Retail’s New Fork In The Road: Understanding Buying Versus Shopping

As I pointed out in my last piece, it is all too easy to be misled by high-level statistics and narratives that paint an incomplete picture of the retail landscape. Similarly, many fail to appreciate the underlying dynamics that (increasingly) separate industry winners from the losers and that which will ultimately determine when online shopping starts to mature. Much of this, I believe, can be understood by focusing on the difference between “buying” and “shopping.” I’m hardly the first to make this distinction. Seth Godin got me thinking about this with his 2015 post. Since then it has become more and more clear to me that delving into the differences is extremely useful in ascertaining what is next for the retail industry. Read more at Forbes.