste time in a store when you're already wasting time at the train station?

????In a way, these examples flip the recent retail experience on its head, so that the goods seek out the consumer, rather than the consumer going shopping. It's almost like the days when men drove wagons from farm to farm, pots and pans clinking to announce there were dry goods for sale. Of course, a big difference is that the proprietor of the traveling general store had to guess what his customers wanted, and his customers' wants were pretty much limited to the proprietor's offerings. There was little back and forth.