Shopping 2.0

El IHT trae una nota interesante sobre los experience stores que se están abriendo en EEUU. El concepto puede ser vagamente familiar a quienes surfean esa arteria peatonal de nuestra ciudad: la calle Florida. Entre Tucumán y Viamonte, si la memoria no me falla, hay un gigantesco local que alguna vez fue Mango y ahora vende celulares entre algodones y luces de neón. De todos modos, la "experiencia" porteña más que agradar intimida, por lo que probablemente desaparezca en breve para dar lugar a otro boliche de camperas de cuero, con sus insistentes promotores bizarramente multilingues en la puerta.

Algunos párrafos:

For its first store in the United States, Samsung, the South Korean electronics company, took an unconventional route: It refused to sell anything.

Having leased 10,000 square feet, or 929 square meters, of astoundingly expensive real estate in midtown Manhattan, it instead encouraged customers to commune with its products — to check e-mail on Samsung computers, watch reality shows on Samsung flat-screen televisions and make long-distance calls on Samsung cellphones.

No shopping, only loitering.

(...)

The era of Experience Shopping is upon us. The new stores are designed to put a piece of merchandise into customers' hands and teach them how to use it.

The assumption is that after all the touching and feeling, customers will be willing to spend more.

(...)

"Everyone comes into a store with a clock ticking in their head," he added. "If you give them enough to forget the clock, they are thrilled. And they buy."